Someone in the comment section of a Youtube videos said:
(Quote) "Now that they ban safe and legal abortion, I'm sure the Conservatives have plenty of policies lined up to help support all these newborn babies though." (Unquote)
And a radical Right crackpot who practice poverty-shaming and victim-blaming (Conservative poverty-shame and victim-blame poor and disabled people, rape victims, people who use birth control but the birth control failed like the pill failed or the condom broke for some reason, and they also poverty-shame and victim-blame dirt poor children for not being able to buy a lunch, etc) replied:
(Quote) "You do realize that before Roe and abortion it was understood that it’s the parent’s responsibility to take care of their children…right? And there were no giant social spending programs to “help” right? Families simply taught their daughters that they should not sleep with men who are not their husbands. And it worked out fine. Going back to that would not be a bad thing." (Unquote)
This radical Right crackpot is so detached from reality that he really think it's acceptable to tell women "don't ever have sex except with the one man you're going to marry." He didn't say anything about a man never having sex except with the one woman he's going to marry. Never mind that 97% of people on this planet start being sexually active at the age of 13 or 14 and don't wait like 4 or 5 years to have their first sexual relation. The overwhelming majority will not wait until they are adult. Also, most people don't marry until they're well into their mid-thirties now to make sure that they're going to marry the right person for them and not make the mistake of marrying the wrong person because they don't want to end up divorcing a bunch of time because they didn't wait. Do Conservaturds really expect people to wait until they're in their mid-thirties to have sex for the first time?
And it's funny how it's only women who are expect to be sexless virgins for like 20 years (like age 14 -34). Conservaturds are detached from reality. They don't even believe in this purity shit, because they often get caught engaging in sexual activities like the fucking hypocrites they are. Like Donald motherfucking Trump who pushed for abstinence only "education" in the schools and gutted teenage pregnancy prevention programs while he was cheating on his wife (wives?" with porn stars. Conservaturds are hypocrites who believes in "purity for thee but not for me" or "sex for me but not for thee", they call any woman who has sex for pleasure, even with her own husband, a "slut" and a "whore".
Nevermind that God create human beings with errogenous zones, a sex drives, and made sex to be pelasurable and that human beings are hardwired to fuck, it's in our DNA, our biology and our human nature. And when you repress your human and natural sexual urges, it comes out in all kinds of fucked up, harmful and creepy ways (that's why you have fucked up sexual perversions like incest, pedophilia, beastilality, sadomasochism, etc, and the reason Catholic priests are raping and molesting children is because the stupid Vatican force them into those sexual abstinence for life vows and won't let them marry and start families, they are not allowed to marry and to have sex with consenting adults their own age, the Vatican is cancer on society and there's nothing in the bible that explicit says priests can't marry and have kids).
But Conservaturds want to punish women for having sex for pleasure and think that only men should be allowed to do that and that's why they banned safe and legal abortion and are working on banning all contraceptives and birth control and they'll probably ban voluntary sterilization too. They want to make sure that women will be force to have eight, ten or twelves children and kids they can't afford to punish them for having sex, of course the men won't be punish for dumping the women pregnant after the fact to raise the babies on their own, the women and girls will suffer the most in this.
They want to make sure that women and girls will live in dire poverty and die young to punish female for having sex for pleasure, because when safe and legal abortion is ban, the poverty rate drastically increase and there are poor, starving and homeless children and mothers by the truckload and their life expectancy is about 15 to 10 years shorter, and I'm not even talking about the increase in infant mortality, in the maternal death rate, and of course the increase in birth defects, genetic defects, respiratory illness, bone cancer, leucemia, etc, because they will not allow any exception for rape and incest, yes, for incestuous rape, for women and little girls who were raped by a relative and this is going to be very bad for the human species and our gene pool as there will be no way to prevent a pregnancy from taking place as a result of incestuous rape or inbreeding.
Women and girls will be force to have incest babies and the incest babies who make it to adulthood will want to have kids and we won't be able to pass laws that forbid incest offsprings from breeding and having kids because that would be "eugenics" and the next thing you know, the next seven, eight, or nine generations will see an increase in birth defects, genetic defects, respiratory illness, bone cancer, leucemia, etc, not to mention infant mortality, early death, etc, and incest and inbreeding are very bad for the human species and its gene pool.
