Words Are Enough: Björk

Anyone who has heard Björk's cover of abstract vocalist Meredith Monk's spine-shivering "Gotham Lullaby" can tell you that the strength of her music exists outside her poetics. Say the word "lyricist" and Björk may not immediately come to mind. In her own arguably less abstract songs, she herself resorts often to gibberish, communicating — quite effectively — in a language neither English nor Icelandic (she's fluent in both). But when pressed for words, fans are quick to quote her "Hyper-ballad" from 1995's Post:

We live on a mountain/ right at the top/ There's a beautiful view ... every morning I walk towards the edge/ and throw little things off/ like: car parts, bottles and cutlery ... I listen to the sounds they make/ on their way down/ I follow with my eyes 'til they crash/ imagine what my body would sound like/ slamming against those rocks/ and when it lands/ will my eyes/ be closed or open?

Like a more famous red wheelbarrow, the images Björk conjures are discrete and isolated, magnified whether she's honing in on the minutiae of an early-morning moment or the tiniest spark of an emotion, as in the skeletal "Unravel":

While you are away/ my heart comes undone/ slowly unravels/ in a ball of yarn

Those slight words convey a longing far greater than the song's length, hitting the mark with a starkness that only Björk seems to summon. Her method owes at least partly to the landscape she grew up in. Some proof lies in "Hunter" another track from the same album, 1997's Homogenic:

If travel is searching/ and home what's been found/ I'm not stopping ... I thought I could organize freedom/ how Scandinavian of me

And from there, her abilities as bard do indeed bring her to mind when the subject of lyrics arises. While there are those to verbalize the changing times at large, there must be some to document the tiny movements within, and Björk stands firm on that front. She has said that she sometimes writes songs in English, then translates to Icelandic and vice versa. Since matters of the heart are the trickiest of our obsessions, access to multiple languages seems a boon to deciphering such mysteries. Clichés in one language may be profound insight in another, so Björk's linguistical acrobatics result in a condensation of universal — or at least bicultural — memes. Her almost-haikus transform the common into the not so.

These efforts peak with her most recent solo work, Medúlla, in which the words are sung a cappella, without embellishment. And so she tackles fate:

It's tricky when/ you feel someone/ has done/ something on your behalf ... With a palm full of stars/ I throw them like dice (repeatedly)/ On the table ... until the desired constellation appears

love:

His embrace: a fortress/ it fuels me and places/ a skeleton of trust/ right beneath us

and, of course, utter nonsense:

You can use these teeth as a ladder/ up to the mouth's cradle

Because for all the truths she's written, there's none more resolute than the one she's likely best known for:

If you ever get close to a human ... be ready to get confused

The point is obvious, sure, but it takes quite the observer to highlight that point, quite the songwriter to make a lasting pop song out of it, and quite the lyricist to give you lines with which to sing along.

— Lavina Lee (lavina at flakmag dot com)