This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. In today's volatile market, having an investment strategy you can trust is essential. When it comes to your money, knowledge is power. Get the advice you need from Alan Cameron on the Sunday Money Show. Alan Cameron has the experience and expertise to help you navigate the growing spectrum of investment options. What's best for you? Stocks or RSPs? Gold, real estate or Bitcoin? Visit alancameron.com and hear Alan at his new time, 12 p.m. Sunday on News Talk 1010.
How do you know that Claude won't become manipulative? This is a constant worry. And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm going to tell the user why. I'm Walter Isaacson. On my new podcast, The Builders, I'm going inside the minds of the people shaping our future. Listen to The Builders starting October 13 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
It's all just a joke. What is the value of these women? I'm Bridget Armstrong, back with season two of the podcast, Curse of Miss America. We're talking to participants, whistleblowers, and people who say Miss America didn't live up to their promises. He looks at me and goes, you don't look like you suffered an eating disorder. I never received scholarship money to pay for my student loans. Maybe this is the meta question for the podcast. Why is Miss America at this point? Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
There are thousands of podcasts that can tell you how to better yourself. Get Worse with Kyle Pru is not one of those podcasts. So if you're interested in getting thinner, going to therapy, starting peptides, setting boundaries, taking supplements, making your better, getting closure, then I would humbly recommend other podcasts. If you're interested in blackmail, love bombing, cloning yourself, or getting revenge, then we've got a little something something for a dastardly individual like you. Listen to Get Worse with Kyle Pru on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, the internet, and welcome to this spin-off episode of Their Daily Zeitgeist! Which we call the Iconograph. The Iconograph. Instead of looking at the Zeitgeist through current events on Monday mornings, we're looking at the Zeitgeist through the powerful pop culture deities that are our icons. This week we are talking about a first ballot Hall of Famer on the list of people you'd be least surprised to learn they were an alien the whole time. Correct. Otherworldly. Yeah, unlike Adam Silver and Clint Howard and Wemby, maybe, who are also in that Hall of Fame and seem like men and black aliens, I feel like...
She's more like a Spielberg alien who you would fall in love with and bring home and hide in a pile of stuffed animals. This is just my best friend now. We're talking about Bjork. My kids call her Bajork. As it's apparently pronounced Bjork, rhyming with jerk, which she's not. I will be calling her Bjork. She's not a jerk. I'm happy to report our research indicates she's very cool if you're not a paparazzo trying to photograph her and her kids at an airport, in which case she becomes acutely uncool.
My name is Jack O'Brien. I'm one of the founders of Cracked, and I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host. His wicked sense of humor suggests exciting sex. It's Miles Gray! What? Thank you so much. That's a Bjork quote. That's a Bjork lyric. He's wicked sense. Anyway, yeah, thank God. I'm so glad to be on this. Bjork is kind of like my Bob Dylan, in a way. What Bob Dylan is to you. I'm so, bro. I love Bjork. I love Bjork. I do, too. I thought she was Asian for the longest time, and that's when I was like, hold it down, hold it down. And then I didn't know, I didn't realize that she was fully Icelandic until maybe I was like,
24 or something like that so many problematic questions about her yeah like where where does she get her asian eye from yeah just the eyes yeah yeah yeah but um fantastic artist and oh man anyway i'm ready i'm excited uh and we're thrilled to have in our third seat a brilliant poet political activist academic mc uh podcast host of the must listen hood politics with problem cool zone media he's a fountain of blood in the shape of a boy it's jason petty aka propaganda Wes, Wes, Wes, Wes, Wes, Wes. I had the same questions about Bjork. I was talking to my daughter yesterday. No, Tuesday. She's older now, so we can have these conversations. It's just like, you know when somebody, like, ugly fine? Like, when they're just, like, funny looking, but, like, hot. You know what I'm saying? And that's like, she was like, like, Adam Driver. Extremely unique. Yeah, she said, she's like, like, Adam Driver. And I was like, yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean? And, um, yeah. So, like, that's what I felt about Bjork. I was like, I don't...
usually the northern hemisphere bodies just don't do it for me. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm very much an equator person. Equatorial? Yeah, you know, Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. This is starting off horribly. Equatorial lover could be a Bjork. Equatorial lover. Equatorial lover. But I was just like, I think it's that, like, wait, why you like, is this like Mongolian? Like, you know, Siberian? Yes. Something just like northern Asia. Like, I was just like, yo, what? And she's so weird that it was just like, it's kind of dope. You know?
Her genetic line is just a fucking straight line on rails back to the very first founders of Iceland, like the 9th century settlers. People are like, it's a genetic anomaly. She just looks weird and awesome, and we don't know why. I am of the belief that the northern Siberian, that somebody just walked across from upper Mongolia and landed in Iceland. That's why they kind of look like that. This is bullshit. Very detailed.
genetic histories as we'll get into iceland very interesting uh country like tiny super isolated um even smaller population but um yes bjork is just a force of nature um very just like compelled she doesn't have like that one iconic moment she just like has she she's just like bjorkness that presence of bjorkness that just um like watching her one of my favorite things that i saw during this research was watching her when she's going on conan with her debut album like the human uh behavior album you know the very first debut album that would have been like 93 or 94 maybe okay that's 93 july 5th 93 smitten like i'm like oh my god this is embarrassing actually to watch this like he's like vibrating talking to her like he's not even like in his you know so like he eventually got like his like fun like i'm nerdy and i'm like a little uncomfortable uh sort of energy when he would like interview a beautiful woman in this one he's like looking deep into her eyes and like just like getting lost and it's really wild like her effect on some of my favorite people like miles she's the subject uh not the star of but the subject of one of our favorite canon internet clips that became a vocal stim uh which is of course there is a
uh, saying that, uh, she can communicate with the whales. I can communicate with the whales. Listen, I like, I truly resonate. I'm about to go on a long diet drive about my connection to Bjork, Bjork, but to point to point. Um, but that response that Conan had, like, I distinctly remember when I started college, you know, I'm from Los Angeles, you know, uh, backstories, like the, the, the tapestry of LA I've lived, I went to Iceland in the empire cause I was bust out there, but I, but I grew up in the, born in South central east side of San Gabriel Valley. Like I, you know, little Bangladesh, like I used to walk to Manila sunset just to, cause I like wanted to hit on the Filipino girls. All I'm saying is.
I grew up in a very diverse space. And then I remember getting to college and being like, yo, what are you? Because college is just so like, it's so big and diverse and me thinking that my world was ginormous. And then you meet somebody, you like, yo, and she's from Bangladesh. Like this girl speaks Urdu. You know what I'm saying? Like you're just meeting people from the other parts of the planet and you just look. And I remember just like being like, I have to rethink my perception of myself. I thought I was a global citizen. And then you like, yo, like you meet this black person and they're going, no, I'm Ghanaian. And I'm like, Ghana. They're like, no.
Guyana. And I'm like, what? Like, no, like, no, but like South America. And I'm like, what? Like, what? You know, so just, you're just, just like, and I feel like, so when I, so like looking, I resonate with Conan being like, yo.
what is this? I think that is generally the response from people and it goes back. So we're actually going to do this one more like just a straightforward beginning of her life, like forward, because it is interesting how early a lot of this shit is present. Just like people's response to her has been this way. How did she hit y'all's radar? Because that's for me, that's why I wanted to do this one was how she hit my radar was so unique. The human behavior video and that being like, oh.
music videos can be like really interesting works of art and also uh why is this person so beautiful basically yeah yeah uh for me the first one is yeah human behavior video because it was like it was so trippy i was like what because i think it's michelle gondry videos and yeah um and i mean they did a ton of videos together and that's when like and it's funny because my dad's an artist so he was up on bjork already but like when i was like nine years old and i heard this i was like what is this he's like oh that's bjork from the sugar cubes and then he played me the sugar cubes album then i listened to like uh like that first album they had But yeah, everything for me was that human behavior video, for sure. Yeah, I honestly, I can't tell you, I don't know exactly when. I think, so, Miles is the native, so you'll appreciate, I hope you understand what I'm about to say right now, but like, I come from...
backpack, rappity rap, tactile, practical, pterodactyl, you know what I'm saying? Empirical, lyrical. Empirical, lyrical. I come from, you know what I'm saying? Empirical, lyrical, miracle. Yes. Like I'm saying, you know, like doggy style, like what's my name came out two months before passing me by from the far side. And you could ask me what I was more excited about. I think you already know. So it was like, and then for me to like being a part of the bus program in this, because my mom moved to the Inland Empire, I stayed back in the, in San Gabriel Valley. Cause I was like, anywhere in the world, I'm gonna live out there. This is wild. Right. But.
