The singer aggressively winks at the camera, reminiscent of a pirate. (Spike Jonze)
I first came across Björk in 2000, when Dancer in the Dark was released.
Every Sunday, my family had this small ritual where we would rent a film and watch it together, and that afternoon we were watching Dancer in the Dark.
Well, we never made it to the end because an argument broke out between me and my sister over a little hair tie, and even now I don’t remember exactly where we stopped!
A year later, she appeared in my life again at the Academy Awards, wearing that swan dress I was completely obsessed with.
That would be me, I thought. If I ever had to go to prom, or whatever, I would pick that dress. Or make my own, haha.
It didn’t feel like something made to impress or explain itself, but more like a decision only she could have arrived at. And that was when I started falling in love with her.
In 2008, finally I saw her live and I was standing in the very front row singing Declare Independence with everyone else like it was something I had been holding in for a long time, and it’s still one of those moments that hasn’t faded.
In my early twenties I kept going back to It's Oh So Quiet, and the video directed by Spike Jonze being so vivid with me too because of how precisely it moved between control and release without ever feeling forced!..
The two-hour shoot at the Chateau Marmont happened the day before Spike Jonze and Björk would begin working on the iconic video for the single “It’s Oh So Quiet.” (Spike Jonze)
For a long time I thought she was simply being herself in the most natural way possible, but the more I watched the more it became clear that nothing about her is accidental and that what feels natural is often something she has constructed very carefully, almost like she understands exactly how something needs to be shaped in order to feel real.
And then only few years ago she started speaking about salmon in Iceland, and it wasn’t abstract or metaphorical but grounded in something very specific, about industrial open-net fish farming and the way it releases waste, chemicals, and parasites into the surrounding ocean.. affecting wild salmon and gradually altering the ecosystem in ways that are not immediately visible but difficult to reverse once they take hold.
Together with Rosalía, she released Oral, and the song carries that same layered feeling her work often has, something that draws you in first and then quietly reveals what sits underneath, and the proceeds were directed toward efforts to stop fish farming in Iceland.
What stayed with me wasn’t just the issue itself but the way she approached it, because people with that kind of visibility often stay within a certain boundary where nothing becomes too uncomfortable, and yet she chose to use the same language she has always worked in, sound and image and presence, to point toward something that doesn’t easily fit into it.
These days it often feels like many people already know what is happening and still decide not to say anything, so when someone does the opposite it doesn’t come across as a performance but as a choice, something deliberate that shifts the meaning of everything around it.
And maybe that is what makes her feel so consistent over time, not because she stays the same, but because she keeps deciding, again and again, what to build and what to say, and when to step out of it.