The radical Right crackpots want no exception for incestuous rape, see this,
https://www.reddit.com/prochoice/comments/vjcsyy/tapper_presses_gop_governor_on_law_that_would/ Abortion bans and the cycle of poverty (including child poverty):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbkXjWS-ff0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_POBtKjksjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25JyC5Whhvc Banning abortion doesn't mean less abortions, it just means more unsafe abortions and a drastic increase in the maternal death rate, abortion bans kill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H23MuUy2eN4 Also, women who miscarry or have stillbirth are suddenyly being investigated for "murder" and there are women in jail for miscarriage.
Conservaturds want to punish women for having sex, and they want to use little girls who were raped by child predators as incubators and broodmares if it kills them, what they're doing is fucking shameful and they think that an embryo or fetus that's not viable outside the womb is more important than a fully formed woman or little girl who will die if she doesn't get a life-saving abortion. That's why they ban safe and legal abortion, and this is going to kill rape victims, especially widowed mothers of 3 or 6 who will die in childbirth leaving her other kids orphaned or 9 years old little girls who were raped by child predators will die in childbirth bleeding to death and experiencing damage to their organs and organ failure and if by some miracle that 9 years old little girl survive childbirth which is one chance in a billion at that age, she will be paralyzed in a wheelchair or a bed for the rest of her life with disjointed hips, a distorted spine and all kinds of other damage to her physical body and mental health. You can only ban SAFE abortions.
Countless women and little girls will die from unsafe and illegal abortions and countless women will go to jail for abortion and even miscarriage (women are already being jailed for miscarriage in the U.S.A). Imagine that, millions of women in jail for abortion or miscarriage because they are being denied the right to safe and legal abortion. The U.S.A already has the biggest prison population ever and the higest incarceration rate. So, millions of women and little girls in prison and juvenile detention facilities. Where are you gonna fucking put all the actual and dangerous criminals like the rapists, child molesters, murderers, bank robbers, domestic terrorists and so on and so forth. They'll be loose in the streets? This is fucking sheer madness. We need to take back women's rights to safe and legal abortion, and a women's right to choose.
Also, even married couples can be dirt poor so a woman being married and having a husband doesn't guarantee that she won't be poor and that her husband won't be poor. A lot of husbands are poor and struggle to provide for their families because they don't make enough money at their full time jobs, there's no living wage, and a lot of families live paycheck to paycheck. That's a fact. And Conservaturds like Marjorie Taylor Greene believes that women are the "weaker sex" and that women only exist to be wives and if a woman is not married, she's defective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CGkRzjqyn4 Then the nasty piece of garbage radical Right moron added:
(Quote) "Sooooo….you are saying that before Roe the people understood that the government was going to fund the raising of children? No, parents support babies. Expect to be held accountable for your actions, freebies and handouts are over." (Unquote)
To which I replied:
(Quote) "Yeah, you're right. No "freebies" and "handouts" for dirt poor families and families with children with special needs, but it's okay for the fucking rich and ultra wealthy to have handouts; like inherited wealth that they didn't earn, huge subsidies, private jets, and yachts. And it's okay for like 9 people in the whole wide world to own more wealth than the bottom 50 or 60 percent of the world combined. Amirite? Income inequality and the uber rich hoarding all the wealth is just fine, amirite?
Facts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IqUbcCxAo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCiBWMrmhuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4hkjlKdm9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BVduowVyR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdNfKntd2yA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzG_3q50DuPkv48aX2AbfV_JBBrjPPb8H You, radical Right idiots need to take your own fucking advice: facts don't care about your feelings, man.
Radical Right morons screams that they are against socialism, but they're only against socialism for the poor, they're totally fine with socialism for the rich. They're also against a guaranteed minimum for the dirt poor and families with children with special needs, and without a guaranteed minimum the individual and his or her family have no chance at equal opportunity and upward mobility.
Fuck you, man, just fuck you...
I hope you end up dirt poor and/or disabled through no choice or fault of your own and you get screwed over by the system that's rigged against the poor and disabled in favor of the rich and uber wealthy and that you get poverty-shamed and victim-blamed for things that you can't control and a situation in life that you didn't choose, then you'll know what it feels like. I hope you get a fucking taste of your own medicine. That should teach you a lesson for being a selfish, heartless sociopath with no empathy and no remorse who could care less what happens to the least of these, as Jesus calls them, unless it affects you and your loved ones personally. You're a sorry and pathetic excuse for a human being, man, fuck you.