I'm going out there, but I had to go to that high school. So I went to high school in the Inland Empire and I discovered the movie tropes of white people, like the bad guys in Karate Kid. I was like, this shit is real? Y'all are real people? You know what I'm saying? Because TNC surf design shirts and totally tubular. I was like, I thought that was TV. I didn't think white people really... Anyway, all that to say, since I come from this backpacker, black, Latino, Filipino space, I just... All music streams from soul and gospel and R&B. You know what I'm saying?
I just, I just wrote it all off as white music. Like I just wrote it off and ain't got no soul. And because they just had horrible ambassadors and the ambassadors were these white boys at my school. You know what I'm saying? There's one kid called hip hop or called, yeah, he called rap music jungle jive. And to this day, I regret not jumping over the table and dog walking him to this day. You know what I'm saying? But like, you're just in this. So I just wrote it all off. Like I don't want that to do it. You know what I'm saying? And then you realize as you go into all these like.
you know, battles and like breakdancing things besides the little cool little Filipino girls, ain't no girls at the shit. So like, if you like girls, you better start opening your mind with this music. You know what I'm saying? So for me, the gateway drug, and this gets to Bjork, but the gateway drug was like, was Alanis Morissette. It was Jagged Little Pill. Cause I was like, shit, she can write. You know what I'm saying? Like as like a hip hopper, I'm like, I'm listening to lyrics. And I don't know what I'm not supposed to think is corny. I fell in love with Inkibus cause Inkibus had a DJ. So I was like, I get it. Like that's Kilroy. He was at the good life. Like I get it. And then.
And then you discover Bjork and she's just like this like distant cousin of hip hop, like just this weird. four four kind of like dirty drum kind of sounds like dilla a little bit it's like the only way i can explain it is like when the original like homo erectus like wandered off the african plain and into europe and kind of became neanderthals and then the rest of us became homo sapiens and then we kind of met each other and was like yo are we related i bet you i bet you we can make kids you know i'm saying familiar yeah so that's what bjork felt like to me it was almost like it made it okay to be like yeah oh i'm into this white shit yeah this is dope so for me she was just like she symbolized this permission to not have to stay on your own sort of cultural island to be like yo this is interesting and like i said like i just always thought she's like white dilla like what is this her favorite album coming like going into her solo career in like 1990 her favorite album is fear of a black planet and she would like take her boombox out into the icelandic countryside and just like play it as loud as she possibly could she was like you need to listen to shit loud and so she was like go out and just imagining her in the icelandic countryside just like blasting fear of a black planet
um but yeah and she also like her mom was a hippie uh as we'll get into and like had a uh she had a stepfather who was like oh you're into music all right here's hendrix here's like all these like guitars and she always rejected that shit she was like when she was starting her solo career after like having been in like punk bands a lot growing up she was like keep the electric guitar the fuck away from my music like everything else as well but she she had the same reaction as you just like she's like i can't i can't deal with this shit and so that's yeah yeah she was that everything you're describing is very much kind of uh it resonated like yeah that whole thing was the sugar cubes was the last band that had guitar in it and she really that's when she completely differentiated herself after that she was like i'm really into this like electronic music everyone's talking about yeah her born in detroit she's a member of sloan village like y'all say like she's she her and ninth wonder are best friends like that that's totally yeah she used to sleep in dj how she was basement I believe that. I believe that completely. So the other notable thing that I just want to talk about is, of course, her voice, the way she approaches, not her singing voice, but just like probably the most iconic thing. Like there's not, we talk about two factor authentication in icon episodes where like you have the hockey mask and the machete. You know who that is. You have the fedora and the whip. You know who that is. Bjork is, I think, the first one that we don't really, unless you're talking, unless you're wearing the swan dress, you don't have like that iconic thing.
that you're like oh shit yeah that's that's bjork you're bjork for halloween but the voice is like so iconic uh i just want to play so this is something that you shared with us this is luke pre uh in a video called saying things as bjork on tiktok says things container of water this will put it in front of his hand too like real influencer content yeah yes yes brown the editor's killing it in the group chat right now Brian said Stevie Wonder could definitely notice her in an elevator. We just talked about it on the regular episode. She's like, holy shit, I think he can see. But yeah, just rolling her R's at random, you know, like just depend with no rhyme or reason. That's what the song called for. That's what I love it. She's like, the song called for it. Just an artist. But yeah, so let's get into just the life of Bjork. She was born in 1965. Bjork, oh, Guzman's dotier. 1965.
I did not realize she was 60. She's kind of the musical equivalent of, like, a Japanese baseball player who, like, comes to America and starts dominating after, like, having an entire career in Japan. Oh, like Yichiro or something? Yeah, like Yichiro, where you're like, oh, shit, they've... Oh, if you count my hits back there, too, I'm actually the greatest ever. Right. She was famous for 17 years in Iceland and, like, Europe before Human Nature came out in the U.S. Right. She was 28 when she finally, like, came over and, like, we found out about her. Football players coming to play in MLB after they retire and then dominate the league immediately. Yep. But Bjork Guzman's dot here because her father is Guzman.
uh is guthmunder is his first name and the way it works in iceland is like you get your father's first name so like my kids would be jackson would be their last name type thing um or jack's dot dotier dotier yeah yeah but uh her parents divorced when she was two um as bjork later put it my mother became a feminist a rebel and left her husband to become a hippie and lead a very free lifestyle uh she has also said that at the age of three she was looking both ways and leading her mother across the street the deepest fear of having someone as driven and successful as i think all three of our partners are like there is definitely who i already knew she was a leading feminist before i married her but just the idea that one day she might just be like um i'm bored of males it's just like it's definitely like a thought across my mind that she was just like i don't know you just patriarchy just males are not irredeemable yeah i'm just gonna her dad was her dad's an electrician the head of the electrician's union in uh a reunion leader and uh this is a quote from him he says uh my mother had a piano and she started on and bjork started on it very early
It was very easy for her to find out which notes to push to get the tune. Wow. Push the button and tune come out. Seems like his understanding of music. That's his artistic background. Yeah. Is her stepdad considered one of the best guitar players or something in Iceland? Her stepdad is a guitar hippie. They live on a commune for a while before she's 10 years old. And he's obsessed with Hendrix and electric guitar. And like I said, that turns her completely off from guitar music and anything like that. So funny. But this is...
her talking about writing songs this is again when she's you know just a child uh in my family when we would go on a vehicle like drive or boats i would just start humming people would sort of go quiet and listen and i could tell that people found it relaxing and also when i was in school buses the kids would like ask me to just hum when the first you know drip coffee machine came they had this kind of imitates machine sound to it my friend would tell me that i would like sit next to it and sing along with the sounds so people would request humming from her like again like just picture picture a school bus And you're, like, picturing kids, like, screaming and, like, throwing shit at each other. And when Bjork is on that, one of the kids on the school bus, the kids are like, hey, could you just, like, hum something? You mind singing one of those songs? Hey, shut the fuck up, man, Bjork. You're about to hum. Hey, my daughter's gonna hum right now. Could you sing along to that coffee maker for us? Look, I don't know where people fall on the very concept of a creator or God or a divine power. And every once in a while, though, it's humans like that that make you be like, no.
God made this one. You are supposed to be a star. You are uniquely, you're supposed to be a star. I'm having trouble accessing whatever you're accessing somehow in my brain. You got something, the rest of us don't. They treat her like Stitch in Lilo and Stitch. They're like, hey, could you hum along to the coffee machine? What the fuck does that even mean? You're that good. I went to school with this guy, this guy named Gabe, I think it was Garcia. Gabe Garcia, when we were in fourth grade or something, and we all just discovered skateboards.
