Bjork
Bjork’s songs are filled with images of different sorts of breaking points: people snapping, breaking down, losing control. The narrator in “Hyper-Ballad” throws “car parts, bottles, and cutlery” off a mountain to feel better; a relationship comes undone like a ball of yarn in “Unravel”; and in “Pluto” Bjork simply announces, “Excuse me / But I just have to / Explode.” After three increasingly distinctive solo albums (four, if you count the great radical remix collection Telegram) it’s become clear that she thrives on the tension that usually precipitates human dramas. Chaos equals life is an equation present not only in her lyrics but in the way her pixielike appearance contradicts her bold presence and, on her most recent album, Homogenic, in the way disparate musical elements–classically influenced string arrangements and harsh electronic beats–fight each other.
