Trivia / Björk

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Björk never said "I am a grateful grapefruit!" at the 1998 Brit Awards. She merely said "I am grateful grapefruit".
• Black Sheep Hit: "It's Oh So Quiet" from Post, a jazz/big band song from an electronic/alternative artist.
• Breakup Breakout: After the Sugarcubes disbanded in 1992.
• Bury Your Art: Her self-titled album as a child singer has not only never been issued outside her native Iceland, but has also never been officially released past its original vinyl pressing in 1977. Her first solo album as an adult would be named Debut, firmly exiling her 1977 album to Canon Discontinuity, and she has scarcely brought it up in interviews.
• Content Leak: Vulnicura was leaked 2 months before its original release date. This caused the album to get released earlier than what was initially planned.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Her most popular and most successful song is the aforementioned "It's Oh So Quiet." Björk got angry that her most popular song is a cover, and now she rarely performs it.
  • After the Troubled Production of Dancer in the Dark, she stated that she hated working with Lars von Trier so much that she vowed to never act again, despite winning Best Actress award at Cannes for that film. However in 2005—where she got cast as the lead in her then-husband's arthouse film Drawing Restraint 9—she stated that she would act again, but not for Lars von Trier. In 2020 she was cast in Robert Eggers' The Northman.
  • A downplayed case, but she had an ambivalent reaction to the public acclaiming Vulnicura (a Breakup Album) as a "return to form" after the worse-received Volta and Biophilia (which respectively focus on social commentary and science), since she said this reinforced stereotypes that women musicians should just sing about love and emotions to have success while avoiding "serious" or "political" subjects, unlike their male colleagues.
  • In an interview with Pitchfork, she claims that she has these feelings towards "Black Lake", which was effectively her giving her ex-lover Matthew Barney a lengthy "Reason You Suck" Speech (which led to some summarizing the song as her version of a diss track).
    "I was really embarrassed about that song. I can still hardly listen to it."
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Slightly before recording began on Homogenic, a Loony Fan of hers named Ricardo López made a video diary detailing his obsession over her as well as a letterbomb that he sent to her home (it was intercepted before it could do any harm) before killing himself. After the incident, she stated that it distressed and disturbed her, instilling a deep sensation of paranoia that someone could get so involved in her personal life so as to potentially hurt her or her child. This led to the song "So Broken".
  • "Vulnicura" is a word made up from "Vulnus," Latin for "Wound," and "Cura," Latin for "Care." This "complete heartbreak album," to quote Björk, is the way she coped after her breakup with Matthew Barney.
• Creator Couple: With artist Matthew Barney, up until they broke up.
• Dye Hard: Her natural hair color is dark brown, not black. This is evident in pics of her during the time when she was in the Sugarcubes.
• Hitless Hit Album: In the USA, Debut and Post both went Platinum, but Debut only had one low-charting single^note ("Big Time Sensuality" peaked at #88), while Post didn't produce any charting singles.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: She regards the 1977 album recorded at age 11 as an Old Shame, so if you're interested in it, you'll have to find some way to access this album, which was never released outside of Iceland.
• Only One Name: Unlike many musicians, Björk's mononym isn't an affectation. Most Icelanders including Björk don't have a family name; Guðmundsdóttir is a patronymic (it simply means "daughter of Guðmundur," her father's name), and it's normal Icelandic usage to refer to her as just Björk in second reference.
• Troubled Production: The famous video for "All is Full of Love", as recounted here, was this for director Chris Cunningham. Because of all the complicated effects required in post-production, the initial footage was essentially still shots of the set and props, and Björk in a blue costume and white facepaint, with Cunningham having a full-blown panic attack over how cheap and ramshackle it looked. Björk trusted him enough that she first saw the video when it was finished, an act of faith that ultimately paid off as it's widely regarded as one of her best.
• What Could Have Been:
  • She was originally approached to perform "Gollum's Song" for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but declined, citing her pregnancy. Fellow Icelander Emilíana Torrini performed it instead.
  • Wu-Tang Clan were originally supposed to produce for Homogenic, but had to drop out due to their album's delayed production schedule.
  • "It's in Our Hands" was originally recorded for Vespertine but ultimately didn't appear in the track list. It eventually appeared in her Greatest Hits album as a previously unreleased song.
  • She originally envisioned Vespertine as an album called Domestika, which would feature intimate-sounding music, sounds of household objects, and lyrics that "celebrated the banalities of daily life" such as searching one's house for a lost set of keys. The overall feel of the music and the idea of using household objects remained, but the lyrics started revolving around love and sex. "Domestica", a B-Side to the "Pagan Poetry" single, is a glimpse at the original idea for the album, as it's the aforementioned song about missing keys.
  • Debut was almost going to have a mixture of original electronic-tinged songs and covers of jazz standards and was going to be produced by Graham Massey and Paul Fox before she decided to change the idea of the album to have fully original songs after Nellee Hooper wanted to work with her on her album. The Massey produced songs would eventually appear in Post, such as "Army of Me" and "The Modern Things".
  • "My Spine" was originally recorded for Post before it appeared as a B-side for "It's Oh So Quiet".
  • Post originally had a different cover art.
  • "Who Is It?" was originally planned for Vespertine but felt the song's tone didn't fit well with the album's feel, so it ultimately became the lead single of her next album Medúlla.
  • One of the contributors to Medúlla was planned to be Beyoncé (yes, really!), but scheduling issues prevented her from appearing. Björk justified this choice as such:
    "[Medúlla] is an album about voices, and she's got the most amazing voice."
  • She recorded seven tracks with Timbaland for Volta with only three making it to the album. Timbaland did consider including one of the four scrapped tracks with her on his solo album Shock Value, which was collaboration-heavy, but decided against it.
  • Arca was supposed to be a key contributor to Fossora, as she was to Vulnicura and Utopia, but the COVID-19 Pandemic prevented her and Björk from meeting. On that note, "Allow" was originally composed during the Utopia sessions before being reused for Fossora.

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