They're telling it like it is:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/3/31/1374772/-Dear-Republicans-What-if-God-was-one-of-us https://www.huffpost.com/entry/to-love-not-convert_b_58fa5affe4b086ce58981090 Conservatives/Republicans are not true Christians, they shit all over the poor, sick, disabled, homeless, unemployed, children, anyone who has it bad and rough in life and they claim that poverty, disability and sickness are "moral failures" or "caused by sin" or some fucked up shit like that. They are not true Christians and everything they support and teach contradicts the teachings of Jesus Christ. They're broods of vipers and whitewashed tombs, as Jesus called them in the New Testament. They're "Christians" in name only. I say fuck you to all the Right-Wing theocrats, God gave us free will and the ability and right to make choices, no one has the right to take away another human beings' God-given free will and God-approved freedom of choice!
Fuck you, man, just fuck you, and fuck everyone in the Conservative party who is as heartless and inhumane as Trump and you.
Trump and Fox News hate the poor and only care about the rich:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzG_3q50DuPkTT98oTNB0qqweJk1HamQQ Michelle." (Unquote)
Here's 10 must watch videos about the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt2yA0etdyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlEN80TFDDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_tOTOE90cY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZJwGdCb-6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJcS44CzfuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_YxEK6hcl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj6zQ-nYcdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLEJVaRvxmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEFKvXt-Elg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrfxOaCtAys You can also check out my pro-choice playlist here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzG_3q50DuPnBRQCx3IGNWI5hSufAUMPU Red states that are banning abortion, they want to prevent women from traveling to a state that still have safe and legal abortion.
Those women and little girls who are pregnant and whose lives are andangered by pregancy will have to move to another country altogether. Women and little girls who need life saving abortions and also parents of trans kids because they want to state-sanctioned kidnap the kids of trans parents after investigating them for "child abuse" to punish the parents for accepting and loving their trans kids, not forcing them to live as the gender assigned to them at birth, and letting them have gender affirming care (they call that "grooming" and "child abuse"). A lot of trans kids took their own lives because of the radical Right ripping them away from their parents or threatening to take them away from their families. That's fucked up and very damaging.
They want to snatch the trans kids from the parents and have them adopt by cishetero Conservative foster care parents who will force them to live as the gender assigned to them at birth and tell them that they're defective for not being cis, this will lead more trans kids to developing mental health issues, self-harming and committing suicide. Parents who love their kids, including their kids who need life saving abortions and their trans kids should do the right thing and move to a different country, move out of the fascist United-States of America because the radical Right is taking measure to criminalize and punish travelling to a different state to get reproductive rights and abortion and protecting your trans kids from bad people who want to rip them away from their families should be one of your top priority.
And they won't stop at reproductive right, they also want to ban contraceptive/birth control, anal and oral sex (any and all sex act except for P.I.V, penis in vagina sex, not even married hetero couples will be legally allowed to do it in the butt or to give or receive a blowjob, people will go to jail for this), gay marriage, LGBT adoption, interracial marriage, worker rights, social programs that help the poor and disabled, and of course, they'll ban all movies, TV series, comics and video games that offends their poor "religious sensitivity" and "their poor delicate little feelings" because they're Right-Wing triggered snowflakes and they're hypocrites who are in love with censorship, cancel culture and book burnings.
He's right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_tOTOE90cY My government here in Canada, especially Trudeau is angry that the United-States treat their women like that and says that abortion bans are an attack on women and their reproductive rights, he's been talking about letting U.S. Americans come here to Canada to get life saving abortions for themselves or for their underaged daughters (little girls) who were raped by child predators and will die in childbirth if they can't terminate the pregnancy. I don't agree with everything Trudeau says or does, but I sure as hell agree with him, support him and respect him on this one, women and girls' reproductive rights is a priority and yes, he's right, abortion bans are an attack on global freedom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lT7n5EhMhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM3Qu87u4Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zNRQ6tFKUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm3EXxjjOBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eedIKkToZ_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK7gCw45byE Things are going from bad to worse in the United-States right now, the United-States is now a fascist country that has been taken over by a radical Right theocratic minority (the vast majority of Americans are pro-choice, but the supreme court sided with this radical Right theocratic minority). The radical Right there wants to ban abortion, contraceptives/birth control, bans on anal and oral sex (any sexual act other than P.I.V, penis in vagina sex), gay marriage, gay adoption, interracial marriage, etc, etc. They keep talking about all the things they want to ban and how they want to take away people's rights and they claim that these aren't rights and shouldn't be rights, when legal abortion and other such rights have been around for over 50 years in the U.S.A.
