The Elephant in the Room: Björk and the Polar Music Prize
Seb Recordon


On August 30th last year, Icelandic musician Björk became the third female recipient of the prestigious Polar Music Prize for popular music, an award which is essentially the equivalent to the Nobel Prize for music, if there were one. After handing out the prize to all the unquestioned “Fathers” of modern Western pop music over the past eighteen years since the prize’s inception, it seems the time has come to finally acknowledge the equally important contribution by women to the field.




One of the most striking similarities between the two previous female laureates – Joni Mitchell and Miriam Makeba – and Björk is the way in which their music contains distinctly feminine elements, but it is not the main focus or intention. Although feminist movements like ‘riot grrrl’ made a drastic noise and splash in a predominantly male pond, the movement was high on empowering message and low on varied musicality. While some women focus on subverting masculine clichés by role-playing (Cocorosie don beards for album covers; Peaches, the overtly sexual ex-primary school teacher, does the same and titles her album “Fatherfucker”) Björk never forces her femininity. Mitchell’s career in particular has had a similar trajectory, and there are certain similarities in their work. In fact it’s fitting that Mitchell is one of the only other women who have won the award as Björk has stated that Mitchell was one of the key songwriters who gave her the courage to “create her own universes”. 

It would be easy and lazy to read into the award from a feminist perspective; “Women finally receiving their dues” etc. But I think it would be difficult to make a strong feminist argument. ‘Riot grrrl’ ran its course. Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney is content as a “stay-at-home mom”, making music which doesn’t need to fight that particular fight any longer. But there definitely remains an argument for the ongoing difficulties of being a woman/mother and being a musician. It may seem trite to speak of an award in terms of its reflection of gender issues but it is important to note that the establishment is finally reflecting the important bodies of female work to the history of music. 

But this quote from her website is evidence that sexism towards women is still something of an issue, if a little more covert; less talked about: 
“it feel like still today after all these years people cannot imagine that woman can write , arrange or produce electronic music . i have had this experience many many times that the work i do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job . people seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing .but they cannot program , arrange , produce , edit or write electronic music ." [sic to all]

And this is not the only area in which she has not been given enough credit. There is something incredibly healthy about the way Björk approaches collaboration. She enters into dialogues between people to set off the monologue which solo artistry can entail. She has always worked with the outcast weirdos who were doing something interesting, bringing them into the spotlight with her and nurturing their talent. She is not the utmost authority on any given genre and is more interested in communicating between different musical worlds. There is no other artist who has worked with the likes of Thom Yorke, Konono No 1, Antony, Timbaland, Toumani Diabaté, Matmos, The Wu-Tang Clan, Herbert, Rahzel, Bonnie “Prince” Billie, Tricky, PJ Harvey, and Kelis. The fact that none of them sounded unwelcome in her world is testament to her musical breadth. Moreover, Leila Arab, Magga Stína, Ólöf Arnalds, and Micachu have all benefited from her guidance and maternal support.

The “Almighty” Rolling Stone magazine includes Nico as the sole woman to crack into the top 20 greatest albums of all time. Not a single act on the top 15 most represented artists on the list has a woman in its ranks. We know these things don’t really matter, but they tend to niggle in our subconscious. It’s about time that women occupied some of these spots. The reputed music website Stereogum recently ran a post which had various acclaimed artists analysing the press’ predominantly negative reception of Cocorosie. Although most contained a bit of in-group ego-rubbing, St Vincent’s comments were pretty on-the-money. She wrote a critique of the middle-class white hetero male that makes up most of these official critical groups: “Don’t be Aryan muscle-boys! I have seen enough official culture.” The establishment has never been too friendly with outsiders.

The reaction to Björk’s headlining show at the Big Day Out 2008 serves as testament to how she can be misunderstood by some people, as she was booed by most of the audience who were waiting for Rage Against the Machine. Sure, they may simply not like her music, and that’s a question of personal taste. But it seemed ironic that supporters of a band whose entire career is founded on left-wing politics – equality and social justice – booed her set. She is a true punk at heart, having been signed to the same humble independent record label since her Sugarcubes days. She stayed in a squat with punks trying to blow up parliament in Germany, left Iceland for London in her twenties, alone with a newborn child and no contacts in that foreign land. She has always been firmly anti-authority. After shouting “Tibet Tibet” during the performance of her song ‘Declare Independence’ (a song dedicated to the Faroe Islands’ plight for independence) in China she was banned from future performance in the country. She rallies for the right to and respect for personal independence. And what’s more punk than having the courage to hold up the most naked of human emotions up to light as she does?

Certainly, all due credit to RATM for their vocal support of liberal values. But while RATM started out with an excellent debut with something to say, their politics became their downfall as they turned into something of a one-trick pony. Their fans have become predominantly males who simply like to “rage”, paying little attention to the social messages in the lyrics. This brand of “punk” has become a caricature of itself. It has become part of the establishment, with stadium-filling capacity and major label contracts, devoid of its original creativity and lack of ego. 

Björk’s work has always been founded on the idea that escapism is a natural human craving. It serves not as total escape from reality but a heightened form of it, where emotions are held up to a magnifying glass by way of mini-epic poems. Although the Twilight series sells escapism (and forbidden sexuality) to the masses, Björk has always promoted creativity and healthy relationships in her music. Where the subtext (or not so sub-text) of those films is something along the lines of, “Sex Kills Teenagers, signed the Mormon Church” with broodingly earnest characters, the underlying values in Björk’s music involve communication, friendship, community, excitement at the unknown, the creative process itself, and of course: love. It is rare that an artist accurately and succinctly communicates the scope of human emotion in an easily digestible package. There are no genre guidelines to go by, no shackles of “authenticity” needed except as relating to the human condition: universality. 

Sure, Lady Gaga is promoting an alternative and more interesting approach than most mainstream artists, but as M.I.A. put it, “the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know?” And sure, pop doesn’t have to be meaningful beyond “I want your love”, but isn’t it great when it is? Björk is sometimes (hilariously) called ‘the first female Beatle’, which actually isn’t far off the mark really. I can’t think of another artist who has so consistently and excellently married pop with the experimental, delivering it to an audience of millions.

While it is a fairly widespread belief that awards are bullshit, the Polar Music Prize is one of the few that actually mean something. More than any other award, the focus is on valuable contributions to music. After all, there aren’t many awards whose laureates include people as diverse as Stockhausen, Ravi Shankar, Steve Reich, Sonny Rollins, Gilberto Gil, Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen i.e. the accepted (and notably male) geniuses of recent music history. It’s a gesture which is less a ‘pat on the back’ for the highest-selling artists than an acknowledgment of a formidable oeuvre, which sounds wanky, but is actually an important thing. These awards act as signposts for what’s groundbreaking, exciting, and timeless. In the liberal West, we like to ignore gender as an issue that’s still current. And certainly, things have levelled out. But, as we move steadily into the 21st century, it’s simply a comforting and reassuring indicator that the hegemony of the male (at least in music) is declining and this is being reflected by the institutions that count.