And we're just farting around being 90s kids, 80s, 90s kids, and creating very dangerous ramps and stuff. And we're just messing around. he was really good he was like flying yeah we were just like uh damn don't do like the rest of us are just having fun you you're really good at this right i feel like as a kid like there is that kid that you like nah that that was gonna make it just yeah yeah or just like there's always one kid's like you're fucking good at fucking everything you're just good at everything yeah right yeah and i do think that the fact that she's in iceland is like because yeah they're i went to school with like kids who are great at like various things and like we've had those experiences where we cross paths with someone we're like god damn they're gonna be like incredibly famous or you know they're gonna share their gift with the world and it doesn't happen There are a couple moments in her story where you're like, oh, this is what it would be like to grow up in a supportive community. Where they don't just grind you under the heel of one industry or the other. At age five, she goes to a music school, which is primarily a classical music school. You're not going to believe this. She couldn't relate to the classical music she was taught and got into debates, again, she's five, with the headmaster about how he ran the school. She began experimenting with music, taping her grandfather snoring and creating beats from it.
um another time playing drums along with a popcorn machine she's a b-boy that's what i tell you yeah she's gay dylan i'll tell you but i just imagine the conversation of five-year-old bjork being you know the headmaster being like oh you don't like my classical music curriculum do you prefer like contemporary composers and she's like i'll answer that question once you've listened to me sing about mother nature fucking a volcano over this beat i made from my grandfather snoring oh man um this is when she so her parents divorced at two her mom goes and marries this very good uh guitar rock guy who's like part of this rock cover band pops and she's spending half her time living on a small hippie commune where she is the responsible one on this hippie commune she's like can you imagine being brought up by seven grown-ups who all hate work and all they want to do is play games with you all the time and tell you stories and make kites they all they had all these dreams and wild plans like you know let's live on an airplane and things like that um which by the way later on in life she buys a boat and lives on it for three years so um you know
she's dreams fulfilled she's all of these all of these influences uh together she is her ancestor's wildest dream yeah but um she by age five she's carrying her own house key getting herself to the school bus stressing and feeding herself um and uh developing a profound dislike for rock music like jimmy hendrix eric clapton deep purple is what they listen to on the commune and she like brought the record she like abba boney m uh and sparks and brought the record kimono my house by sparks to the commune and like everyone's like boo this sucks um but by age 10, the commune is like breaks up, but like all of this is happening before she's 10. And this is when her career starts. Uh, I feel almost responsible sharing this story, uh, because it's like such the dream that everybody has who signs up for a talent show. Um, but at age 11, she sang a cover of, I love to love by Tina Charles at a school event. And it was so good that her teachers sent a recording to Iceland's national radio station. And the radio station started playing the song on the air from a record. That's a new single children's.
talent show is that how she then recorded her first album like that's how she got a record deal so that's from there literally just yes she's you know singing along to coffee makers uh just like humming to soothe busfuls of children uh is like talent show i guess i'll try it and uh somebody like it's literally a hey you know that new sound you've been looking for well listen to this type situation um and that launches her recording career uh we're gonna take a quick break we'll come back and talk about her career which starts in 1977 at the age of 11 we'll be right back you've heard the chaos now you can see it We're building a ramp.
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and we're back we're back 77 bro 77 um her life feels like it would make a great biopic as soon as like a filmmaker who is good enough to make it is i'm telling you i just don't think they've been born yet the new rule for biopics it has to be like what they're doing with the bourdain thing you got to chunk it out don't put everyone's entire like also studios are so greedy imagine if you get fucking 14 films out of one like iconic person that's true like i would see the bjork as a child move i would see i would totally watch it by itself yep just to her being 11 and then it ends there and then i would watch the next part where she's with you know like just learning about electronics i mean there's just so many so many phases but young bjork yeah um so her father who or her stepfather who's involved in the music industry through his uh cover rock cover band like you know encourages her to record an album of icelandic covers of popular songs like your kiss is sweet by cb wonder and full on the hill by the beatles um we have the audio of that that i'm gonna play now for you um but yeah it's basically
It becomes a minor hit. It sells 500 copies, which is a lot in Iceland. That's platinum. 500 units, yeah. It's already a bop. It's already a bop.
so crazy it's like it's pretty great it feels a little square for bjork but she's only 11 um you know i'm like full on a hill by the beatles um it does feel a little hack but uh there's also an original instrumental song on the album yeah written by bjork as a tribute to icelandic painter johannes garvel um so she's already doing shit that's like this is a this is a instrumental song uh that is a painting unbelievable yeah and i think after that right they tried to get her to make another album and she refused yeah she's like i'm gonna go into my punk rock phase yeah she said they're like they're trying to give her money like to be like yo you need to make another album and she was like no i want a piano yeah she wanted a piano and like just wanted to develop her own artistic skill set which is crazy again like i think with how she subverts so many like like norms and expectations like shit you got momentum going your album at 11 went this you need to do this other thing she's like nah her career seems completely miraculous to us because she's existing in this world where she can say no to money and you know just do follow what's interesting to her yeah and it's a small small community um there's a guitarist who plays with her on this album i just this quote is crazy he's in his 30s at the time of the recording and he said she was quite different from other kids she knew what she was doing she didn't take any bullshit i remember that
Which, like, that's the thing you always hear people say about, like, very famous musicians. But she's 11. An 11-year-old in the studio. Shouldn't take any bullshit. I'll tell you that about her. Yeah. She's at the fucking boards with a cigarette dangling for her mouth. She's like, pressing the button. She's like, yeah, run that back one more time. One more time, guys. Yeah, no, no, no. What'd I say? Stop bending that note, motherfucker. If I go in, I'll beat the shit out of you with that guitar. All right. Yeah, yeah. It's like... All right. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head. From the head
so the album sells 500 copies moderate success like you said they wanted to keep making albums like this and she's like no and instead uh decides to join the punk scene um which uh she's gravitating to this diy punk rock scene that is massive in iceland um she says i think we had hold the world record for of how many people lived in iceland and how many punk rock bands there were and that sounds like a just like a tossed off thing that's actually something like people went and crunched the numbers and bands per million people uh like in the united states uh which had a lot 3530 punk bands it was 15 bands per million people iceland had 192 punk bands per 1 million people wow it's the nearest the next closest is new zealand with 42 so yeah you playing two songs and y'all said it's too many it's too many of y'all yeah two songs um but yeah they're it's like very they said we were really fed up with what the public was fed through the radio in concert and records it was all like a kind of mind control to create consumers with no brains the music was a vital instrument for the market to brainwash people um which is a sentiment that uh you know that concern about selling out and like consumerism that uh we i i found it annoying in the 90s uh and now it's gone we don't have it anymore right and it's just like i guess in the same way that like an immune system is annoying when it overreacts to like pollen or something you're allergic to it's like
you know it was annoying when it was here but now we don't have an immune system and like the whole thing is just being run over by corporations yeah how come you haven't sold out yet right yeah yeah just like i mean just like i told you like i came from that and even just i like my memory of myself is insufferable of being so like like even just thinking about i don't know how i had any friends because i'm like i even my like my own memories are annoying i'm like i can't believe you know what i'm saying again you discovered like way nobody ain't nobody throwing it back to this boot camp click song you know i'm saying like she's not fun you know so like right you know so what you just realize like man let's just have a little fun but then at the end of it like you said now there's like no inoculation right now we're uh yeah that's where he started oh you don't fuck with smith and wesson yeah basically it's just like y'all just both staring at the stage and nodding your heads you know i'm saying come on man it's dead press get jiggy come on now come on girl y'all mess with that no um so iceland is geographically the size of the state of kentucky um so it would be like the 38th biggest state it the population size is below any state it would be 53rd behind wyoming dc puerto rico um
which that's crazy it's less than dc it's less than wyoming like it's so fucking small like which you look up famous people from iceland and it's her and a bunch of people whose names you've never seen before unless you're a fan of the strongest man competitions yeah yeah where's sigaro's from i don't i think they're from uh detroit really i know that i know they're from iceland are they they are iceland yeah those are my only two references and again again part of this time that like my first hit of like good white music drug like also radiohead's a part of that like i discovered radiohead does like yeah share some dna with yeah okay computer and then i was like oh my god today is the greatest thing i've ever heard then one of the white boys was like you ever heard of cigarettes i was like no and then all of it's in the same world to me where i'm just like no what is up with just funky nordics yeah that first sigaro's album was i was fucking mind blown yeah i was like what language it's like that's not a real language um
But yeah, I feel like having Bjork come out of Iceland was like having gone to the same high school as Beyonce for like the people of Iceland. Like they, it has to be. And like they, everybody knows everybody in Iceland. Like I said up top, they have a genetic database that tracks the genetic, like everyone's genealogy in their population. Going back to when, like the ninth century. Like which wooden boat they came in on? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Literally half of the people who have ever lived in Iceland since the ninth century, they have in this database.