A lot of U.S. Americans moved to Canada when sociopath Trump became president of the United-States (see videos #15 through #21 in this playlist):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzG_3q50DuPkjv7rtFzW5nbLxYvzQJFFj And a lot of U.S. Americans will move to Canada now that the U.S is criminalizing women's reproductive rights and ripping trans kids away from their parents and their families. You'll be welcome here in Canada, you'll have your reproductive rights, you'll be able to get safe and legal abortions and our Canadian government won't take your trans kids from your for accepting and loving your trans kids as they are. Here in Canada we support a woman's right to choose and we support LGBT equality, as well as trans youth and their parents.
Artist: Björk Album:
Utopia Released: 24th of November, 2017 Listen:
Spotify Apple Music Björk Guðmundsdóttir For those of you who don't know, Ms Guðmundsdóttir, mononymously know as Björk, is an Icelandic art pop/experimental singer, songwriter, producer, DJ,
street fighter, actress and activist. Björk turned 52 two days before the release of
Utopia, her 9th album in her solo career that began 24 years earlier in 1993. In this time, Björk has released a further 2 soundtrack albums,
Drawing Restraint 9 (2005) and
SelmaSongs (2000) which she contributed to the film 'Dancer in the Dark' where she was the lead actress, which garnered her a "Best Actress" win at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and an Oscar nomination for "Best Original Song" ("I've Seen It All"), among other awards throughout her career (though never a Grammy). She has also released an iconic videography as well as an intimidating number of B-Sides (the singles section on Spotify looks like
/popheads when a major album is released at midnight) and mixes outside of her studio albums.
I could honestly publish further write-ups for the rest of Björk's acclaimed discography, but instead all I can do is recommend you listen to them yourself and hopefully enjoy them as much as I do. Here are a few of many highlights to start you off: -
Venus As a Boy -
Its Oh So Quiet -
I Miss You -
Sweet Sweet Intuition -
Jóga -
Sod Off -
All Is Full of Love - Original Mix -
Unison -
It's In Our Hands -
Where Is the Line -
The Dull Flame of Desire (ft. Antony/ANOHNI) -
Mutual Core -
Stonemilker Utopia If you Google "Utopia" like the guy in 'Creatures Features' googling love, you get the following definition:
An imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect
Bjork's definition of the cliche is obviously a bit more eccentric:
How we can live with nature and technology in the most optimistic way possible
In 2011, Björk released her 7th studio album,
Biophilia. The album was constructed using nature as an inspiration, such as the time sequence in opening track 'Moon' emulating the phases of the moon and was orchestrated using instruments she had made for the
recording of this album. Infamously, she released the album alongside a series of apps which are now used in Nordic curriculum to teach children about nature. The album and its corresponding era, apart from being her most underrated in a career of being undermined in my opinion, kind of acted like a mission statement for arguably her second career peak.
Before the recording and release of
Biophilia, Björk had received treatment for a vocal nodule. Simultaneously, she was getting more involved with
activism and environmental advocacy whilst Iceland was going through a financial crisis after the banks crashed. Regarding all this, in an interview around the time of the
Biophilia cycle, Björk said:
So, on so many different levels, there was this message that all the old systems don't work anymore, you gotta clear your table and start from scratch."
In hindsight, there is a some crushing cosmic irony here...
Fresh off the toes of
Vulnicura in 2015, Björk released her 9th studio album,
Utopia. Before the album could stand for itself musically, it was already going to be viewed in the context of
Vulnicura, her "break up album" from husband and father of her daughter, Michael Barney. The album was all about the dissolution of a relationship and has been critically acclaimed whilst also being described as her darkest album yet. Despite the ending of a relationship documented on the album, behind the album an artistic relationship was forging between Björk and Venezuelan electronic/experimental producer Arca. Arca went on to
tour with Björk during her Vulnicura Live tour whilst the pair started working on the follow up.
Our first introduction to the album arrived on the 13th of September, with a track titled "The Gate". The first thing of note when listening to the song was how much the track sounded exactly like what you'd expect a Björk and Arca song to sound like - rather than a song by Björk, with production by Arca like much of
Vulnicura - with their most definitive trademarks on display. The track itself was another mission statement with the instantly-iconic lyrics:
My healed chestwound, transformed into a gate
... creating a bridge from
Vulnicura which Björk described as hell to her as-yet-unnamed forthcoming album's utopia.
Then came the
video. Directed by Thomas Anderson Huang and lauded by Pitchfork as the best music video of 2017, Björk and her Gucci dress accepted love into her heart through the hole left by loss of love (and had sex with herself, obviously).
