A quote from Bjork referencing the video director Michel Gondry: "“When Michel gets his strokes of genius and, in the video for ‘Army of Me’, wants a dentist that’s a gorilla to find a diamond in my mouth, some people call it nonsense. But it’s probably the most realistic way of expressing what situation I’m in - all these people trying to take things away from me, and the gorilla finding a diamond that I don’t know I have and then stealing it. ‘Army of Me’ is so much about me actually learning that I have to defend myself. I have to stand up and fight the fucking gorilla. Once I’ve got the diamond and I run away with it, it becomes massive ‘cos it’s mine. But if the gorilla had kept it, it would have gone really tiny. That’s surrealism for me.” I have one Bjork CD, "Debut", bought on the strength of "Venus as a Boy" and "Human Behaviour". Odd is definitely a word I'd use to describe her work. Unique? Absolutely.
Oh nice. I was talking with Santiago somewhere else in this comment section and was on the right track. I was thinking about how Taylor Swift still doesn't own some of her own songs and that pop stars specifically seems to really have to fight, by themselves it feels like, for the right to keep their own stuff.
Björk has always been a visionary. Her impact in both experimental music and pop music is undeniable, even if she still remains ahead of most pop artists. I have no clue about the video, but I know she's usually very involved with everything besides the music, so I'm sure there's a concept that somehow relates to the song and/or the album. Her work has grown more conceptual as years go by, and she remains as creative as always. This is a very restrained song for her vocals, she tends to utilize vocals in lots of different ways, usually strange. About the relationship between instrumental and vocals, I've always assumed the instrumental to mean that "army of me" she's leading, her inner strenght and desire for righting a wrong. Keeping the vocals steady fits the idea of her being able to command such power in an effortless way. But she's always been quite cryptic so I can be way off there lol Great insight as always, Bryan!
""army of me" she's leading, her inner strength and desire for righting a wrong" Kinda makes me think of how pop artists always need to fight for their desires, usually by themselves -- like Taylor Swift still not owning her own dang songs. I wonder if the diamond is something that was stolen from her, musically, and she had to run off with it to avoid letting producers or record labels own something of hers with the gorilla being a stand-in for those types of people. Doesn't explain the museum bombing though so maybe I'm wayyy off😅
@@CriticalReactions that's an interesting take on it! According to wikipedia (I just checked) the song is meant towards someone (her brother it seems) with self-destructive behaviour, she compares herself to a grandmother reprimanding her grandson/granddaughter. It's a call to regain control in life. That explains the "if you complain once more" in the chorus. Now I'm at more of a loss with the video, though 😅
Yeah, really interesting to see Locrian used in music like this and it sets the mood perfectly. The base is pure Locrian but her lyrics line cheats a little bit. Still, really inventive and huge respect.
This is Trip-Hop, simply, like Portishead, this is good, BUT "only" her second album...She's capable of WAY more creativity vocal wise & music wise....(the only precedent creative female artist, building a universe of her own also visually, on stage, videos, etc I can compare her with is Kate Bush in my opinion). She started to sing very early & recorded her first album at the age of 12 ears old.....then she moved to different styles & bands (one particularly interesting being The Sugarcubes), then went to a solo career, with songs & albums that can be sometimes stunning, other times super challenging, bordering some (almost atonal ) Contemporary music she also studied. Check out for instance songs like "Joga", "All Neon like", "Where is the Line", "Black Lake".
“Challenging“ is a good word for it. Unlistenable would sometimes be more accurate. However, because fans like me allow her that freedom when she gets it right, it is both transcendent and derivative of nothing else. I would add that a lot of her music is deconstructive, like if kabuki went hard-core.
I've always considered Björk a genre unto herself. If you look across the breadth of her catalog, it defies categorization. Hugely influential artist across completely unrelated genres, with the most unexpected artists listing her as an influence.
As a huge Bjork fan, when I saw you reacting to this video I thought to myself, “This guy doesn’t get it“.…… Then you started comparing her to Portishead. Bjork, Portishead, DJ Shadow, tricky and massive attack were like the sound of my 90s. Dude! You totally get it. Even the parts where you call it dissident and offputting. Visualize the black and white German expressionist film, “Metropolis“. At least that’s what I do when I’m working out to this song. * But I wish you touched upon her other hit from that same album, “Hyperballad“.……… It’s a somewhat different composition As a fan who sees that you do in fact get it, I would love to see you react to the following in some sort of compressed Bjork special. 1) Hyperballad 2) Mutual Core 3) Virus 4) Joga One last thing…… I truly believe that Bjork both loves men and loves being a woman. I know that’s off-topic, but it’s some thing I hear in her music
I'm so glad you put dj shadow in there too, björk and him are two of my all time favorites ever for their creativity, matter of factly, Dj shadow sampled bjorks "possibly maybe" on his track "mutual slump" in his album introducing. Both Absolutely amazing songs in their own respect. I love them both. Grew up listening to them cause my parents always played them.