They've got 100% of the people born in the 20th and 21st centuries. 100% are like they know everybody who's lived there. Well, there's 42 people there. So it's pretty cool you could do that. But yeah, you're probably going to date your cousin. You have to check. Yeah, right. So that's what I'd always heard was the genetic, the reason for the genetic database was to guard against inbreeding. But it's also an amazing resource for studying genetic illness since you can just like track everything back generations. And yeah, they've just been keeping really close records. Yeah, we got that from Sven.
Sven cut his finger in 1845 and now we all got this Bjork says we've been a colony for 600 years it's kind of about time to sound like us about why she was rejecting the Rolling Stones and like that sort of rock sound so Iceland was a colony under Danish and Norwegian rule for 600 years until 1944 and treated like shit and so anti-colonialism at her core so at 13 she starts drumming and singing with an all-girl band called Spit and Snot um she spent times in uh bands called uh stiff grim uh rocka rocka drum and scud and then between 1981 and 83 she is the lead singer of a band called tappy ticker ass which is quirk the bitch's ass in icelandic oh word okay she's in quirk the bitch's ass from age 15 to 17 and like you can you can see videos of these performances and she has like perfect stage presence and like just already is like fully bjork well she already had like her 10 000 hours of performing by like 12 probably so at that point it's like you're just sweetening it yeah when she was two her mom was like i can't bring her on the public bus because she is going to stand up in front of the bus and start like singing for them so she just like has has this in her in her from the start
so then she hooks up with this band KUKL which I think it's black magic in Icelandic Kukl is Kukl and they are like very very punk she says we didn't want to be famous in the middle of the 80s an outdoor festival with a lot of drunk people started calling out for Bjork to play a new pop song or a greatest hits or a dance song and so to make her statement this is a statement from one of her band members she jumped off stage went to the center of the dance floor and went to the toilet on the spot She just took a piss on the, she's like, this is what I think about you. That's what I think about your little radio hits. The God right there. Yeah, God level. This is also when, like, just another, like, kind of turning point where, like, so they're in this band, they're playing for the same 43 people over and over again. There's a band called Crass that they like and they write to them and the band's like, hey, come and play our cellar in Berlin. And so they take out a bank loan and buy a transit van in London and drive to Berlin.
and uh she says we we didn't bathe for two months and ate sugar cubes for a month just to meet people who were like-minded so again uh she is an alien she's like i lived off sugar cubes but in case you wonder why we don't have more bjorks in the united states imagine in the modern world trying to get a bank loan to buy a transit van to go play a basement in berlin yeah and like why shouldn't why shouldn't that be how our society is organized but it seems like crazy to us yeah right yeah you started off with the phrase bank loan i was like oh this this is the end this is where we And this is where the Bjork train ends. So she starts dating fellow musician Thor Eldon when she's 16. They eventually get married in 86. She performs on Icelandic TV pregnant and wearing a belly shirt, which freaks people out so much that a woman has a heart attack and tries to sue her. Wait, wait, wait. Merely seeing a pregnant woman with her belly out? This is a quote from Bjork. One woman had a heart attack while she was watching and sued me. Fortunately, she lost. Wow. Yes, because it's a stomach that's pregnant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's too much. She was 19 at the time.
And she's dancing and having fun. That is icon levels when you can cause health episodes in the audience just when you're performing. No matter, like, whatever it is. Maybe it was the sight of it, but when your energy is like that, and like, this lady had a fucking heart attack. Yeah. So, 1986, she divorces Thor Eldon. Thor Eldon. Gives birth to their son. And on the same day that she gives birth, they decide to form a band called the Sugar Cubes. Her, Thor, and a, you know, one of the other people in the band is the keyboardist, Maga Urnov's daughter, which is going to be Thor's new wife.
You're doing a good job on these names. I gotta give you that, man. Yeah, I'm probably fucking them up terribly, but I'm trying. Is it Margaret? Yeah. Make America Great Again. I wonder if that, like, freeness from her just growing up in a hippie commune would be like, I don't think we should be together, but the homie's cool, and we do make good music. I like your new girlfriend. She's dope on the keyboard, so, like, let's just make it all happen. By the way, this is your child that I'm going to raise without you. Right. And they kept performing. Yeah, it's like, yeah, man, they kept going. Yeah, so they become the Sugar Cubes, which is the band that Miles...
his dad taught like was introduced to bjork through and introduced her stirred me with that bjork shit yeah i was like he's like bro you mean from the sugar cubes i was like man i'm nine leave me alone sir why would i know who they are yeah she used to be cool when she was in the sugar cube yeah um but their stated mission was uh to play music um to they said we decided to play pop music and totally discussed ourselves um so they're doing it as like i don't know if it was like to intentionally sell out or like as a bit but this is once again something that we keep coming up against is like people have their popular breakthrough by doing a bit. Like we've talked in the Elvis episode, we talked about this, how his entire persona is him just like fucking around being like, and they're like, no, that stupid voice that you were doing to make us laugh. That's actually, that's that shit. Steeler's wheel is making fun of Bob Dylan. You've got to fight for your right to party was making fun of frat boys is like their big breakthrough. A spirit in the sky was written by Norman Greenbaum in 15 minutes to see if he could write a gospel song. He was raised an Orthodox Jew, but these songs seem very easy to write.
I have in my own sort of back pocket of like, in my come up areas, to like, of some ghostwriting things where me and the homies were literally just kidding. You know? And like, just, just like, let's make a club hit. Just joking. I, Jack and Miles, we were just kidding.
and they was like yo that's that shit that's actually really good yeah because i think musicians are musicians are in too deep you know and so yeah and so to come back and communicate with us on the surface yeah you need to just be like this is you this is the sort of shit you like and you're like making a stupid face and everybody's like dancing along yeah but there's also another level to it like when you make music just for yourself or you're composing or whatever like there's all this shit happening in your mind and you're self-editing as you compose right and to give yourself like this like this happened all the time in bands i've been in or just me fucking around making beats is like I'm gonna just do some weird shit. You begin, you just give yourself permission to just purely express yourself without being, without like trying to put it in a bucket of like, well, this is like a club thing or whatever. It's still coming from you in a very sincere way. And I think people are connecting to that, even though it's outside of maybe the genre you sort of prescribe yourself to sort of operate inside of. So I think there's something liberating when you go, man, I'm just fucking around. And then yeah, it might be good because you've actually just created something fully untethered from like your own taste and things. That's what it is. You remove ego, you remove your pretext. And now I feel like it's a tool in my tool belt. Like I know that experience legitimately made me a better songwriter because you're not in your head. You're not like.
this has to fit this version of what I see myself as. I just enjoy making music and that freeness. And that's part of why I liked ghostwriting. Cause it was just like, you just get to be somebody else. And, but like I said, like now, and I wonder, like, I wonder if that, I don't know how this ends or, I mean, I know how it ends as far as like.
