Bjork

selected  Bjork TShirTS, PosTerS & Prints

Björk Guðmundsdóttir (born November 21, 1965 in Reykjavík, Iceland) is an Icelandic singer-songwriter and composer, as well as an occasional actress.

She is best known for her expressive range and an interest in many kinds of music, including pop, alternative rock, jazz, ambient music, electronica, folk, and classical music. She has won numerous awards, and has received 12 Grammy Award nominations and an Academy Award nomination.

Her record label, One Little Indian, reported in 2003 that she has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide. Her most recent album, Volta, was released worldwide on May 8, 2007. She was ranked #36 on VH1's "The 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll" and #8 on MTV's "22 Greatest Voices in Music".

Björk's musical career began when she was 11, beginning her study of classical piano in elementary school. One of her instructors sent a recording of Björk singing Tina Charles' song "I Love to Love" to RÚV, then the only radio station in Iceland. The recording was broadcast on radio nationally; after hearing it, a representative of the record label Fálkinn contacted Björk to offer a record contract.

In her teens Björk was influenced by punk rock; at 14 she formed the all-girl punk band Spit and Snot, shortly followed by a jazz fusion group Exodus in 1979. In 1980 she graduated from music school. In 1981 she and bassist Jakob Magnússon formed another band called Jam-80, which later became Tappi Tíkarrass (which means "Cork the Bitch’s Arse" in Icelandic), and released an extended single, "Bítið Fast í Vítið" in the same year. Their next album, Miranda, was released in 1983.


KUKL toured Iceland with anarchist UK punk band Crass, and later visited the UK in a series of performances with Flux of Pink Indians. They produced two albums as a result of these collaborations: The Eye in 1984, and Holidays in Europe in 1986, both on Crass Records.

The band was eventually dissolved, in part due to the closure of their label, Gramm. In the summer of 1986, several members of KUKL and the surrealist group Medusa got together to create the arts collective Smekkleysa (Bad Taste). They created a musical division, a band called KUKL but soon changed the name to The Sugarcubes. Smekkleysa and the Sugarcubes were officially started on the same day as the birth of Björk's son, Sindri.

In 1992 The Sugarcubes dissolved as conflicting ambitions split the band; they went into an indefinite hiatus to avoid risking their friendship. They still remain friends and are all still involved in the management of Smekkleysa/Bad Taste. Björk moved to London to pursue a solo career; she began working with producer Nellee Hooper, who had produced for Massive Attack, among others. Their partnership produced Björk's first international solo hit, "Human Behaviour". Her solo debut album, Debut, was released in June 1993 to positive reviews; it was named album of the year by NME, and eventually went platinum in the United States. At the 1994 BRIT Awards Björk won the awards for Best International Female and Best International newcomer. Debut had a mix of songs Björk had been writing since she was a teenager as well as more recent lyrical collaborations with Hooper.

The success of Debut enabled her to collaborate with other artists on one-off tracks. She worked with David Arnold on "Play Dead", the theme to the 1993 film The Young Americans (which appeared as a bonus track on a re-release of Debut), collaborated on two songs for Tricky's Nearly God project, appeared on a track on the 1997 album Not For Threes by Plaid, which was released on the cult Warp Records label, and wrote the song "Bedtime Story" for Madonna's 1994 album Bedtime Stories.

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