With the album a few weeks away, most of Bjork's fans were worrying (or eagerly anticipating) about another potential leak, after
Vulnicura leaked 2 months earlier than planned. And almost simultaneously, Björk released the second single "Blissing Me" as the album surfaced online. There is almost a poetic significance of this when listening to the lyrics of the blissed out,
Vespertine-esque track.
Sending each other MP3s, falling in love with a song
Björk hasn't really been a "streaming" artist. As I mentioned before, she said "all the old systems don't work anymore". Like any artist that has been active since before the turn of the millennium, the industry and the diffusion of art doesn't work like they used to. Most of her fans buy physical CDs and vinyls, so talking about sharing songs (MP3s) with someone is just a lovely and cordially insular sentiment - whether she means sending them a Spotify playlist, a link to a leaked Openload file or ripping songs using YouTube to MP3 and making a CD for someone (guilty!). On top of this, Björk also released a video for the
song, being exclusive to Facebook and Amazon Music the first week, and then a vertical version to Spotify - similar to Selena Gomez this year.
In the interim between
Vulnciura and
Utopia, Björk - through no intentional posturing of her own, but rather through some viral videos of her
DJ sets and
some interviews - came across as inspired and inspiring. Her personality spreading out from these moments, either as being a proclaimed fan of RuPaul's Drag Race, writing an unforgiving
post about her music and the Belchdel Test, as well as other extra-curriculars such as her MoMA exhibition and a long-running professional relationship with fashion designer James T. Merry. As well as this, Björk
called out, though not by name, controversial Danish director Lars von Trier for harassment - with whom she worked with on the 2002 film, Dancer in the Dark.
Then came the album cover. Shot by
Jesse Kanda, almost-inseparable Arca collaborator, with the notably-heart-shaped facepiece provided by James and the striking makeup styled by
Berlin drag queen Hungry. Unlike other artists, Björk tends to bring new creative people onto each album cycle, such as Arca as co-producer this time around and Hungry, whilst also frequently working with past collaborators such as Rabit and M/M Paris, who also made contributions to the album process. Unknowingly, this process of collaboration would be thematically present on
her forthcoming "Tinder album".
On the 23rd of November at 0:00:01, my ears were deafened by the twerping of Venezuelan birds before the electronics landed and Björk floated into the song, opening with "Just that kiss, was all there is... Legs a little open, once again", showing that Björk is ready to love again. The song samples an
early Arca track "Little Now A Lot", although completely blown up into euphoric clatters, as well as potentially having additional vocals from Alejandro 'Arca' Ghersi himself. The cascading sounds show an evolution in both Arca and Bjork's everchanging sonic pallet. From hearing the whole project, 'Blissing Me' and 'The Gate' seem like outliers in comparison to this track, which I would say is our first proper reveal of what Björk's utopia sounds like.
Follwing the aforementioned singles comes Bjork's first ever "title track". The song feels like a new beginning for Björk - as "The Gate" fades out we arrive in Björk and her flute band's utopia. The song's intro lasts a whole 1 minute and 29 seconds of flutes and bird songs before Björk begins singing "bird species never seen or heard before". The subsequent
music video contains alien bird-like creatures flying around the digitally-imposed utopian landscape, essentially showing exactly what Björk is singing without any abstract interpretation unlike the rest of her videography. This is her image of a utopia. She later chimes:
My instinct has been shouting at me for years,
Saying, "let's get out of here!"
This is more than likely a reference to her past relationship with Barney, and she follows these lyrics up with:
Huge toxic tumour bulging underneath the ground here
...stating that at one point she probably felt her relationship was a utopia, but there were always underlying factors killing it.
On
Vulnicura, the centrepiece of the 9-track album was a song called "Black Lake", a sprawling 10-minute diss track to her ex-husband. Björk has since said that she finds the song difficult to listen to and perform as she finds the
subject matter partly embarrassing,
Utopia's centerpiece is a direct response to the
Vulnicura track. Where "Black Lake" was about finding the ability to express your ugliest feelings, "Body Memory" is about finding everything else you once knew. Björk was in a relationship for 13 years, but rather than starting her journey for finding herself again before co-habiting life, Björk goes straight back to the beginning. The first verse of the song is about, like a lot of Utopia, nature. The verse begins with Björk painting a picture of Iceland, before having an outburst of green-envy at the simplicities of nature. On "Alarm Call" from her 1997 magnum-opus
Homogenic, Björk climbs to the top of these mountains and growls:
I'm no fucking Buddhist
But this is enlightenment
Perhaps Björk is
angry at the cliffs "showing off" because they can stand strong and tall as they always were, and her outburst will not have any reprecussions, whereas her marriage ended viscerally with legal battles, media coverage and a young daughter in the middle. I think most people can relate to going back to your origins when your life is shrouded in that "fucking mist", and this is were Björk's body memory starts to kick in again.