being a bjork fan but i do wonder if that had that same effect on her to where it's just like oh yeah i mean i don't care about it then you're like actually dang i know how to write a song now like that's what happened with me i was like oh that's how you write a chorus right right right i'm talking around but that's in me yeah exactly now right now i'm like simplified yeah yeah i can write a chorus now yeah you know yeah and if she hadn't decided like been like yeah we'll make a band to make ourselves puke we might not have ever heard of bjork you know exactly because this is like the thing that breaks through and this is her first time performing on snl uh which by the way 88 uh she performs on snl with the sugar cubes and matthew broderick introduces them and is like all the way from iceland our nato ally uh the sugar cube what i guess it was like right two years after that big you know uh reikovic reagan gorbachev thing oh sure sure but uh just so you know it's so weird for him yeah it's like they were doing it as a favor to reagan um yeah but anyways her performances are always great she always just looks amazing and completely at ease and sings exactly like her voice is on the record and all of her performances also just to like so she forms the band the day her son is born and forms a band with her
ex-husband and yeah her ex-husband's new wife um and they last for a surprisingly long time given that uh she also um acts in her first movie this 1990 movie it comes out in 1990 it's called the juniper tree it's an adaptation of a grim fairy tale starring bjork uh and it premiered at sundance and was nominated for the grand jury prize and she uh acted in it with like all of the acting all of the production occurred in the weeks after she had given birth so like just like crazy um prolific handful of weeks right around when she gives birth for the first time which is wild that's so weird to like when you when you go back to like the tupac story where it was just like yeah three of the biggest hits ever happened within days of each other yeah but for her you have that and she's postpartum like right yeah light work yeah exactly all right let's take a quick break we'll come back we'll talk about her solo career we'll talk about the swan dress we'll talk about her beating the shit out of some paparazzi we'll be right back you've heard the chaos now you can see it watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free i heard radio app
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And we're back. We're back. So this is around the time she launches her solo career. She's actually brought on to play three weeks in the U.S. opening for U2's 1992 Zoo TV tour. Oh, God. Loved that. My first U2 album I ever liked. That allows her to leave the sugar cubes on good terms and just be like, sorry, they invited me. Oh, so great. I think they were all ready to break up at that time. Still weird. You're humans. It's still weird. That's your ex-wife, the mother of your child. It's still a little weird. Oh, yeah.
He's like, well, I'm over here then with my new wife, who's not as good as you. Back the wrong horse, buddy. Awful. Awful thing to say. Launches her solo career, launches a new genre of music, which is Bjork. I think it's its own genre. Yes, yes. And yeah, her favorite music at this time, one of her favorite albums of all time is Fear of a Black Planet. And, you know, the drums on her albums, like it's just all very percussive and free at a time when electric guitars were like fucking everywhere. You know, she's launching music that is completely free of that classic rock sound.
And like a real artist, she, you know, and like Jason and I, we have our phase where we go, is it okay to listen to things that aren't hip hop? Yeah. She, she's fully goes into electronic music, like acid house, trim pop. And then like Nellie Hooper starts producing that first album debut. And Nellie Hooper was, was making like soul to soul, like back to life. Like that, that, that song fucking rips. And then you're from that to Bjork and shit. Like she, she knew these sounds that were really like powerful and somehow we're doing something different than just sort of like amp, like just like electric guitar. Yeah.
There was like, yeah, the way she even talks about electronic music is so beautiful because, you know, like this is the same era where people are like, drum machines have no soul or like, do you do electronic, do you have no soul? And she's like, it's not, you can't blame the tool for that. She's so wise. She's like, the music has to have the soul put into it. That's a you problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That sounds like a skill issue. User error? User error? Have you considered user error? Have you considered a game up? I think that's a really good point, Miles. Like she is great at picking collaborators and like kind of goes through her career. You can really see it in her music videos.
where she like this is the like the first thing that i saw was uh human behavior um it's michelle gondry like you know before anybody knew who that was before he was like making these oscar nominated movies and shit um she finds him picks him out you know and like each one of her videos it's almost like she's she's a director herself or like a filmmaker herself and like is just making the soundtrack first and then selecting who directs this movie with her um and so like she's very uh you know specific about who she decides to work with another fun thing from this time is uh neddy walker um who uh worked with her on this uh remember bjork saying can you make it a bit more angular or can i have a bit more pink and fluffy so like that's how she describes the stuff and at first they're like what the fuck is she talking about and then she uh they said then you start understanding you think yeah that's right that's exactly what it is actually it's more angular that's so dope she starts doing like the wee bay from the wire like oh yeah there's a there's a producer up in portland one of my homeboys named theory hazard and he talks like that about production too he's like yeah i think that
He's like, no, yeah, I think the drums need a little more purple. What? I don't have the same kind of synesthesia as you imagine. Yeah, he'd be right though. It does actually need more purple. You're talking about EQ? Okay, so I don't know what he means. The purple, the purple. It needs more purple. I say like marzipan and they say, oh, you mean dulcissimo and flute sound like a baby albino giraffe.
Fuck yeah. So she's 28 when debut was released in 1993. Her label expects the album to sell 40,000 copies and they're like very happy with that. It goes gold. It sells 930,000 copies in the US alone. 3 million worldwide. Spends 31 weeks on the Billboard chart. NME named it their album of 1993 and the music videos really raised her profile. Out of here. Yeah. The other thing too is she was sitting on a lot of those. She had written a lot of those songs when she was a teenager that were on debut. But she was like, I was in a punk band and these songs I knew were not punk band songs. So I just...
I set him aside. I'm just always writing. And yeah, I wrote that when I was a teenager. Alright, this is when the Conan interview happens. I just want to show it to you real quick. What's it like over there? What's the music scene like there?
It's like he's on a first date. She's like so charming. She said Iceland is an island of people who know how to control and operate electricity. Good news it comes from that situation. Look at him blinking there. He's never seen anybody like this. He's mesmerized. He's blinking so slow. And then they're kind of like, yeah, sort of, what's going on in Europe as well. And then they're kind of like, misunderstand it in a very beautiful way.
yeah they get american culture and misunderstand it in a very beautiful way which is also exactly how she describes her uh swan dress because she is like i knew i was going to a movies thing and my impression of movies were like those old uh you know swimming dance like busby whatever oh yeah yeah musicals and like so i just wore something that i thought matched that just just like fuck yeah just whatever happens to make it over yeah but do you see like look at look at the he's locked in he's locked in he doesn't he doesn't even know how to turn it on he's just like he looks so smitten he's like he looks so like yeah the way he's blinking while he's looking at her looks like when an animal in a disney movie has a crush yeah yeah yeah yeah or like or like uh when we're talking about indiana jones how his students were swooning for him as he's talking yeah yeah it's really kind of adorable and like it overall it's like a very nice respectful interview where he's just like totally matching her energy yeah yeah which is yeah it's understood in a very beautiful way just
bars um so post comes out two years later uh which everybody is like this is where it like really picks up and this is where she works with tricky who she starts dating for a while um there's like a lot of trip hop kind of energy on the album and there's a rumor that the song possibly maybe uh the that the vocals are recorded in the bahamas standing naked in water in a cave and uh that you can hear the bats in the final song and i just want to say miles and i are about to record in the bahamas oh so i'm gonna get into that sesh just get in there but naked and let the but the animals serenade us. Dude, I think too, like something that you, that you just kind of like, that Miles brought up that just was kind of like, we kind of walked over was like the fact that she had been sitting on him songs for 10 years, some of the things. And what you find, what I find with like the most prolific, like songwriters and just artists is that they're so far ahead of where we're going that like, and they don't even know it. It's just more like this like unconscious. Okay. I'll wait for y'all. Like, you know, and you know, like the, the, the story about Pharrell writing happy.
He wrote it four years before it came out and he just banked it. He was like, well, I was not ready for it. I know it's a hit. It's not ready. Like he just said it there. Not the moment. Right, right. It's not the moment. And just, but it takes, you have to be so confident with your pen and secure with yourself to let it sit there. Because if not, like if you're still insecure, you still feel like you're trying to put it out, put it out, put it out, put it out. And it's like, no, like wait, you know what I'm saying? And like, it'll be, it'll be there. Then you have the other side of that. Like Dr. Dre, like never puts it out. That waits way too long. But at the end of the day.
just that is like you know like you said like you're building this uh you know owner's manual of what makes an icon i think that that's one thing for an iconic musician is that oh this smash hit that we just thought was the most genius thing 10 years old right right right wrote it in high school that's the beautiful thing about music though too is like how evergreen like a good idea yeah like it's like that is a 10 year old idea that will always it just stands the test of time because you're just sort of in touch with what people are like sort of trying to express and wanting to hear i love how much pharrell is inspired by the minions he's written a lot of songs yeah quite amused he's like that he saw the minions and was like okay they're ready for my song happy yeah totally ah yes there's some songs that are so passionate on some of those minion soundtracks i wonder if it was one of those things where they was like all right he gets the deal they need a hit but he's just like my daughter's got a recital you need it tomorrow yeah it's like yeah i think i have one i think i already have one i think oh yeah you like this you like yeah so uh she talks about the recording process for debut and post um they recorded at the studio of nelly hooper um the home studio and she said we were just eating food and cooking and getting drunk and partying then working a little bit it took the pressure off it wasn't just like i'm writing songs from 12 to 6 it was more about having fun with people coming over and taking turns playing records uh the home studio was pretty lo-fi so a lot of the beats we ended up doing were pretty simple which you know i think simplicity again can sometimes be helpful but yeah uh this gets at her so
a lot of people have been like, what is she on? She's so trippy. Um, and she has said, uh, mainly vodka is what she's on. She says, I come, I come from a country where from the age of 15, you drink one liter of vodka every Friday straight from the bottle. Now, just a quick word of, uh, how much, how much one liter of vodka is. So exhibit Bragg's, uh, he can drink a whole Hennessy fifth, but I call it a gift. He's, uh, in a collective called the alcoholics. Uh, so Hennessy fifth is 25 fluid ounces, uh, which is too much Hennessy.
