I feel like the people from Iceland have a different relationship with their country than other places. Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don’t have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people.
BjorkBeing a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There's a lot of music, always.
BjorkI've written arrangements for choirs and strings in the past, but I usually write music with my voice or a keyboard and then I'll get someone who is good at writing scores to write it out. Or, if I have the luxury of time, I will go in a room and hear the people perform and then change it through what I hear, not on paper. I can read music OK, but I probably rebelled a little - music changes into something else when you read it.
Bjorki'm back at my cliff still throwing things off i listen to the sounds they make on their way down i follow him with my eyes 'till they crash imagine what my body would sound like slamming against those rocks.
BjorkI mean, I've never been thinking that if you're a fan you have to buy everything that somebody puts out. I mean, you've got a choice. If you don't want it, just don't buy it. It's also a reaction to YouTube and sharing of files. A lot of it is really bad sound, really low quality. So the librarian in me wants it at least to exist there so that in 20 years when I'm sitting in my rocking chair, it will still exist in the best sound quality possible, even though it only sold 1000 units or whatever. As much as I love the whole pirate kind of thing, the quality suffers.
BjorkI think choosing between men and women is like choosing between cake and ice cream. You'd be daft not to try both when there are so many different flavors.
BjorkOur times seem to be so much about redefining where we are physical and where we're not. For me, it is really exciting to take the cutting edge technology and take it as far as it can get virtually, use it to describe/control the musicology or the behavior of raw natural elements, and then plug it with a sound source which is the most acoustic one there is - like gamelan and pipe organ. So you get the extremes: very virtual and very physical. In that way you shift the physicality.
BjorkYou want people to take risks, and OK, they fail, but you don't get the great stuff unless people are willing to risk and not play it safe. And maybe the Icelandic characteristic is better harnessed in these places than on the stock market.
BjorkI never want to know the range of my voice. It has to be impulsive, and I don't want to kill the mystery.
BjorkI do try and wear stuff by unknown designers, and I make sure I pay because if nothing else I have money.
BjorkPeople from the rock and roll world have felt for years that electronic music had no soul, but now electronic music can not only have soul but have all the shapes in the world.
BjorkThere is this stereotype of Icelanders all believing in spirits, and I've played up to that a bit in interviews.
BjorkWhat probably confuses people is they know a lot about me, but it quite pleases me that there's more they don't know.
BjorkI think every year brings unknowns that you have to deal with and handle, confront and embrace.
BjorkI've always appreciated working with people I have chemistry with, who are friends, and where you feel that the work is growing while you are getting to know each other better.
BjorkI never really understood the word ‘loneliness’. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature.
BjorkI'm a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl . . . leave me now return tonight tide will show you the way if you forget my name you will go astray like a killer whale trapped in a bay
BjorkCompared to America or Europe, God isn't a big part of our lives here. I don't know anyone here who goes to church when he's had a rough divorce or is going through depression. We go out into nature instead.
BjorkI'm not as religious as some people about "the album." To be honest, that was a product of a format. You had vinyl, and you could fit five songs on each side, and that's 45 minutes. You had A-side songs and B-side songs; I always loved the first song on side B. And there's nothing wrong with that. Prog albums of the 70s adapted to that format very much. But not all musicians want to create 45 minutes of music that has to be listened to in chronological order.
BjorkOver the last 10 years, there have been so many incredible albums created in bedrooms by people who never would've gotten an album deal. People keep thinking of professional music studios like they've always been this way for hundreds of years, but they're very much a child of the 70s. Even the interior is very 70s. Everything's brown and it's wood - somebody told me the wood panels are all by the same company. We're always mourning things that have died. It's a bit much sometimes. These studios have no fresh air, and there's this unwritten rule that they don't have windows, either.
BjorkUsually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy.
BjorkI do believe sometimes discipline is very important. I'm not just lying around like a lazy cow all the time.
BjorkI'm not going to talk like I know about politics, because I'm a total amateur, but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren't normally interested in politics.
BjorkI'm self-sufficient. I spend a lot of time on my own and I shut off quite easily. When I communicate, I communicate 900 per cent, then I shut off, which scares people sometimes.
BjorkWhen I write a song, I see a tunnel, and then the chorus is an open space, or the bassline is doing this shape. I see songs as a more of a geometric, spacial experience.
BjorkI don't like records that are the same from beginning to end, that are too styled and slick. Everything is so designed and airbrushed and Botoxed, it makes us think, 'Oh, everybody's perfect except me. Everything's smooth except me.' But nothing is smooth.
Bjork[As a kid] I felt it was really weird that music schools behaved like a conveyor belt to make performers for those symphony orchestras. If you were really good and practiced your violin for a few hours a day for ten years you might be invited to this VIP elite club. For me music was not about that. It is about freedom and expression and individuality and impulsiveness and spontaneity. It wasn't so Apollonian; it was more Dionysian.
BjorkThe reason I do photographs is to help people understand my music, so it's very important that I am the same, emotionally, in the photographs as in the music. Most people's eyes are much better developed than their ears. If they see a certain emotion in the photograph, then they'll understand the music.
BjorkThere have been so many articles written in the papers that want to just eliminate the environmental values business and just build aluminum factories now. But there have been an equal amount of articles of people saying listen, you just went on a money binge, are you gonna go on another binge now?
BjorkThe relationship changes as you learn more about people, and the work sort of takes on its own life. I enjoy this very much.
BjorkI just feel like making things solar-powered and wind-powered should be as easy as using an iPad.
BjorkI feel the 21st century is another new age. Not only can we collaborate again with nature, but we have to. It's an emergency.
BjorkThere's definitely, definitely, definitely, no logic to human behaviour . . . There's no map And a compass Wouldn't help at all
BjorkThe English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.
BjorkWhat comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.
Bjork