In Verse 2, Björk retreads
Vulnicura's
"Notget", which was about coming to terms with the death of a relationship. Where the lyrics and beats on "Notget" portrayed anxiety and panic - in "Body Memory", Björk revisits the grapple of trying to keep the relationship afloat out of the fear of the unknown that comes afterwards, before her body memory kicks in again and she surrends to the "unknown", and most importantly, the future. Björk has a history with the word "claustrophobic", and here the brass, not unlike
Volta, builds and animals start to appear, further expanding the landscape the song represents.
Verse 3 finds Björk back at her lovelonging present. She admits that the feeling of recreating and finding love again is as unfathomable as "threading an ocean through a needle". Having been with Barney since the year 2000, she feels like she doesn't know what she is doing, especially in a new society of singletons she was blind to before, where she is older and dating has changed with new rules and options (like Tinder). However, as an adult, her body memory returns and she goes with the flow of her "limbs and tongue". The instrumental here adds a choir as if she is ready to let other people into her life again.
Where verse 3 was about love, verse 4 is about sex! These are probably some of Bjork's most explicit lyrics, and her body memory doesn't seem to have told her to stop using beastiality as a metaphor. Nonetheless, Bjork's reintroduction to her single sex life has her comparing the bodies of her new partners in order to "redeem her body" by allowing her to do what she wants with it, using the imagery of "beastility" to embrace her wild side. The instrumental becomes more frantic here, with the choir now sounding more like
Biophilia than
Vespertine, as her love-life gets busier and more physical.
As I said in regards to verse 2, this song has a lot to do with coming to terms with the anxieties and adrenaline of the unknown. From 1986, Björk acted as the vocalist in Icelandic alternative rock band
The Sugarcubes, although she admitted that the style of music she performed with the band was not her style. When The Sugarcubes disbanded in 1992, Björk started her solo career by moving from Iceland to the
rave scenes of London and Manchester and the sounds of underground techno and acid house, which caught her ear and can be seen as the singularity of the electronic direction of the rest of her career. This is what
inspired the sound of her first official album
Debut in 1993, and inspired the themes of her sophomore, fan-favourite
Post in 1995. She sings:
I wasn't born urban...
Love lured me here
For the first time on
Utopia, she isn't singing about romantic love, but rather the love for beats and electronics. "As a music nerd, I just had to follow my heart. and my heart was those beats that were happening in England," she told TIME in a 2015 interview. It's interesting to compare this era of Bjork's career with her current career - before she was moving around to find her collaborators whereas nowadays her collaborative pallet resembles a scratch map, with technology allowing her to reach out to other artists more easily.
Into a stagnant state
My myths, my customs, ridiculed
The lyrics may allude to the idea that, in order to earn her career, Björk had everything stripped from her: her rural background, her customs and her comforts. Now she's back here again, with the security blanket of a long-term relationship gone and everything around her has changed. However, this time - several decades into her career, Björk doesn't have to prove herself to anyone, and her body memory has kicked in on a Brooklyn dance floor; she has found this part of herself again.
Verse 6 introduces a new theme which presides over the rest of the album: the patriarchy. Michael Barney famously sued Björk for custody over their daughter and this is likely one of the most upsetting things to happen in the deterioration of her relationship and the life she led under it. 8 minutes into the song however, Björk has gained and earned a fight-or-flight intuition from the landscape of electronics and animal cries before her, and most importantly, she plans to stand up for herself as a women - a message that lands fittingly into a year where women hit
critical mass and finally men are being held more accountable than ever. The instrumental, although the fluttering precussion continues, settles down as if she is back to reality, and that she'll have to "deal with shit soon enough."
The epic ends by transitioning quietly into the first of two Arca-less songs, "Creatures Features". The instrumentation is co-produced by new collaborator Sarah Hopkins, who provides pan flutes to the quietest song on
Utopia. The title may allude, again, to her animal instincts. This song further drives the most persistent themes on the album: music and looking for love. As I see it, Björk (whether intentionally or not) sings as if she is in
dialogue with herself. Her voice is more muted than usual and presents itself as very inward. Personally, I relate a lot to the lyrics of this song as well as the succeeding song, "Courtship". Björk was likely referring to this song in her press circuit when she called her 9th studio album her "Tinder record". The song starts with the lyrics:
He turned me down, I then downturned another
Who then downturned her
The paralysing juice of rejection
Björk enters into a new dating game in a more skeptic social climate. Nowadays, love exists in data pockets and geocoding and courtship is initiated through little more than few seconds of physical attraction. Björk further explores the skepticism through the lyrics, such as:
Will we stop seeing what unites us
But only what differs
Björk could be saying that courtship is rather make-or-break when you move past physical attributes and onto more intangible aspects of a person, and as a divorcee these thoughts are probably always at the front of Björk's mind. This ideas leads
nicely into "Losss".
