I don't know my future after this weekend

Obviously we all hate that “I liked them before they were famous” guy but, in 1992, an Icelandic band called The Sugarcubes released a single called “Hit” which I quite liked, so I took a risk on the album – Stick Around For Joy – and yes, I stuck around for joy. The songs were pretty catchy and the lyrical delivery was both quirky and precise but that was pretty much that, I thought – no-one from Iceland was ever going to make it in the big wide world, surely.

Well, over the years it turns out that Björk Guðmundsdóttir has done OK for herself, despite (or maybe because of) being the very embodiment of the phrase “mad as a box of frogs”. Her first solo album – Debut – came out in 1993 and, certainly in retrospect, feels to me like someone experimenting and trying to find their place, but it maintains a strong level of quality throughout, with catchy tunes and quirky lyrics - “Big Time Sensuality”, “Violently Happy” and “Play Dead” (yes, I know it wasn’t originally on Debut, but it’s on my copy, OK?!?) would be the highlights for me, but “There’s More To Life Than This” gives us a taste of what is to come where she sneaks off into the toilets halfway through the track, but continues singing.

The follow up, Post, is in my opinion a stronger album as a whole with “Army Of Me”, “Hyperballad” and “Possibly Maybe” standing out for me - with “Isobel” obviously getting a listen from time to time in our household, although if she’s around it is usually greeted with “What is this exactly?!?”. Post also contains her most successful UK single – “It’s Oh So Quiet” - which is (quite obviously) a cover of a 1948 German song. And I really don’t like it – certainly not in the context of the album. But what do I know, hey?!?

The final album I’m going to specifically call out is her third album, Homogenic, which I know I really like (and have two copies of, for no obvious reason) and has the most fantastic cover art – but when I look at the track listings, I struggle to remember what any one of the tracks actually sound like. I feel that by this time, she knew what she wanted to be – and she was admittedly very good at it, but some of the rough edges had been smoothed off for me so that I found myself admiring rather than enjoying the music. And that theme has continued, for me at least, for the rest of her albums – which often vary greatly between albums, but are generally just too polished to totally grab my attention. Maybe you need the odd low to celebrate the highs, maybe I'm just never happy - who knows?!?. However, they're well worth a listen to - they may suit your more refined tastes better.

Around the time of Homogenic, I also got to see her live at Glastonbury which was a fantastic performance, with more lasers than you would believe (second only to Muse in my concert going experience – and no-one’s going to beat Muse for lasers) although she was also impressively late (second only to Pete Doherty in my concert going experience - and we'll just gloss over that one). Homogenic also landed Björk the award for Best International Female at the BRIT Awards where she accepted the award stating "I am grateful grapefruit". Because she would, wouldn’t she?

For those of you that read up and marvelled at Neneh Cherry’s Wikipedia page, then I’d suggest Björk’s is very much in a similar vein – once again, the woman has lived! Some of the Bjork related highlights are winning best actress at Cannes, “the egg incident” at the Oscars, her big break coming when her teachers sent a recording of her singing to Iceland’s only radio station which resulted in her recording her first album at the age of 11, her being offered an island as a gift by the Icelandic government and her punching several reporters over the years (but remember kids, violence isn’t the answer). All in all, she’s a fascinating individual and possibly best summed up the closing line of the “Some of the Bjorkest moments of Bjork” video on Youtube (link here) – which is “I think it’s not fair on all the people in Iceland to think they are like me”.