When we think of Björk, apart from her experimental music, somewhere between electronic, soul, and pop, which defies categorization and genre, we think above all of her visual identity, inspired by the natural elements, particularly plants and the aquatic world.
In this way, she has developed a whole visual style around her music that destabilizes, intrigues, and leaves a mark on the listener. And yet, the paradox of her visual identity is that although she is sometimes unrecognizable (completely covered by her costumes so you can’t even see her face), her style is so unique and identifiable that it’s impossible not to recognize her touch.
1. Visual identity as a defining element of the artist
Björk asserts the link between her visuals and her music. Far from being illustrations, they are genuine translations. She goes deeper into this concept in her podcast “Sonic Symbolism,” where she details the influences on her various albums.
“When people ask me about the differences between the music on my albums, I find it easier to use visual shortcuts. In a way, that’s why my album covers are like homemade tarot cards. The image on the front may seem like a simple visual moment, but to me, it describes the sound of the album. I try to express that with my color palette, the textures of the textiles, with what I’m holding, and the angle of the posture I’m in translates a relationship to the world. Also, the emotion of the mouth tries to share the general mood of the album. Maybe you could call it a kind of Acoustic Symbolism.” – Björk, in the first episode of her Podcast “Sonic Symbolism.”
It’s interesting to see in her testimony how the artist conceptualizes her album covers, how precise she is in conveying the “mood,” the “vibe” of her music, right down to the fabric textures and body posture.
At the time Björk broke through, social networks were not yet as developed as they are today. It was the age of MTV. However, we can be pretty sure that if she’d started today, she still would have been popular thanks to her identity that speaks to the concerns of the time, closeness to nature, questioning the boundaries between humans, animals, and minerals.
Today, Björk isn’t on TikTok. She only has Instagram, which she mostly fills with photos of her incredible outfits, concert videos, and announcements of her musical projects. However, if she had to do it all over again, social networks would have offered Björk incredible possibilities to express all her creativity and identity!
Indeed, even if finding a visual identity is a challenge that can be perceived as stressful for musicians, it’s also an opportunity to enrich the message of their music, to give it a new dimension, to create a world of its own.
Sometimes, a little guidance is needed to realize the full potential of the project. Professional advice can be invaluable, whether it’s for the artistic or the marketing side of things. With this in mind, Groover has set itself the mission of democratizing access to professional advice for artists in development, whatever their budget. As a result, artists can enrich their musical universe with a rich visual universe that will resonate with their listeners, fostering the development of a solid fan base that identifies with the artist and their artistic world.
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2. An artist who made a name for herself with a music video
From this point of view, it’s interesting to note that Björk’s first success wasn’t so much her music per se, but the whole world around her. Indeed, Human Behaviour received relatively little radio play. The music video, on the other hand, was played on MTV in 1993, and it was this that made the singer explode. The video, directed by Michel Gondry, mixes references and styles, reinforcing Björk’s trademark destabilizing quality. The video’s aesthetic is reminiscent of children’s TV series from the 60s and 70s, where the characters were puppets. The usual teddy bear is transformed into a monster in a tale that mixes references to Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood. The shots are incisive, fast-paced, and designed to shock: from the very start of the clip, the shot is taken from the height of a freeway, where a hedgehog is seen crossing as a car speeds past the camera. The scene takes place at night, and Björk combines innovation and the bizarre: one of the following shots is a close-up of some kind of wiggling larvae, on which Björk’s head is photoshopped.
In this video, Björk lays the foundations of her image: playing on the bizarre and destabilizing her audience, exploiting a very plant-like environment, questioning the porous boundaries between the animal, plant, and human worlds, questioning the relationship to reality in mirroring the potentials of the imagination.
3. Destabilize your audience
Björk likes to destabilize, to play on our relationship with reality. Her clips are highly edifying, forcing her audience to question themselves. She likes to erase the boundaries and partitions that might exist, whether between natural elements, or between dream and reality.
In her video Triumph of a Heart, for example, she is married to a cat that behaves like a human being. The boundary between animal and human is blurred. Similarly, in Bachelorette, the spectators in her story are transformed one by one into shrubs.
Her music videos are more than just illustrations of her music or marketing tools to promote her world. They are, at times, veritable short films, in which the viewer is caught up in the visual narrative carried by the music. Bachelorette is a perfect example. The clip recounts how Björk found a book that wrote itself, then her success and downfall as the book’s author. She puts her own narration in abyss, first telling the story of the book once, and then “repeats,” this time in a sort of lecture. The words of the music have nothing to do with what’s being described, but the musicality, the intensity of the electronic sounds and strings, the piano, the marked rhythm, complement the visual narrative and enrich it with a powerful intensity and emotion. It’s impossible to remain indifferent to such a clip!
4. Plants, insects, and nature
Today, Björk is at the climax of her stylistic research. Her costumes are so elaborate that, at times, you don’t even recognize her anymore. She plays with masks, clothes, volumes, and colors.
Her world is that of plants, flora, and fauna. She is able to recreate the imagery of aquatic and plant organisms, playing with shapes reminiscent of feathers and the tentacles of certain fish, colors reminiscent of jellyfish and the shapes of algae.
She likes to combine colors that you wouldn’t intuitively put together, such as violet with green, yellow with navy blue, or coral red with blue. This creates a unique universe reminiscent of the visual diversity to be found in nature, whether in the jungle, with parrots or exotic plants, or on aquatic animals.
On her album covers, we see creatures that sometimes look human, but we can’t be sure; sometimes they’re deliberately other. They have bodies, but seem to come from another world. In the same way, they look like digital images, but you can’t be 100% sure. Björk exploits different mediums to create an artistic world of her own.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Björk is an artist whose artistic language is both musical and visual, and who has built a world of her own. Her music, which defies classification, is rooted and enriched in this vibe that destabilizes you and leaves you with tons of questions. Björk has shown herself to be both a great musician and a great visual artist.
– Translated by Kole Wright –
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