BJlillK
Gold Comfort
After being targetted by a fanatic and surviving a public break-up with her lover Goldie, BJéRK has moved back to Iceland. But she won't let the world forget her. Words: Damien Love
12 THE “ST 7—20 Nov 1997
BY NOW OF course. Bjork Gudmundsdottir needs no introduction. let alone a surname. The ‘ex-Sugarcubes’ epithet has long since fallen away. burned to a crisp by the fearsome trajectory her career has traced since the release of Debut in 1993.
Over the course of four years and three albums — not counting Telegram. last year’s Post remix project — she has moved from the paddocks of the independent chart to a place where award- winning designer Alexander McQueen art directs her album sleeve and her music is as likely to be heard in clubs. on catwalks. on soundtracks or at dinner parties as it is pounding out of student bedsits. The latest album Homogenit‘ is behind a UK tour which brings her to Edinburgh this month.
As she has moved. glowing brighter and ensconcing herself firtnly within the public psyche. Bjork has left behind the days when only the music press and its readers took notice. and come inevitably within the sights of the wider media.
Now deemed copy-friendly. her personal life is picked over in the spotlight more than her work is. As the attention intensifies. it feeds off itself and gathers momentum.
"
o///////”
Last year was perhaps the point when Bjork‘s travel through the world‘s microscope reached terminal velocity: her romance and break-up with Goldie. documented in the public domain; the fracas with a television news crew at Bangkok airport: and. ugliest of all, the incident with Richard Lopez. A racist obsessed with Bjiirk and her relationship with Goldie. Lopez. videotaped himself construct-
'I don't want to do a Kurt Cobain on you, you know. I think I'm a lucky bastard really. All my dreams came true. I've got nothing to moan about.’ Bjtirk
ing the acid bomb he then posted to Bjork. before filming his own suicide with the singer‘s ‘I Miss You‘ playing in the back- ground. The letter was intercepted.
Sitting in a rehearsal studio in her native Iceland. Bjork is mostly breathless in conver- sation. a tttmbling torrent of words forced out between mouthfuls of whatever it is she‘s managed to grab to eat. When asked whether she misses the days when it was only the Melody Maker she had to worry about. however. she becomes far more hesitant. and picks her way carefully. falterineg through an answer.