Music

Let’s All Remember The Time Winona Ryder Did A Perfect Björk Impression On ‘SNL’

True art.

by Joseph Earp  29 January 2020
Bjork Winona Ryder SNL photo

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There are few artists harder to impersonate than Björk.

After all, there’s a reason that every punter down at your local RSL decides to do Elvis and not the ‘All Is Full of Love’ singer. Björk is just so singular; just so… Björky. Simply draping yourself in a swan dress and twirling around while singing muddied consonants won’t quite cut it. You have to thoroughly commit — to absorb the singer’s entire bizarre deal.

For that reason, it is high time that we pay our dues to Winona Ryder, the only actor to ever properly nail the Björk ethos.

Ryder dropped the imitation while a guest on Saturday Night Live back in 2002 (the show also featured musical guest Moby, so that should date things for you.) The actor was having something like a comeback at the time, having recently starred in the cult classic Girl, Interrupted. She’s good in that movie — trembling, and full of heart, sensitively depicting a person at the very end of her tether. But her Björk impression is in another league altogether.

I mean, just feast your eyes on the thing:

Of course, as all real Björk-heads know, Ryder was skewering a very bizarre clip of the singer in which she finds poetry in the everyday by pulling apart a television and marvelling at its contents.

To that end, why not treat yourself by watching the Ryder impersonation above and then the clip of the real deal singer below, one after the other? There’s no better way to soak in not just the accuracy of the impersonation, but the sheer joy that comes from spending some time in the Björky orbit.