Björk Speaks On Vulnicura And Feminism - Pitchfork publishes first album interview

Pitchfork publishes first album interview

Pitchfork have published the first new interview with Björk, in which she discusses the making of Vulnicura.

She expresses nervy anticipation of releasing such a personal album into the world:

I’m a little nervous. Definitely. Especially coming from an album like Biophilia, which was about the universe. This is more of a traditional singer/songwriter thing. When I started writing, I fought against it. I thought it was way too boring and predictable. But most of the time, it just happens; there’s nothing you can do. You have to let it be what it is.

The interview moves on to discusses the process of synthesizing pain into art:

When I did this album — it all just collapsed. I didn’t have anything. It was the most painful thing I ever experienced in my life. The only way I could deal with that was to start writing for strings; I decided to become a violin nerd and arrange everything for 15 strings and take a step further than what I’ve done before. I had like 20 technological threads of things I could have done, but the album couldn’t be futuristic. It had to be singer/songwriter. Old-school. It had to be blunt.

She also talks at length about her work being misattributed to male collaborators, when much of the production work is by Björk alone, and endemic sexism in music:

I want to support young girls who are in their 20s now and tell them: You’re not just imagining things. It’s tough. Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times. Girls now are also faced with different problems. I’ve been guilty of one thing: After being the only girl in bands for 10 years, I learned—the hard way—that if I was going to get my ideas through, I was going to have to pretend that they—men—had the ideas.

Read the full interview here.

Vulnicura is available to buy internationally on iTunes and in Iceland on tonlist.is. Since its snap-release, the album has hit the top of the charts on iTunes in over 30 countries. Our first-listen review can be found here.

In other Vulnicura news, look what this guy did!