Bjork, the Icelandic musician and producer has given the most honest, kick arse interview ever. She basically drops a massive truth bomb to Pitchfork magazine about what it’s like being a woman in the music industry.
The news is: it’s tough, yo. You get no credit for your work, men just sail in over the top of you, and sometimes you gotta play dumb and let them think all the good ideas were theirs.
The longform profile will have you punching the air saying, “Bjork. You wonderful, crazy duckling. I don’t know how to pronouce your name. But let’s be friends.”
The New York based singer, famous on our shores for her song “It’s Oh So Quiet”, is currently promoting her latest album with an honesty rarely seen in promotional interviews. Like when she says she struggles to get credit for her musical ideas:
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 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.
(via twitter @bjork)
And how her album, has some songs on it that are so emotionally charged that she actually doesn’t know how she will perform them. Talking about the song “Black Lake”, she says, “I was really embarrassed about that song. I can still hardly listen to it.”
How, pray tell, will she perform it then? She doesn’t know.
I have no idea. But it’s like you were saying, there’s no easy exit through. I wish. I would have taken it if I could. [long pause] It’ll be emotional. I’m just going to have to cry and be a mess and do it. Right now, my life is not getting any discount, as we say in Iceland. There’s no easy access. I have to go through that to get to the next bit.
Bjork performs at the Roskilde Festival (Pic: Getty)
The journo, Jessica Hopper, in an expertly insightful way, prods her on it, saying, “That’s how we figure things out, isn’t it? That the only way out is through, that having things be easier is not helpful in the long run.”
And Bjork? Truth bomb. She’s pretending to be all that, but she’s not:
When I say that, it might come across that I’m incredibly wise. But it’s the other way around. I’m fucked and I’m trying to talk myself into it, like, “Go, girl! You can do it!” It’s me advising myself. It’s not me knowing it all—not at all. It’s just a certain route you just have to go; I went through it.
She says the album stretched her to show how “over-reaching” she was being as a woman:
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….It’s like the end scene in Mary Poppins, when she’s made everyone friends, and the father realizes that kids are more important than money—and [then] she has to leave. [chokes up] It’s a strange moment. Women are the glue. It’s invisible, what women do. It’s not rewarded as much.
At the end, the children don’t even say goodbye to Mary Poppins. Even after all the spoonfuls of sugar and flying kites.
And the kicker. The thing she didn’t want to talk about for ten years: that whichever man was in the room with her got credit for her genius.
Yeah, 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 …I’ve sometimes thought about releasing a map of all my albums and just making it clear who did what. But it always comes across as so defensive that, like, it’s pathetic. I could obviously talk about this for a long time.
(via twitter @bjork)
She goes on to detail the double standards for women in the industry, citing an example of how Kanye West manages to sail through production. That, despite him not making any beats in his music, no one questions his authorship. Ever.
She says now her focus is on developing and supporting other female artists.
I have to say—I got a feeling I am going to win in the long run, but I want to be part of the zeitgeist, too. 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.
The innovative musician, who was ranked 29th in VH1’s “The Greatest Women in Music” has been championed for her body of work, and now, we champion her for the most refreshingly candid thing we’ve read in AGES.