Bjork is just outside my Top 10 Artists. She's simply one of the most original, creative, visionary musical voices of the last half-century. This track was from her second album, which is where she first started getting experimental. Her first album was more traditional electronic pop, though still more creative than almost any of her contemporaries. This song really announced her as an artist to be reckoned with. Radiohead is often credited with bringing electronic music to the mainstream on Kid A, but one can actually argue that Bjork did it first on this album (Post) and her subsequent works. The crazy thing is that Bjork actually got even MORE creative and out-there after this: Homogenic and Vespertine sound like very little else out there--certainly for their time--both are absolute masterpieces and among my favorite albums of all time. After that she did an entire album made almost entirely of human voices (Medulla), and album that was meant to be an interactive experience with an app (Biophilia... though it's still a great album listened to without the interactivity), an emotionally grueling concept album about the end of a long-term relationship (Vulnicura), and her last album, Utopia, which is chock-full of wind instruments and other classically-inspired orchestration. She's one of those rare artist that you never know what you're going to get album-to-album, but whatever she does it's almost always brilliant, and it's amazing to hear her evolution from the electronic pop of her debut to the classical experimentation on Utopia. Anyway, that's enough of me fanboying over Bjork. I do think this song makes for a good introduction because it's something of a middle-ground between the accessible electronic pop of Debut and the even more experimental electronic work that came after of Homogenic and Vespertine. I do think the latter two albums are a bit more challenging, but ultimately more rewarding. As dark and menacing as this track is it still has traces of her pop roots thanks to its relatively simple structure and memorable chorus, and that's probably why it was such a success for her. As for the vocals, I will say that Bjork's vocals are quite diverse. She really loves irregular phrasing and odd sounds. She can sing "straight" when she wants to, like on Like Someone In Love (a rare cover for her), but more often than not she loves using her voice like a very bizarre, unique instrument in itself and tends to tailor her approach to the specific song. Bjork is also very involved in the videos/visuals. Much like Kate Bush (who was a huge influence on Bjork) she's almost as much of a visual artist as a music artist. Sorry for the novel, and I do hope you really try to explore more Bjork either on this channel or on your personal time. She's definitely an artist worth exploring in depth.
I think a huge part of the unsettling nature of the melody and overall sound is the very intentional use of the Locrian mode, which is extremely rare outside of experimental music.
There's a harder re-recording of this done with a punk band (Skunk Anansie) where Bjork does end up screaming her head off to the climax, that's pretty fun. She wrote this with Graham Massey of 808 State, who had a top 10 hit with the frankly equally weird "Pacific 707" in 1989 - birds on a loop, slow floating saxophone, fast meandering bass, all the usual hallmarks of a pop classic
I saw her on tour for this album at Copley Symphony Hall in San Diego; the acoustics there made it such an absolutely fantastic, and overwhelming beautiful experience.
@@CriticalReactions throw in the guy with the giant bag of mushrooms being passed around with a "just take one" note on it, and yeah ... everyone there just got a little "enhanced" (not enough to trip out, just enough to heighten things).
By the standards of Bjork this song is quite straightforward and sparse. A lot of her songs, particularly from the album after this one and onwards, have much more complex and dense musical arrangements. Personal song recommendations would be Hunter, Pagan Poetry, Joga, or Undo.
The song is about having enough of people complaining all the time about not being able to manage their life. The annoyed tone of the lyrics matches the rather brutish beat. Stylistically, Bjork said she wanted the song to be something a metal band could take up and play in a bar, or something to that effect. It's quite different from her other songs, though there's a lot of variety in her repertoire. Another quite different song of hers you might want to listen to is "Bachelorette".
You should really check out her MTV Unplugged performance. It probably doesn't fit you channel's format, but watch it for your on enjoyment. It features a sax trio, baroque instruments like harpsicord and regal, a Javanese gamelan orchestra, tablas, and a harp! Plus a barefoot Björk doing her thing
As for your confusion about when it was made. I remember very clearly hearing the album for the first time and thinking, this is the music of the future.
