Music

Björk Just Dropped Some Serious Truths About Women In The Music Industry

"Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times."

by Meg Watson  22 January 2015

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To discuss the release of her new album Vulnicura, Björk — Icelandic musician and global trendsetter in all that is weird — recently sat down to talk to Jessica Hopper from Pitchfork. This new album, which works through the end of her relationship with long-time partner, Matthew Barney, is a major turn for the artist whose music has previously been occupied with surreal takes on particle physics and an ongoing fascination with gemstones.

So naturally, there was a lot to talk about.

Published today, the interview starts out in a predictably odd fashion (making note of the fact the artist is attired in a flamingo-pink kimono and sporadically breaking into tears), but it ends somewhere a lot more interesting. Björk used it as an opportunity to speak out about some of the problems and prejudices she’s faced as a woman in the music industry.

Here are some of the serious truths she dropped.

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#1: “Women are the glue. It’s invisible, what women do. It’s not rewarded as much.”

When speaking about the huge difference in subject matter between Biophilia and Vulnicura, Björk tried to explain the way in which the former album was also a kind of statement about womanhood.

“I was being like Kofi Annan — I had to be the pacifist to try to unite the impossible. Maybe that was a strange, personal job between me and myself, to show how overreaching I was being as a woman. The only way I could express that was by comparing it to the universe. If you can make nature and technology friends, then you can make everyone friends; you can make everyone intact. That’s what women do a lot — they’re the glue between a lot of things. Not only artists, but whatever job they do: in the office, or homemakers. Biophilia was like my own personal slapstick joke, showing I had to reach so long — between solar systems — to connect everything. It’s like the end scene in Mary Poppins, when she’s made everyone friends, and the father realises that kids are more important than money — and [then] she has to leave [crying]. It’s a strange moment. Women are the glue. It’s invisible, what women do. It’s not rewarded as much.”

Of course, you may not have got this impression at first from listening to songs like ‘Crystalline’ where she puts her head inside a planet and shoots laser beams at the moon, but it’s a pretty interesting idea all the same.

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#2: On taking ownership of her work: “You’re a coward if you don’t stand up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.”

As is the case with many female artists, there have been many times when she hasn’t got the full credit she deserved. This came to a head most recently with Vulnicura; many news outlets credited Alejandro Ghersi (aka Acra) with the production, despite the fact Björk was a co-producer.

“I didn’t want to talk about that kind of thing for 10 years, but then I thought, “You’re a coward if you don’t stand up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.” So around 2006, I put something on my website where I cleared something up, because it’d been online so many times that it was becoming a fact. It wasn’t just one journalist getting it wrong, everybody was getting it wrong. I’ve done music for, what, 30 years? I’ve been in the studio since I was 11; Alejandro had never done an album when I worked with him.”

She then spoke more generally about the problem at large.

“I have nothing against Kanye West. Help me with this — I’m not dissing him — this is about how people talk about him. With the last album he did, he got all the best beatmakers on the planet at the time to make beats for him. A lot of the time, he wasn’t even there. Yet no one would question his authorship for a second. If whatever I’m saying to you now helps women, I’m up for saying it. For example, I did 80% of the beats on Vespertine and it took me three years to work on that album, because it was all microbeats — it was like doing a huge embroidery piece. Matmos came in the last two weeks and added percussion on top of the songs, but they didn’t do any of the main parts, and they are credited everywhere as having done the whole album. [Matmos’] Drew [Daniel] is a close friend of mine, and in every single interview he did, he corrected it. And they don’t even listen to him. It really is strange.”

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#3: “Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times.”

After firmly establishing that she’s had to deal with some pretty fucked up things, she came out with some broader life advice for women who can learn from her experiences.

“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. I became really good at this and I don’t even notice it myself. I don’t really have an ego. I’m not that bothered. I just want the whole thing to be good. And I’m not saying one bad thing about the guys who were with me in the bands, because they’re all amazing and creative, and they’re doing incredible things now. But I come from a generation where that was the only way to get things done. So I have to play stupid and just do everything with five times the amount of energy, and then it will come through.”

Yikes. Though that may be helpful for women who are feeling downtrodden or unheard, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when your best advice is, ‘It sucks, but that’s the way it is’.

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#4: “It’s a lot of what people see … maybe it’s not all sexist evil.”

The musician then conceded that it’s difficult to convey a sense of ownership in her kind of musical style — one hugely driven by behind-the-scenes mixing work that nobody ever gets to see. Though that doesn’t really account for her seemingly shitty experience with men elsewhere, it’s probably an important concession to make when making such accusations.

“When I met M.I.A., she was moaning about this, and I told her, “Just photograph yourself in front of the mixing desk in the studio, and people will go, ‘Oh, OK! A woman with a tool, like a man with a guitar … It’s a lot of what people see. During a show, because there are people onstage doing the other bits, I’m just a singer. For example, I asked Matmos to play all the beats for the Vespertine tour, so maybe that’s kind of understandable that people think they made them. So maybe it’s not all sexist evil. [laughs] But it’s an ongoing battle. I hope it doesn’t come across as too defensive, but it is the truth. I definitely can feel the third or fourth feminist wave in the air, so maybe this is a good time to open that Pandora’s box a little bit and air it out.”

YES. Who knew Björk made so much sense when she wasn’t making whale noises?

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Read the full interview on Pitchfork.