That is so much Hennessy. I would call it a problem exhibit. Bjork is saying in her home country, table stakes for alcohol consumption is 33 ounces of vodka. That is a 7-Eleven big ol' vodka. Damn!
yeah she says i watch my granddad my grandmother and it's grandmother and it's my pattern it's a release that's been going on in my family for a thousand years purely from alcohol is how people lose themselves and put their little policeman off shift and run riot i actually need it in my life a lot of drugs basically just don't agree with me i once tried half an acid and i decided never again good for her once she's probably already seeing the matrix anyway like this is my like you know drugs exist naturally in our brains and bodies and some people just like have more of it than others naturally and like I feel like she just naturally has whatever LSD. Freestyle humming on the bus, playing some solos to a coffee. That's some LSD shit already. She's already high. I wish that there was a way for us to do some sort of like biochemical autopsy of her brain and that it's like, oh yeah, she's been on an LSD trip. Her brain just makes it. I think that's true. Completely uninhibited is what she's achieved, basically. And I think that's really, to me, the X factor about her is she's so uninhibited and everything is purely on her terms. There's nothing, especially in the era of pop music that she came up in and like, you know, women are in pop music.
they're leading with like sexuality and all this shit she was like nah bro like that's not that's not how i'm gonna have fun like you want to see me i'm a robot having sex in this video right like it's i'm i'm looking at some completely other shit yes still doing like in 1995 at a festival she's sewing her own costume backstage so still very like diy yeah this is this is when uh the the stalker comes along a 21 year old exterminator named ricardo lopez from florida mailed a sulfuric acid letter bomb concealed in a hollowed out book to bjork's london address um he'd been obsessed with her for three years He was angry Bjork was dating a black man at this time. And he had spent nine months creating 22 hours of video diaries talking about their relationship. And he said, I'm just going to have to kill her. I'm going to send a package. I'm going to be sending her to hell. And then after mailing the letter bomb, he went back to his apartment, shaped his head, painted it red and green and shot himself while playing Bjork's I Remember You. Written on the wall was the best of me and a racial flair. And the police found his body and were able to intercept the bomb. It's like at the post office in her neighborhood. Like it was about to be deleted. I think if I remember that correctly. And like she.
dude almost like he almost got he almost got away when i get away with it but york almost opened that shit or i don't know who would have opened it but it almost got to her house uh she sent flowers and a card to his parents so you know still because she has a kind heart i guess she is still better than all of us yes also that year earlier that year she made headlines for a confrontation with a reporter in thailand um she was traveling to the country with her son who was then 10 and had requested reporters leave them alone until a scheduled press conference um and there was a group at the airport when she arrived which was not what was agreed to we signed up for julie kaufman from a cable tv station approached bjork and her 10 year old son with a microphone and said welcome to bangkok and bjork just immediately it's like awesome lunges at her knocks her to the ground like security has to pull her off of her i respect it so much i do too like and this was like i remember this being like a thing where they're like bjork's crazy um but first of all she had been negotiating with these motherfuckers and they said they weren't going to uh also it's not like it should be your right to be like don't put a camera on my 10 year old you know
and she has used as a metaphor when like even talking creatively about like a protective mother and like that protective like mothering instinct right and i think people greet this a little bit more differently if a year later princess diana is killed basically by the paparazzi yeah and right it's yeah you know i mean given that this is around the ricardo lopez era too like yeah not a great time uh so yeah brian cranston talked about and speaking to conan he was on it he was on a conan o'brien interview and he was like fame when you're like it's a weird thing because it's more like a a side effect. It's a side effect of you just being good at your job. And he's like, I didn't sign up for that. It's just a side effect for this. But the side effect can be so intoxicating. But if you come from someone like her who's like, I never really wanted to be famous. You know what I'm saying? I kind of always wanted to do this. And then she's like, well, see what the fuck happens when you're famous. Some weirdo in Florida mailed you a bomb. And I told y'all, I told y'all, I'm going to talk to you. I already promised I'm going to talk to you. We got a thing right here. Man, you know what? It's up. Square up. I feel like
all of us as parents, even on this, I mean, I haven't, you know, thank God our long ancestors asked Shay that I haven't had to go there, but there have, I have had moments where it was close enough where that just like ancient, like, you know, that ancient did like just epigenetic, like I am going to like, there was like, we used to live butted up against an alley and we'd lived in Long Beach and there was like, there was somebody like rattling the gate to get into our little thing and just you, your eyes pop open and I'm like, Before I even knew what happened, I'm outside. You know what I'm saying? Right. No shirt on. Just like, I will die today. You're not getting into my house. Just like, just this, just, it's like ancestral. Like, so I get it. When you just see red, you're like, I, you will have to kill me to get to my kids. Like, I just, you know, I don't know, man. I get it. Like, I get it just snapping and being like.
that was yeah i'll go to jail today she let him know she had that that norse that i can i can tap into something a little bit she didn't go to the bathroom on the spot which was kind of you know showed restraint yeah uh 2008 she had another run-in with the media at the airport another paparazzi in new zealand in new zealand um the report is wild like it treats her like a wild animal at one point they're like bjork is known to be feisty but experts say she must have been particularly angry this time oh my god um but the guy said uh i took a couple pictures and i got about three or four frames of her and as i turned and walked away She came up behind me, grabbed the back of my black skivvy and tore it down the back. I think it would be easy to be pretty easy to assume for it to seem not out of character. However, I'd like to see the security footage. Do you know how hard it is to rip a skivvy clean in half? Which I think is just like a shirt that she just ripped in half. I love that. Like I'm funny and cute and small and I sound weird, but like try me. Yeah. Yeah. Like play with me. Keep playing with me. You'll see. So somebody who did try her was Lars von Trier, the filmmaker who made Dancer in the Dark. This is her like one big Hollywood.
