‘Unravel’: How Björk turned heartbreak into high art
There’s a soft, unknowing wave of cold that brushes the heart the moment you realise you’re losing your grip on someone else. It’s strangely slow on the uptake before becoming overwhelmingly unavoidable as its intensity grows. Björk knows the power of a soft sway of musical arrangements more than anybody, but the beginning notes to ‘Unravel’ feel like that indescribable moment when the ice finally starts to crack.
Emerging from a rocky period in her life, Homogenic earnestly signposts the spectrum of human emotions, using acknowledgement and confrontation to navigate what it all means during times of uncertainty. This is nothing new when considering Björk’s artistry, but the defining moments on the album are less about solemn affairs and more akin to finding hope in the chaos.
“Emotionally, this album is about hitting rock bottom and earning your way up,” the singer explained, adding, “So it’s the darkest album I’ve done emotionally, but it’s got a lot of hope.” Lyrically, this striving to leave resignation behind comes forward by the bucket load, proving Björk’s affinity for constant movement even amid life’s downturns, when heartbreak pushes the soul to hold its hands up in surrender.
With ‘Unravel’, the singer traced the fault lines of a broken heart by describing the overwhelming nature of losing someone, especially when it occurs slowly and there’s nothing you can do to control it. The gentle frustration and devastation of suddenly having your heart fill with something less welcoming and colder to the touch breeds a different kind of sluggishness, where the world around appears desaturated.
On the track, love and connection are as delicate as a shallow, hot breath. “While you are away / My heart comes undone / Slowly unravels / In a ball of yarn,” Björk sings, “The devil collects it / With a grin / Our love”. Using intensely emotive metaphors, Björk likens yearning to something delicate and fleeting, and consistently on the cusp of being taken away by a dangerous, insidious entity.
As a result, Björk takes the fragility of love lost and feeds it into allegorical imagery, the same way a painter might enhance emotional turmoil with aggressive, dark brushstrokes. However, by the time the chorus comes around, these fine lines become outlined by something lighter and shinier, signifying hope amid the sadness, even if such hope is entirely hopeless when considering the bigger picture.
Enhancing this torturous whirlwind is Björk’s singing technique, which typically sits somewhere between singing and talking, underscored by the beauty of her childlike tone of wonderment. Björk’s vocals also play into the frayed seams at the crux of the romantic breakdown, highlighted by a timid demeanour that feels frail in aura, much like losing a loved one and having no chance of pulling it back in.
The slow build of the melody, accompanied by subtle saxophones, a church organ, and other electronic notes, provides a sort of uncontrollable intensity filled with inexplicable delicacy. In this way, Björk transforms her desire to rebuild a love lost through some of her most brilliant artistic techniques. It’s a beautiful song even in its tragedy, embracing the truth of loss with authentic vulnerability.
However, it’s not just Björk’s ability to charge directly into the nucleus of mourning that makes ‘Unravel’ the quintessential example of the singer’s unparalleled ability to transition heartbreak into art. And if we’re to define high art as something that transforms everyday, oftentimes vapid experiences into multi-interpreted facets of human truth, then ‘Unravel’ is a true masterpiece. It’s also the dynamics she toys with throughout, less as a means of providing complex contrasts but more to layer the different emotions themselves, like a fleeting abyss where everything, even the most clashing elements, exists in seamless tandem.