Listen to Janet Jackson's "Nasty" after listening to Bjork's "Army of Me". Or "What have you done for me lately" after listening to songs on Bjork's Debut. At the prime of Alternative/Grunge of the 90s, Bjork really released an unexpected Pop Album. Seems Debut especially invoked a lot of the dance elements from the late 80s that was fading away in the 90s. Bjork although mostly known for the Swan Dress at the Oscars in 2001 wore a dress with Michael Jackson's face on it to the previous Golden Globes. (Note: Michael Jackson was not universally loved in the early 2000 with all the child molestation accusations and later his trial) She gives due to those who inspire and collaborate with her. She doesn't claim to be source of all her creativity from a vacuum. Lately I see people compare her to Yoko and I cringe at that comparison cause I dislike everything about Yoko.
When I first heard this track in the 90's, I was hoping Bjerk would create in this style. However, I never heard anything like that from her again. What was it? Strange... But more than that, I haven't found anything like it until now: with such an intense female voice and such a dark atmosphere and such a bass rhythm in dark-techno style. Definitely I'd love to listen for a couple or three hours to tracks like this. But alas, no one has done or is doing anything like this. If you can suggest analogs, I'd really appreciate it :)
As others stated, Bjork isnt just 1 Genre , she keeps experimenting with Different Sounds, Instrumentations, Compositions, arrangements especially the Cadence & Range in her Voice. This Album (Post) was the Catalyst imho that Catapulted her Creativity into another Realm. She had been living in London and Going to underground Raves, Clubs and all those scenes Inspired her to Incorporate said beats sounds into a Project , that culminated into Post. Her next track (HYPERBALLAD) is probably one of her most Critically Acclaimed and Fan Loved Song. 🤩🤩🤯🤯. If You decide to Delve further into her Catalog, From here on out Her Albums are unique and pinpoint everything that was happening to her at that exact place in time. Homogenic Vespertine Medulla Volta Biophilia Vulnicura Utopia (personally My favorite on soo many Levels)
I don't thnk 'pop' is the right label for what Bjork does, though clearly she's been connected to it for most of her solo career, if only cause she's cute and female. I think it does the depth and breadth of her body of work a grave disservice to look at it that reductively. Her music has changed tremendously over the years (ua-cam.com/video/OwQPwEydSIY/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Bj%C3%B6rk-Topic from her mid-period to something more recent ua-cam.com/video/w5tV-mNNUxY/v-deo.html&ab_channel=OneLittleIndianJukebox), while her voice remains awfully distinctive. This period came out of her interest in the UK contemporary art scene and Bristol trip-hop scenes (themselves pretty deeply intertwined). The video is directed by Michel Gondry, and has a lot of his hallmarks of low-fi surrealism and dystopianism. It's also one of my least favourite tracks on the album it comes from. It's very one-note emotionally and musically. Try something like Hyperballad (ua-cam.com/video/6CSiU0j_lFA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=bj%C3%B6rk). It's always been much more of a touch-point for me and this album at least, though it's also popier than the track you're reacting to. I think she's one of those artists, where you just can't understand anything all that significant about her as an artist from a single track.
I certainly agree that "pop" might have some negative connotations that might seems to be a disservice to some people when the label is applied. It might have been better if I hadn't of brought it up at all -- though I still feel this song in particular is pop-adjacent. I'll have to check out some of these other songs you've linked from her and see how she's approached different style of music.
@@CriticalReactions i'm fully team "bjork is pop", most of her singles were hits, they all came out on hugely attractive double CDs backed with dance remixes, you could buy them in any high street. It's not even the weirdest stuff that got into the charts in the 90s in the UK
Not even nearly one of her best. Never cared for this one, the general fanbase are quick to choose a few singles as essential, this one gets a lot of love and I dont get it. Björk can do a lot with a little, and do little with a lot. This song falls in the latter.
Where have you been in the 90's? It's so strange to me you are super intelligent about music (and I mean it), but all these essential is somehow missing.
Soooo the 90s..... I would have been the ages of 3 and 12 and most of my listening back then was selected for me. Rock CDs that my dad or stepdad played in the car (mostly Ozzy, Yngwie, Metallica, Kiss), the local country music station that my mom listened to, sometimes a hair metal CD that my mom played (Loverboy, Motley Crue), and a little bit of the local Classic Rock radio station. That's about it. I started coming into my own regarding music in the 2000s: having my own car to pick music, getting into classical and jazz since I played them at school, and just all around being a teenage and wanting to listen to newer music that wasn't my parents stuff. So I really do have a large gap in pre-2000s popular music. I do have a small reference for some of 90's pop biggest hits, stuff like Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys; but that's really it.
