There are few artists for whom the first name is sufficient. Everyone knows immediately who is meant - and also has a few milestones in their respective careers in mind. Or in the ear. In the case of Madonna it might be "Vogue" or "Ray of Light", in Prince's work "Purple Rain" definitely has a place of honor, and Beyoncé is unthinkable without "Halo" and "Crazy in Love" as an association. And then there's Björk, whose surname Guðmundsdóttir fell under the carpet of pop history simply because of its unpronounceability. The Icelander, who celebrates her 50th birthday in November, proves with her new album "Vulnicura" that she not only lives in a dream world in the fantastic video for the single "Black Lake", but also plays in her own league creatively.
Few musicians have such a wide repertoire of compositional styles, are vocally nuanced and can play more instruments than the one and only Björk. Singer, producer, composer, actress ("Dancer in the Dark") and converter between almost all musical genres. Pop, electro, trip-hop, jazz, alternative rock, folk and classical - Björk dares to do everything and forms an extremely innovative sound from it. Often state-of-the-art and staged with multimedia in videos, an album as an app and digital collages.
What also distinguishes the ex-Sugarcubes frontwoman, who became famous and notorious in fashion circles with her swan dress at the Oscars in 2001, is her courage. Without hesitation, she repeatedly speaks out politically: “In everything I do, I make sure not to fall a single step behind the achievements of feminism and not to forget the struggles for our equality. I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
With "Vulnicura" Björk processed the painful separation from her life partner, the US media artist Matthew Barney. In an interview about the album, she expressed her hope that "the songs are a help, a crutch for others. They are a reminder that wounds heal and that there is an aftermath.”
Coinciding with the start of her world tour, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York showed a retrospective of her artistic work. The 10-minute video "Black Lake" for the song of the same name was commissioned by MoMA for the exhibition. Shot in Iceland by award-winning director Andrew Thomas Huang, it integrates the archaic landscape – caves, canyons, lava and fields of moss – into a meditation on birth, death and rebirth. In the film, Björk wears fashion by Iris van Herpen.
More about the total work of art called Björk at www.bjork.com .
