“A joke”: The hit song Björk regretted making
When you put popular hits under the microscope, the phenomenon becomes more intriguing as you investigate. For instance, why did The Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’ become their most popular hit, despite Phil Oakey despising everything it achieved? Björk is undeniably one of the most sophisticated and experimental avant-garde artists in music history, but even she isn’t immune to a distorted legacy.
Throughout her life and career, Björk seems to have done it all. She has explored the importance of connecting to nature, navigated a vicious and traumatic stalker, and pushed the boundaries of music and visual art, blending the organic and the synthetic to create a unique sonic landscape that reflects her deep emotional experiences and her commitment to environmental and social issues.
Aside from many of her more obvious picks when discussing innovative excellence, Biophilia was perhaps the singer’s most daring venture. A museum-like journey into addressing the notion of seeking mentorship in nature, Biophilia is a call to arms, an exploration of what truly matters, and a criticism of contemporary consumerism wrapped in one.
Björk’s ability to explore such terrains lies not just in her effortless ability to recognise the ambiguity of her surroundings but in the sophistication of music in a broader sense. Often, she shuns the obvious in favour of a more hedonistic approach, enjoying the uncertainty of spotlighting the world’s biggest dangers and challenges and embellishing the person she becomes in the process.
For some strange reason, however, one thing is often put in front of Björk’s prowess as a genuine artist with an abstract vision, and that’s her biggest hit, 1995’s ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’. For a musician who constantly thrives to achieve more untouchable brilliance, it’s understandable why she almost came to loathe the track and its strangely unsettling rhythms.
‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ became Björk’s most well-known song not just because of its strange shifts between hushed verses and explosive choruses but because of its links to the Christmas period and its use in festive advertisements. However, while songs being used for marketing purposes usually taints their quality in one way or another, Björk’s attitude towards the song was not actually impacted by its connections to reindeer and synthetic snow.
In reality, Björk’s regret stems from the fact it started as a joke. As she explained to Record Collector in 2002: “It was sort of a joke really. It was a song Guy Sigsworth used to play on the bus when we were touring. Ever since, I almost regret doing it because I wanted to put so much importance on making new music.”
The ambivalence with which she approached futuristic soundscapes and the seemingly problematic nature of reinventing traditional sounds also made her feel uneasy. She concluded: “So many people are doing old music, and you’ve even got new bands doing old music. If I put something out in this world, it would be the courage to go ahead and invent things, so it’s ironic ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ became my biggest song.”