@@CriticalReactions oh I thought you are a bit older. The 90s were pretty good for the perspective of music, maybe I'm just getting old but recently I found it very difficult to find anyone who has any idea which worth paying attention to, perhaps Chelsea Wolfe's Hiss Spun and Birth Of Violence are exceptions, give a try to them if you have a bit time. I have a feeling most of the new ideas only focusing to find some difficult rhythm patterns and the music somehow just has lost during this process. Some others trying to leverage some of their earlier success but not bringing anything new anymore. Whereas in the 90's we were flooded with great ideas one after another, I never had a feeling we ever run out of good music. But maybe I'm just getting old and not that much open-minded as I was at that time, or do you have the same feeling?
(Based on my limited exposure and knowledge of the eras) I've likened 90's music to 70s stuff before because the seem to both have been moments in time full of experimentation. A lot of the 70s songs I've reacted to have been quite playful with production. My guess is that record tech was making huge advancements at the time and bands/engineers were messing around with it to see what they could do, pushing the boundaries of how music sounded. The 90s was another experimentation of sound but, at least in the rock/metal sphere, it was about making new sounds with instruments. A lot of the modern sub genres seem to hail from bands that were formed in the 90s. So I can definitely see your angle of not really finding anything refreshing these days. Or that what you do find interesting is lacking soul (you mentioned that bands are getting more technical but the music is somehow being lost). When new ideas are at play it feels like anything can happen but as people becomes more acquainted with the concepts, standards begin taking form and sometimes that leads to a bit of stagnation, especially in the mainstream areas of music. In tech there is the idea of tick-tock development. A 'tock' is a major development and a 'tick' is a refinement on that technology. I wonder if this model could be applied to music. The 70s and 90s are tocks for sure -- they were bursting with tons of new ideas -- and the 80s and 00s could be seen as ticks -- taking those ideas and refining them. But I'm not sure the 2010s were a tock (at least in rock/metal), but time will tell when we're looking back on this era in the 30s and 40s.
@@CriticalReactions Perhaps you are right about this tick-tock theory and maybe sometime soon another major change going to happen. Although 2000 to 2010 was stronger from my taste than since 2010. Maybe the way how I listen to music differs. I usually play an album again and again till my subconscious get bored with it and nowadays very easily reach this boredom. Maybe the last Opeth album was that I could listen to recently over months. I only listen to the way -- how you analyze a song or at least how I see it -- when I'm during the process to learn how to play that particular song. But nothing close, most likely you have way much more experience with this, for me, it takes an awfully long time to understand a song on the level that you easily get after the first listening. Anyway, I think initially I started to pay attention to your channel because of your analysis and I glance back from time to time to discover get something new. So thanks for sharing all of these, please keep up the good work.
A quote from Bjork referencing the video director Michel Gondry: "“When Michel gets his strokes of genius and, in the video for ‘Army of Me’, wants a dentist that’s a gorilla to find a diamond in my mouth, some people call it nonsense. But it’s probably the most realistic way of expressing what situation I’m in - all these people trying to take things away from me, and the gorilla finding a diamond that I don’t know I have and then stealing it. ‘Army of Me’ is so much about me actually learning that I have to defend myself. I have to stand up and fight the fucking gorilla. Once I’ve got the diamond and I run away with it, it becomes massive ‘cos it’s mine. But if the gorilla had kept it, it would have gone really tiny. That’s surrealism for me.”
I have one Bjork CD, "Debut", bought on the strength of "Venus as a Boy" and "Human Behaviour". Odd is definitely a word I'd use to describe her work. Unique? Absolutely.
Oh nice. I was talking with Santiago somewhere else in this comment section and was on the right track. I was thinking about how Taylor Swift still doesn't own some of her own songs and that pop stars specifically seems to really have to fight, by themselves it feels like, for the right to keep their own stuff.
Björk has always been a visionary. Her impact in both experimental music and pop music is undeniable, even if she still remains ahead of most pop artists. I have no clue about the video, but I know she's usually very involved with everything besides the music, so I'm sure there's a concept that somehow relates to the song and/or the album. Her work has grown more conceptual as years go by, and she remains as creative as always.
This is a very restrained song for her vocals, she tends to utilize vocals in lots of different ways, usually strange. About the relationship between instrumental and vocals, I've always assumed the instrumental to mean that "army of me" she's leading, her inner strenght and desire for righting a wrong. Keeping the vocals steady fits the idea of her being able to command such power in an effortless way. But she's always been quite cryptic so I can be way off there lol
Great insight as always, Bryan!