Having slightly left Arca behind since "Body Memory", the
signature Arca sound comes crashing back on the most abrasive song of the record. At this point on the album, Björk has accepted that the wound from
Vulnicura will always sting a little and in finding new love, she accepts the pain she could go through again in order to feel "full satisfaction". Of all of the feelings Björk has explored and rediscovered, this track puts all of it in context of her most devasting loss and I believe is the most introspective song on the album. In a macro sense, Björk belongs to a group of female performers who present themselves as vulnerable and hard-as-nails at the same time. Here, Björk softens her edges contrapuntally to the onslaught of Arca beats and becomes vulnerable to fulfill her desires. The song then fucking goes off with the closest thing Björk will probably have to a drop this side of
Homogenic, with wobbling voices as if her utopia is sending out transmissions for her return.
The hammering of beats doesn't stop there, as Björk fires shots at ex-husband Matthew Barney again, but this time more direct and clear on "Sue Me". Probably the closest Björk has come to a chorus in years, she repeatedly yells "sue me, sue me all you want" becoming more agitated but self-assured as the song progresses. Barney sued Björk as he believed she was spending too much time with their daughter, Ísadóra. Björk has released songs about her daughter in the past, for example, one of my favourite Björk songs "I See Who You Are" (especially the Arca-assisted
Vulnicura-era
live version) from 2008's
Volta. Where she was affectionate and maternally proud on that track, Björk shows the defensive side of her motherhood here. Almost directly referencing "
Quicksand", the closing track on
Vulnicura, Björk widens her aim and blames the patriarchy for the way Barney is handling their family drama, using their daughter as either a prize or collateral damage.
From this point on in the album, Björk asks more of her utopia, and not just for herself but all women in general. Having blown off some steam in the past few tracks, for the first time on the album Björk starts to look forwards into the future, having already looked at her past. At this epoch in Bjork's life, she has earned the right (and integrity) to impart some wisdom on the younger generations beneath her in which she has a surprising number of fans. On "Tabula Rasa", Björk The Sage uses her pain and experiences to inform those who have a "clean slate", telling them that they have:
A clean plate: not repeating the fuck ups of the fathers
I have seen a few reviews and opinions online regarding these lyrics, men claiming that this sounds like a lecture they don't deserve. Personally, in a year where dictionary.com named "complicit" the word of the year, I think these men aren't listening. Regardless, Björk continues to talk to the generations, especially women, beneath her - telling them:
To rise and not just take it lying down
This year gave us the Women's March and the #MeToo movement, so these lyrics couldn't have come at a better time. And as mentioned before, she also called out von Trier as trying to belittle her ("[he] created for his team an impressive net of illusion when I was framed as the difficult one") and, well, dismissed the claim that she was difficult onset and ate a blouse ("this matches beautifully the Weinstein methods and bullying. I have never eaten a shirt. Not sure that is even possible"). She then finishes the song by reminding her audience that "you are strong". Sonically, this song takes a more welcoming approach and allows her to be heard, whereas on "Losss" and "Sue Me", the instrumental had Björk shouting to be heard.
"Claimstaker" sounds as if Björk has found her utopia and she is setting up camp. With lyrics alluding to
Debut's
"The Anchor Song", Björk goes back to nature and calls it her home, and mentions the cliffs she had disdain for in "Body Memory". In terms of literal sounds, the vocal layers throughout and on the outro recall her 2004 album,
Medúlla - which could be seen as her first extreme turn into experimentation from which she will likely never return.
Björk leads her troop of flute players through a beautiful instrumental track named "Paradisia", her second instrumental track of her career following "Frosti" from
Vespertine (2001) - which is notably a close sonic sister to
Utopia, before transitioning into "Saint" (I tend not to notice when "Paradisia" has ended and "Saint" has begun when I listen to the album in the car). At first I had no idea what she was singing about and I didn't care because the climaxing flutes in this are like nothing I've ever heard before. Lyrically, the song is about music anthropomorphised as a woman, and its healing abilities - whilst addressing a number of people who might need some of that; from refugees to widows. Songwriters in general tend to paint ideas in an abstract sense, talking about spirituality and using metaphors, and Björk is one of them. However, a thing I enjoyed about this album is, despite the fact the sound of the album is like a wacky, woodwind world, the lyrics are more down to earth than ever. Her uses of locations (hospitals, Brooklyn, record stores), colloquialisms (singletons) and items (thermal blankets) grounds her to a relatable level.