filmmaking you know big hollywood role and people at the time were like she's incredible and it's like only grown in estimation since then i think people are now like she should have either definitely been nominated for acting um and probably won that year um but during the making of the movie there were a lot of stories about them butting heads often attributed to both having like uncompromising artistic visions uh there were claims that she walked off set shut down production there's a rumor that she had eaten her costume and started living in the woods and one of the really spreading this idea that she was like this feral animal um so during the me too movement she is finally like okay if we're doing this oh i'm difficult yeah yeah she came out and was like uh you know here's what actually happened uh he sexually harassed me during the course of the entire making of the movie acted like it was completely normal uh after each take the director ran up to me and wrapped his arms around me for a long time in front of all crew or alone and stroked me sometimes for minutes against my wishes
uh after it went after two months of this i said he had to stop the touching he exploded and broke a chair in front of everyone on set like someone who has always been allowed to fondle his actresses then we all got sent home there were constant awkward uh unwanted whispered sexual offers from him uh with graphic descriptions sometimes with his wife standing next to us oh my god yeah threatened to climb from his room's balcony over to mine in the middle of the night with a clear sexual intention while his wife is in the next room i escaped to my friend's room this was what finally woke me up to the severity of it all um and she's like i have not uh she also she was like another type of harassment they fabricated stories in the press about me being difficult right uh this matches beautifully the weinstein methods and bullying i've never eaten a shirt not sure that is even possible that was the first clue yeah she ate the shirt oh bro you she turned you down that's what happened yeah yeah and people have pointed out like this is the only time like everyone's like well you know bjork's difficult and he's difficult nobody says she's difficult except ever yeah everybody's like she's amazing she's worked with timberland she's worked with like you know everybody everyone's like oh my god she's amazing she's so kind to work with so funny and not funny at the same time because fuck that guy yeah fuck that guy anyways uh the the movie is nominated for uh golden globes and academy awards uh her song is nominated for an academy award and this is where she wears a feathered dress shaped like a swan
by macedonian designer marhan podioski and uh i was looking through some of his other work and there's like other swan based stuff in there okay it's got a thing but this is this again like i don't know it's just a very good illustration of like how our dumb pop culture encounters an artist where i mean as she put it she's like they acted like i was trying to wear a black versace dress and like yeah she said they wrote about it like i was trying to wear a black armani and got it wrong like i was trying to fit in of course i wasn't trying to fit in this was that was the fucking point Man, I wore a swan because I wanted to wear a swan. Because it's weird. I don't understand. Have you heard anything I've ever made? Have you guys thought how weird this shit is that we're at right now? Yes, exactly. This is bizarre. But I'm weird. Bjork topped those worst dress lists and Joan Rivers said, the girl should be put into an asylum. But yeah, it has gone down as like super iconic. She was also walking the red carpet and leaving eggs behind. It could have been more obviously.
like something she was doing as performance art um at a time so dope yes at a time when everybody is like trying to be very serious and just like not whatever they can do to not get on the worst dress lists but it immediately becomes a an iconic look and like ellen degenerate wears a swan dress at the 2001 emmys kevin james did it it becomes this like hack joke it's in white chicks um and it becomes like it's in museums now and she wears it on the cover of her next album so uh it's immediately iconic she's right the culture's wrong yeah correct yeah she's she's the she's the reason Like, I talked about this on the show, maybe, like, earlier this week about just, like, the fear of cringe is so stupid. Yes. You know what I mean? She embodies that in the most beautiful way of, like, because people take the shit she does, like, oh, my God, dude, you fucking were so weird. Meanwhile, she's living from the inside out. She's not letting the external affect the internal. And there's something so poetic about someone being able to live like that. And everyone's just completely got it fucked up. Like, they're just humiliating. Like, no, this person is so true to themselves and is so unbothered by what other people think. Like, that is somebody who's, like, living in a very...
interesting inspirational way it's so crazy that like yes that your point is like like to the person who actually leads shapes and defines culture to the person is that while the rest of us are like trying to figure out what's next what's hot whatever the ones that actually figure it out aren't worried about they just do the thing like you know the whole michael jackson and prince comparison of like prince is like well i'm gonna i'm gonna take the ass out of these jeans and i'm gonna play 27 instruments you gonna follow right like It is dope. Like, oh, you don't, I don't need you to tell me that. I'm not looking for what's dope. I know what's dope. And if it's not dope, I don't care. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I thought was dope. That's what I thought was dope to the person. Yeah. I'm not here to do it for you. I'm living my own fucking life. This is what I'm fucking with. Yeah. Why don't we get it? I don't understand why we still don't get it. I think that's probably why, like, also just like when she, the few times she's acted, it just blows people away because again, she's like, what do I need to do? Embody this thing? Express myself? Okay. Yeah. Great. I'm not even, I'm not even thinking about like, whoa, what's that? What, what, what would this actress do if they were me or whatever? It's like, she just intuits
the the person who directed that first movie that was like a you know a sundance hit was like she's she kind of got to method acting in her own way she like she had her own language for it she was like it's not angular enough it's still too pink and fluffy or whatever you know whatever words she used but like yeah yeah she she invented method acting just without knowing what method acting was in her own way yeah yeah anyways i think that's a good place to leave it an amazing career amazing icon probably one of my favorite icons one of my favorite artists the only thing i will say that is really a poignant statement that she made is on the vespertine album there's like these producers matmos who worked on it but prior to that bjork had been doing most of the work on that album and then because these guys were famous producers were working on it they're all like oh matmos is genius and like taking basically gave them all the credit over bjork and she was like it's really crazy because you know y'all like kanye west who works with a who just hires producers to work with interesting yeah and everybody just takes that as this guy's a singular genius or whatever right i made most of that album of course matmos came in to work on drums and stuff like that but you then take all of that and just say this was all matmos she's like this is
she's like just like i'm just i'm just gonna let just let that marinate out there just how you compare and contrast yeah it's like i don't give a shit but she's like a man only has to say something once and then it is repeated five times or something is what she said right after then you're like yeah bars she just throws these daggers of genius like that's a man i say something once and repeat it five times like you just explained yeah yeah you just she says um that like she i mean she's obviously like a feminist icon but like she's like no that's just like how it is in iceland we have a female prime minister female president female bishop female head of police i was born in a good country it is not perfect but i was spoiled so i think also going to other countries and just feeling this sort of silence you cannot speak out it was like what the fuck right it's so weird to be icelandic because people say oh you're such a feminist and i'm like well i'm just like everybody where i come from i'm normal which like i just to collect you know she she is this like singular genius alien but also she is a testament in a lot of ways to like the value of just having a well-built civilization you know right dude that actually makes me even think more about like our my hypothesis that she's just her body produces lsd and she's high it's more that like no this is a nurturing society that takes care of your basic needs and your brain isn't broken all the time and you can be creative and you can see the world differently because you you see equality happen and you're supported in your talents and this is what we could all be i think that's right uh
Prop sucks. Prop. Wonderful having you. Great choice, by the way, of icon. Thank you. Where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff? Yeah, dude. I am on prophiphop.com. That's the link for, to get you to the hypothesis prop and, you know, the podcast, the music. I am right now, actually, somehow or another, I landed a slide.
in the fringe festival had y'all heard of fringe uh yeah yeah i never heard i guess have you ever heard of the oscars um how you say i'm approaching fringe the same way i approached bjork where i was like oh this shit is dope i didn't know you know what i'm saying so uh it's a show called making love with david mcdonald it's this improv show it's super funny somehow or another i landed a spot where i just kind of like freestyle uh spoken word in it so fun anyway it got picked up and since i didn't know anything about how this thing worked yeah he was like do you want to go to this festival i was like hell yeah send me the tickets he was like no no no you got you got to get yourself there and i was like okay well let me look at this french fest and i was like oh shit i gotta get myself there anyway we're doing a bank loan yeah i know right yeah so we're doing a seed and spark to kind of raise money um to get us there and to like actually make money while you're there so uh i'll uh so that links on my website too if you could just kind of like help us you know raise money to go out there and make jokes yeah you know how many times you can be performing it's 17 days 15 shows yeah i was gonna say yeah yeah yeah yeah so so yeah
Seed and Spark for the Making Love with David Magidoff show. And yeah, we're trying to get to Edinburgh, man. Amazing. Miles, anything you want to share? Anything you want to plug? No, man. No. Just, you know, just be... I don't know, man. Just re-engaging with Bjork and thinking about it again. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. There's something just like really... It really is one of those things like as a kid, you'd be like, man, that's just weird. And then you kind of get on the other side of it as you have more experience and you're like, that person's a fucking genius. Oh, it turns out. Genius. Ah, shit. Yeah. Goddamn.
Um, amazing. Yeah. All right. We will be back with the notebook. We'll be right back.
All right. That was Bjork. Thanks to Miles, as always. And big thanks to Prop for being a great guest, as always, and for picking Bjork. Also, huge thanks to Meredith Danko for the research on this one. Definitely one of our most unique icons, one of the most fun times I've had researching an icon. Yeah, no two-factor authentication, like two pieces of business that makes it easy to dress as her for Halloween or whatever. And she doesn't have that one iconic moment, like the night everybody remembers where they were the night.