""army of me" she's leading, her inner strength and desire for righting a wrong"
Kinda makes me think of how pop artists always need to fight for their desires, usually by themselves -- like Taylor Swift still not owning her own dang songs. I wonder if the diamond is something that was stolen from her, musically, and she had to run off with it to avoid letting producers or record labels own something of hers with the gorilla being a stand-in for those types of people. Doesn't explain the museum bombing though so maybe I'm wayyy off😅
@@CriticalReactions that's an interesting take on it! According to wikipedia (I just checked) the song is meant towards someone (her brother it seems) with self-destructive behaviour, she compares herself to a grandmother reprimanding her grandson/granddaughter. It's a call to regain control in life. That explains the "if you complain once more" in the chorus. Now I'm at more of a loss with the video, though 😅
I love her use of a syncopated Locrian mode in this composition !!!! She uses one of the most unique modes in an effortless manner. #BecauseBjork
Yeah, really interesting to see Locrian used in music like this and it sets the mood perfectly. The base is pure Locrian but her lyrics line cheats a little bit. Still, really inventive and huge respect.
Bjork is a genre. The genre of Bjork. Her music is stunning and well worth discovering if you’re into Bjork.
This is Trip-Hop, simply, like Portishead, this is good, BUT "only" her second album...She's capable of WAY more creativity vocal wise & music wise....(the only precedent creative female artist, building a universe of her own also visually, on stage, videos, etc I can compare her with is Kate Bush in my opinion). She started to sing very early & recorded her first album at the age of 12 ears old.....then she moved to different styles & bands (one particularly interesting being The Sugarcubes), then went to a solo career, with songs & albums that can be sometimes stunning, other times super challenging, bordering some (almost atonal ) Contemporary music she also studied. Check out for instance songs like "Joga", "All Neon like", "Where is the Line", "Black Lake".
“Challenging“ is a good word for it. Unlistenable would sometimes be more accurate. However, because fans like me allow her that freedom when she gets it right, it is both transcendent and derivative of nothing else.
I would add that a lot of her music is deconstructive, like if kabuki went hard-core.
I've always considered Björk a genre unto herself. If you look across the breadth of her catalog, it defies categorization. Hugely influential artist across completely unrelated genres, with the most unexpected artists listing her as an influence.
As a huge Bjork fan, when I saw you reacting to this video I thought to myself, “This guy doesn’t get it“.…… Then you started comparing her to Portishead.
Bjork, Portishead, DJ Shadow, tricky and massive attack were like the sound of my 90s.
Dude! You totally get it. Even the parts where you call it dissident and offputting. Visualize the black and white German expressionist film, “Metropolis“. At least that’s what I do when I’m working out to this song.
* But I wish you touched upon her other hit from that same album, “Hyperballad“.……… It’s a somewhat different composition
As a fan who sees that you do in fact get it, I would love to see you react to the following in some sort of compressed Bjork special.
1) Hyperballad
2) Mutual Core
3) Virus
4) Joga
One last thing…… I truly believe that Bjork both loves men and loves being a woman. I know that’s off-topic, but it’s some thing I hear in her music
I'm so glad you put dj shadow in there too, björk and him are two of my all time favorites ever for their creativity, matter of factly, Dj shadow sampled bjorks "possibly maybe" on his track "mutual slump" in his album introducing. Both Absolutely amazing songs in their own respect. I love them both. Grew up listening to them cause my parents always played them.
Bjork is just outside my Top 10 Artists. She's simply one of the most original, creative, visionary musical voices of the last half-century. This track was from her second album, which is where she first started getting experimental. Her first album was more traditional electronic pop, though still more creative than almost any of her contemporaries. This song really announced her as an artist to be reckoned with. Radiohead is often credited with bringing electronic music to the mainstream on Kid A, but one can actually argue that Bjork did it first on this album (Post) and her subsequent works.
The crazy thing is that Bjork actually got even MORE creative and out-there after this: Homogenic and Vespertine sound like very little else out there--certainly for their time--both are absolute masterpieces and among my favorite albums of all time. After that she did an entire album made almost entirely of human voices (Medulla), and album that was meant to be an interactive experience with an app (Biophilia... though it's still a great album listened to without the interactivity), an emotionally grueling concept album about the end of a long-term relationship (Vulnicura), and her last album, Utopia, which is chock-full of wind instruments and other classically-inspired orchestration. She's one of those rare artist that you never know what you're going to get album-to-album, but whatever she does it's almost always brilliant, and it's amazing to hear her evolution from the electronic pop of her debut to the classical experimentation on Utopia.
Anyway, that's enough of me fanboying over Bjork. I do think this song makes for a good introduction because it's something of a middle-ground between the accessible electronic pop of Debut and the even more experimental electronic work that came after of Homogenic and Vespertine. I do think the latter two albums are a bit more challenging, but ultimately more rewarding. As dark and menacing as this track is it still has traces of her pop roots thanks to its relatively simple structure and memorable chorus, and that's probably why it was such a success for her.
As for the vocals, I will say that Bjork's vocals are quite diverse. She really loves irregular phrasing and odd sounds. She can sing "straight" when she wants to, like on Like Someone In Love (a rare cover for her), but more often than not she loves using her voice like a very bizarre, unique instrument in itself and tends to tailor her approach to the specific song. Bjork is also very involved in the videos/visuals. Much like Kate Bush (who was a huge influence on Bjork) she's almost as much of a visual artist as a music artist.
Sorry for the novel, and I do hope you really try to explore more Bjork either on this channel or on your personal time. She's definitely an artist worth exploring in depth.
Given what I've read here in the comments about Bjork it's definitely an artist that I'll need to dive into -- either on my own or on the channel.
Agreed
I think a huge part of the unsettling nature of the melody and overall sound is the very intentional use of the Locrian mode, which is extremely rare outside of experimental music.
Locrian is such a tough mode to write palatable music in. I'm actually surprised this comes off as being as "listenable" as it is.
There's a harder re-recording of this done with a punk band (Skunk Anansie) where Bjork does end up screaming her head off to the climax, that's pretty fun. She wrote this with Graham Massey of 808 State, who had a top 10 hit with the frankly equally weird "Pacific 707" in 1989 - birds on a loop, slow floating saxophone, fast meandering bass, all the usual hallmarks of a pop classic
Thanks for pointing me in that direction. Found the performance and what a ride that was!
This song is in the Phrygian mode. The dissonance is from the flat 2, the minor 3, and the tritone intervals.
This song is in locrian mode, Bjork is just playing a trick on us ;)
Bjork did an extremely powerful and moving musical called 'Dancer in the Dark' some yrs back. A must watch movie.
This is one of my favourite chillout songs. I just love the eerie ambience.
I saw her on tour for this album at Copley Symphony Hall in San Diego; the acoustics there made it such an absolutely fantastic, and overwhelming beautiful experience.
That sounds wonderful!
@@CriticalReactions throw in the guy with the giant bag of mushrooms being passed around with a "just take one" note on it, and yeah ... everyone there just got a little "enhanced" (not enough to trip out, just enough to heighten things).
If I recall correctly, this is one of the few examples of a radio song that's actually in Locrian
By the standards of Bjork this song is quite straightforward and sparse. A lot of her songs, particularly from the album after this one and onwards, have much more complex and dense musical arrangements. Personal song recommendations would be Hunter, Pagan Poetry, Joga, or Undo.
You have such a soothing voice Bryan!
Thanks! Maybe I should take a shot at the ASMR side of YT 😂
The song is about having enough of people complaining all the time about not being able to manage their life. The annoyed tone of the lyrics matches the rather brutish beat. Stylistically, Bjork said she wanted the song to be something a metal band could take up and play in a bar, or something to that effect. It's quite different from her other songs, though there's a lot of variety in her repertoire. Another quite different song of hers you might want to listen to is "Bachelorette".
Wrong. It’s about her brother. Who was irresponsible and lazy
Your WTAF face at the end of the clip is fantastic :)
You should really check out her MTV Unplugged performance. It probably doesn't fit you channel's format, but watch it for your on enjoyment. It features a sax trio, baroque instruments like harpsicord and regal, a Javanese gamelan orchestra, tablas, and a harp! Plus a barefoot Björk doing her thing
As for your confusion about when it was made. I remember very clearly hearing the album for the first time and thinking, this is the music of the future.
And that even adds to a sort of timelessness for it. It somehow strikes that balance of seeming both from the past and the future.
More from Bjork, Bryan! She´s the queen. Resourceful like no one.
You should check out the version she did of ‘Army of Me’ with Skunk Anansie.
Yup, that was something else. Very cool to hear this song with a different sonic identity.
Can we bring back the 90's please.