Bjork went on the Ed Sullivan show and made his head and dick explode at the same time, which is a shame. But that would have been fun to watch. But she just had like 100 perfectly executed moments of avant-garde art that were allowed to be broadcast in the mainstream media for some reason. And slowly people go from being like, what is happening on my screen to I think I love her. One moment of that cross-section of weird performance art and mainstream pop culture. And I still remember this.
that I had in my notes that I didn't get to is when she performed at the Olympics, the Athens Olympics, I think was 2000. I don't know why she was at the Athens Olympics. Presumably they were just like, well, we'll never have the Olympics in Iceland. But she performed a song called Oceania, which according to Bjork is written from the point of view of the ocean. And she's like wearing a dress made out of 10,000 square feet of fabric that just starts like flowing out over the athletes. And it's like this.
you know, extremely mainstream event broadcast by NBC, like presumably Ford or like Chrysler were sponsoring this moment. And she's like wearing the ocean while singing, your sweat is salty. I am wide. Your sweat is salty. Like over and over again. It's just, I don't know. It's, it's so Bjork. It's, it's, she's the only person who could be in this moment that we would usually give to like a Whitney Houston or like, you know, like a mainstream pop singer. Like, it's like if Whitney Houston had Werner Herzog and Yoko Ono driving her career instead of Clive Davis.
And, you know, still had the same mainstream success as a Whitney Houston. Anyways, the research for this episode reminded me of a couple of things. The weirdness of Iceland's last naming system reminded me of how arbitrary our last naming system is. So as mentioned, they don't share the last name of their parent. Their last name is created by their parent's first name, which I guess we had at some point. Jack's son, Jackson, you know, but she is her father's name's daughter.
Yeah, it seems confusing that Iceland doesn't have one familial name you can trace back through the generations. But A, they can afford the confusion because they have a ledger of every person who has ever been alive there and their genetic lineage. And yeah, B, ours is just as stupid. Yours is dumb, but here we do things right. We're all named after the job that our great, great, great, great, great, great, 20 times over removed grandparents did. Like Cooper, Smith, Hawk, Tennis Getter. There's a producer of the, I think it's the podcast Daily, who's...
I think it's Claire Tennisgetter, whose last name is like, for some reason, sticks in my head. And I always imagine she's coming from a long line of US Open ball boys, Tennisgetter. I don't think that's how it's spelled, but that's what I'm going with in my Tennisgetter cinematic universe. The research for this episode also reminded me of how much I love the pop cultural artifacts that our SNL hosts introducing musical guests. There are many classics. Daniel Craig sang, ladies and gentlemen, The Weeknd, which...
There's an account on Twitter that just posts that every time The Weeknd arrives. You've got Steven Seagal not knowing where the syllabic emphasis goes in the name Michael Bolton. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Bolton. And, of course, you have Adrian Brody introducing Sean Paul in a Rasta wig, one of the worst things that's ever been televised. So anyway, Bjork has the Matthew Broderick one commenting on Iceland's status as our NATO allies. Her other two SNL performances as a solo artist were introduced by...
Brendan Fraser looking incredibly hot, just giving the camera an absolutely smoldering eye fucking. You kind of forget how hot that guy was at a certain point, or at least I had, having recently taken my son to see a Brendan Fraser movie where he plays, you know, Eisenhower, I think. But anyways, and then Scarlett Johansson introduced her in 2007. And it's like she's doing an impression of Anna Faris's character in Scary Movie for some reason. It's really strange. And these introductions are always strange. There's a...
Twitter thread of just people of only these, of celebrity guests introducing musical acts. And they're like, I don't know, they're like overthought out. And the Scarlett Johansson one's really weird, but they often are. So I love those pop culture artifacts. I highly recommend you go check out that Twitter thread. We'll link off to that in the footnotes. A random detail from Bjork's childhood, not hurting.
the um maybe she is an alien case uh is that she once wanted to see if her cat could fly and literally threw him out the window um she said it wasn't meant in a mean way i really felt sorry for him because he couldn't follow the birds she interpreted as a child she interpreted the cat looking at the birds as like wanting to fly like the birds and not just wanting to devour them um another fun anecdote more fun doesn't involve the accidental harming of animals uh is that and it does get at her being an iconic parent her being a mother came up a lot in the research giving a woman a heart attack by performing with her pregnant belly out uh fucking up that reporter when they tried to photograph her kid um there's a reddit thread asking people for their uh quote weirdest rarest bjork fact and the icelanders turn up in full force and are like she goes hard in the paint on her uh on her little vodka nights when she turns her little uh policeman off she turns him off you guys um but one person also said i went to school with one of her kids and during christmas there was a parent teacher meeting hangout thing
And all the kids were in a different room watching a Christmas movie and Bjork watched the movie with us instead of being around the other parents, which she just seems, she just seems like a lot of fun. In addition to being a parenting icon, she is an LGBTQ plus icon specifically saying she doesn't know why anyone would ever choose one type of sexuality to be attracted to. And she is currently dating a woman named Yara Polana, who is also a musician and a multi multimedia artist. But yeah, that's, that's our Bjork episode. I did have a mini notebook dump from a past episode, which we'll do from time to time. We learned about Elvis's monkey after the Elvis episode, so I had to come back in a later episode and tell you about Scatter, which is what they called him because that's what people did when he showed up. This is a Steve Jobs detail I just learned on my favorite movie podcast, Blank Check. They're covering WALL-E. Shout out to Griffin, David, and Super Producer Ben. They're covering WALL-E in their Andrew Stanton series. The director, Andrew Stanton, is the director of Finding Nemo, WALL-E, John Carter.
of mars you might you might know him as john carter of mars anyways great series and so they're talking about wally and apparently the initial idea for that movie which is one of my favorite movies probably top 10 for me is to have not have humans in it at all if you're if you're a wally fan this will be interesting but even if you're not so the second act of the movie takes you to a spaceship where humanity is living out a weird purgatory as like screen addicted babies essentially everyone's just like that their physical build is that of like large babies because nobody's moving Everybody's going around on futuristic jazzies and they're just glued to their screens. Don't even notice each other. And during development, that part of the movie was actually going to feature like green blob aliens. And even the trash planet while he was cleaning was not going to be Earth. Andrew Stanton was like, I don't want to make this like a message movie. And Steve Jobs is still involved at Pixar. And he comes in with a note to make it about Earth and humans.
And for a minute, they were like, what if the green blob aliens are us from the future? Like, what if that's the twist at the end? The green blobs are actually what we evolved into. But based on Steve Jobs's note, they eventually settle on making it what we know today, which is a commentary on the future of humanity that seems to get more and more accurate every year that we become more and more addicted to our screens. So this, though, is where it gets really interesting, because at that time, when they're making WALL-E, Steve Jobs is the only one who could have known that that's what humanity was going to turn into, because the development on the story happened before the first iPhone.
had ever come out. The first iPhone dropped like almost exactly a year before Wali was released. So we get the first and arguably still the most accurate depiction of screen addicted humanity in a movie created before we were addicted to screens uh but they were able to do that because uh they had a guy on the inside at apple uh who you might have heard of who had a sense of what was coming um and that was steve jobs uh in addition to being like make it a commentary on humanity he was like and while you're thinking about what humanity is going to be like andrew stanton here's something i'm about to release called an iphone and he gave andrew stanton the director of wally one of the first iphone prototypes so before anyone else stanton gets an iphone and is like oh shit Like, I have not been addicted to anything this bad since I quit cigarettes. And, you know, I feel like him probably being one of the first to have one and the freshness of the experience of screen addiction probably made it possible for him to see where we were headed and how weird it was more clearly than maybe even someone today could because now it's just normal. But yeah, Jobs basically...
creates both the dystopian screen-addictive future we all exist in today and helps make the movie that is one of the best, most critical statements about the dystopia that we're still in the process of living in and that he was still in the process of creating at that moment. And he did both things basically at the same time, thought that was worth a miniature notebook dump. He also had a weird reverse Timberlake social network thing where they were going to call it WALL-E with one L and he was like, add an L. It's not cleaner, but it'll be less likely to be confused with the rapper WALL-E. All right.
That's been our Bjork episode. We're back next week with another genius alien who makes avant-garde art that somehow crosses into the mainstream a week from today. We've got David Lynch with Janie Danger. It's a lot of fun. And we will talk to you then. Bye. The Daily Zeitgeist is executive produced by Catherine Law. Co-produced by Victor Wright. Co-written by J.M. McNabb. And edited and engineered by Brian Jeffries.
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