Listen to Janet Jackson's "Nasty" after listening to Bjork's "Army of Me". Or "What have you done for me lately" after listening to songs on Bjork's Debut. At the prime of Alternative/Grunge of the 90s, Bjork really released an unexpected Pop Album. Seems Debut especially invoked a lot of the dance elements from the late 80s that was fading away in the 90s. Bjork although mostly known for the Swan Dress at the Oscars in 2001 wore a dress with Michael Jackson's face on it to the previous Golden Globes. (Note: Michael Jackson was not universally loved in the early 2000 with all the child molestation accusations and later his trial) She gives due to those who inspire and collaborate with her. She doesn't claim to be source of all her creativity from a vacuum. Lately I see people compare her to Yoko and I cringe at that comparison cause I dislike everything about Yoko.
You should listen to Yoko’s song ‘Walking on Thin Ice’, it’s actually very good.
Supposedly this is one of the few pop songs that use the locrian mode
When I first heard this track in the 90's, I was hoping Bjerk would create in this style. However, I never heard anything like that from her again. What was it? Strange...
But more than that, I haven't found anything like it until now: with such an intense female voice and such a dark atmosphere and such a bass rhythm in dark-techno style. Definitely I'd love to listen for a couple or three hours to tracks like this. But alas, no one has done or is doing anything like this. If you can suggest analogs, I'd really appreciate it :)
As others stated, Bjork isnt just 1 Genre , she keeps experimenting with Different Sounds, Instrumentations, Compositions, arrangements especially the Cadence & Range in her Voice. This Album (Post) was the Catalyst imho that Catapulted her Creativity into another Realm. She had been living in London and Going to underground Raves, Clubs and all those scenes Inspired her to Incorporate said beats sounds into a Project , that culminated into Post.
Her next track (HYPERBALLAD) is probably one of her most Critically Acclaimed and Fan Loved Song. 🤩🤩🤯🤯. If You decide to Delve further into her Catalog, From here on out Her Albums are unique and pinpoint everything that was happening to her at that exact place in time.
Homogenic
Vespertine
Medulla
Volta
Biophilia
Vulnicura
Utopia (personally My favorite on soo many Levels)
Bjork is #unique.
Wait a minute isn’t that Locrian in C major !! Didn’t really study much of music theory but I know Locrian is a tricky mode
'Abandoned pools' did a great cover of this song btw.
Bryan, please say something about Grimes!!!
Please do Madonna "Intervention" it's such a great song, very interesting sound
Check out "Isobel" from the same album
How can I get in touch with you man !!!!
My email is in the LinkTree link the the description box. There should be an envelope icon near the top.
Thank you man I just shot you an email
I don't thnk 'pop' is the right label for what Bjork does, though clearly she's been connected to it for most of her solo career, if only cause she's cute and female. I think it does the depth and breadth of her body of work a grave disservice to look at it that reductively. Her music has changed tremendously over the years (ua-cam.com/video/OwQPwEydSIY/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Bj%C3%B6rk-Topic from her mid-period to something more recent ua-cam.com/video/w5tV-mNNUxY/v-deo.html&ab_channel=OneLittleIndianJukebox), while her voice remains awfully distinctive. This period came out of her interest in the UK contemporary art scene and Bristol trip-hop scenes (themselves pretty deeply intertwined). The video is directed by Michel Gondry, and has a lot of his hallmarks of low-fi surrealism and dystopianism. It's also one of my least favourite tracks on the album it comes from. It's very one-note emotionally and musically. Try something like Hyperballad (ua-cam.com/video/6CSiU0j_lFA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=bj%C3%B6rk). It's always been much more of a touch-point for me and this album at least, though it's also popier than the track you're reacting to. I think she's one of those artists, where you just can't understand anything all that significant about her as an artist from a single track.
I certainly agree that "pop" might have some negative connotations that might seems to be a disservice to some people when the label is applied. It might have been better if I hadn't of brought it up at all -- though I still feel this song in particular is pop-adjacent. I'll have to check out some of these other songs you've linked from her and see how she's approached different style of music.
@@CriticalReactions i'm fully team "bjork is pop", most of her singles were hits, they all came out on hugely attractive double CDs backed with dance remixes, you could buy them in any high street. It's not even the weirdest stuff that got into the charts in the 90s in the UK
to mu ear I believe the drum is a John Bonham sample.
This is in LOCRIAN mode. b5
Leprous - Nighttime Disguise please
Its very good awesome the experimental era from her
If you think this song is unsettling, you should listen to Diamanda Galas.
i think army of me is as close as bjork gets to a nine inch nails style of production.
Listen to the album Family Tree. Enjoy.
It's Bjork, innovator.
LYDIAN!!!
4:32 - 4:34 dude that awkward silence left me speechless 😂😂😂😂✨
Lol 😭😭😭 it's oh so quiet 😂
Damn it, quit saying "'95" like that, you're making me feel old
I was only a kid in the 90s and it still made me feel old saying it 😂
Not even nearly one of her best. Never cared for this one, the general fanbase are quick to choose a few singles as essential, this one gets a lot of love and I dont get it.
Björk can do a lot with a little, and do little with a lot. This song falls in the latter.
I’ve heard Helmet and Beastie Boys cover this…..not at the same time.
Where have you been in the 90's? It's so strange to me you are super intelligent about music (and I mean it), but all these essential is somehow missing.
Soooo the 90s..... I would have been the ages of 3 and 12 and most of my listening back then was selected for me. Rock CDs that my dad or stepdad played in the car (mostly Ozzy, Yngwie, Metallica, Kiss), the local country music station that my mom listened to, sometimes a hair metal CD that my mom played (Loverboy, Motley Crue), and a little bit of the local Classic Rock radio station. That's about it. I started coming into my own regarding music in the 2000s: having my own car to pick music, getting into classical and jazz since I played them at school, and just all around being a teenage and wanting to listen to newer music that wasn't my parents stuff.
So I really do have a large gap in pre-2000s popular music. I do have a small reference for some of 90's pop biggest hits, stuff like Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys; but that's really it.
@@CriticalReactions oh I thought you are a bit older. The 90s were pretty good for the perspective of music, maybe I'm just getting old but recently I found it very difficult to find anyone who has any idea which worth paying attention to, perhaps Chelsea Wolfe's Hiss Spun and Birth Of Violence are exceptions, give a try to them if you have a bit time.
I have a feeling most of the new ideas only focusing to find some difficult rhythm patterns and the music somehow just has lost during this process. Some others trying to leverage some of their earlier success but not bringing anything new anymore. Whereas in the 90's we were flooded with great ideas one after another, I never had a feeling we ever run out of good music.
But maybe I'm just getting old and not that much open-minded as I was at that time, or do you have the same feeling?
(Based on my limited exposure and knowledge of the eras) I've likened 90's music to 70s stuff before because the seem to both have been moments in time full of experimentation. A lot of the 70s songs I've reacted to have been quite playful with production. My guess is that record tech was making huge advancements at the time and bands/engineers were messing around with it to see what they could do, pushing the boundaries of how music sounded. The 90s was another experimentation of sound but, at least in the rock/metal sphere, it was about making new sounds with instruments. A lot of the modern sub genres seem to hail from bands that were formed in the 90s.
So I can definitely see your angle of not really finding anything refreshing these days. Or that what you do find interesting is lacking soul (you mentioned that bands are getting more technical but the music is somehow being lost). When new ideas are at play it feels like anything can happen but as people becomes more acquainted with the concepts, standards begin taking form and sometimes that leads to a bit of stagnation, especially in the mainstream areas of music. In tech there is the idea of tick-tock development. A 'tock' is a major development and a 'tick' is a refinement on that technology. I wonder if this model could be applied to music. The 70s and 90s are tocks for sure -- they were bursting with tons of new ideas -- and the 80s and 00s could be seen as ticks -- taking those ideas and refining them. But I'm not sure the 2010s were a tock (at least in rock/metal), but time will tell when we're looking back on this era in the 30s and 40s.
@@CriticalReactions Perhaps you are right about this tick-tock theory and maybe sometime soon another major change going to happen. Although 2000 to 2010 was stronger from my taste than since 2010. Maybe the way how I listen to music differs. I usually play an album again and again till my subconscious get bored with it and nowadays very easily reach this boredom. Maybe the last Opeth album was that I could listen to recently over months.
I only listen to the way -- how you analyze a song or at least how I see it -- when I'm during the process to learn how to play that particular song. But nothing close, most likely you have way much more experience with this, for me, it takes an awfully long time to understand a song on the level that you easily get after the first listening.
Anyway, I think initially I started to pay attention to your channel because of your analysis and I glance back from time to time to discover get something new.
So thanks for sharing all of these, please keep up the good work.
Sound to a name with one bjork song huh? Lol
bJörk invented musicc
Björk rhymes with "work".
I wait your reactions to arca or.dorian Electra its the same so better
Try "enjoy"
Very linear but this is a good song. Not her best tho.
omg, shallow references lead to shallow analisys
Bruh eatliz cover is better 😎👊🏻