The final track on the album is ceremoniously titled "Future Forever". Despite mentioning in the run-up to the release of
Utopia that it is important that we have a "manifesto, an alternative" in "this time of Trump", the lyrics don't explicitly consider the macro-environment of the real world outside of her personal connections to nature and cities and the patriarchy. The first lyrics of the song...
Imagine a future and be in it
...are the closest we are going to get - but what a lovely message. In 2017, the existence of many minorities was seen as a threat or inconvenience to those in power. 800.000 Dreamers had their citizenship jeopardised as the US government rescinded DACA, families were torn apart by Trump's travel ban. Even outside of the US, gay marriage and abortions are still illegal in Northern Ireland despite these being legal in the rest of the UK (had to shout out my country!), it's illegal to be gay in 72 countries, 15 million girls became child brides this year... you get the idea. Björk telling everyone that she'd invite to her utopia that they matter, matters.
Hold fort for love forever
Back to the major themes on the album, Björk reminds everyone that, despite all she has been through, that love is still possible. She then sings...
Trust your head around
This is a reference to the last track on
Homogenic (and unofficially the first song on
Vespertine), "All Is Full of Love". Björk described the song at the time as "the birds coming out after the thunderstorm" which is fitting considering the inclusion of birdsong on this album and the "thunderstorm" that could be seen as
Vulnicura. It is also worth noting that
Vespertine was written about her newfound love and future husband Matthew Barney. "Future Forever" ends the illusion of a utopia, but the dream still continues even after the album has concluded.
As I mentioned before, Björk took a dive into experimental/electronic music in 2004 with
Medúlla, although she was never-not left of centre even before then. I feel a problem with artists being described as "avant-garde" is that everyone has their own ideas for what this actually means, which is straight up contradictory. Many fans want Björk to return to
Post-era Björk, other fans stopped playing attention after Vespertine and music critics criticise her lack of conventional melodies or her subject matters (nature mostly). It is the responsibility of the artists to
push culture forward, not the music blogs and critics who get to write about it. Although Björk isn't exempt from criticism, it's hypocritical for non-musicians (even me) to evaluate how avant-garde a project is when it can be moving forward in any number of different directions - it's best we sit back and let the artists show us what art can be, then figure out how to interact with it. Therefore...
The reason this album is my Album of the Year is that it's themes completely sum up 2017 for me whilst sounding absolutely nothing like anything else I have heard this year (or ever). My conquests as a "singleton" and considering myself as a "music nerd" make me relate to a lot of the album personally, but outside of this the album itself is a masterclass in collaboration and creating worlds. Credit to a 52 year old for being able to write unwithheld about love and sex and pain and motherhood, and still somehow be impacting and relatable to a 21 year old and everyone else in between or otherwise. It is also reassuring that a female artist who is so many decades into her career can continue to deliver a consistently spectacular output and carve out a whole lane for herself to the point that "Björkian" is a recognisable adjective and she can still produce art alongside the next generation of artists she inspired years behind her, such as Kelela and Grimes - the keyword being "alongside". In
Utopia, under Bjork's "matriarchal dome", everybody gets to be in it.
Favourite lyrics: Blissing Me Is this excess texting a blessing?
Two music nerds obsessing
Cliffhanger like suspension
My longing has formed its own skeleton
The Gate My healed chestwound, transformed into a gate
Body Memory Half of the damn review was about that one song so honestly - the whole damn thing
Features Creatures When I hear someone with same accent as yours Asking for directions with the same beard as yours I literally think I am five minutes away from love
Losss Loss of love, we all have suffered
How we make up for it defines who we are
Sue Me He took it from his father
Who took it from his father
Who took it from his father
Let's break this curse
Tabula Rasa My deepest wish
Is that you're immersed in grace and dignity
But you will have to deal with shit soon enough
Saint She reaches out to orphans and refugees
Embraces them with thermal blankets
I've seen her offer empathy to widows
She attends funerals of strangers
Future Forever Imagine a future and be in it
Thank you for reading my thoughts on this album, I put more effort into this than some of my work at uni lol.
Points for Discussion: - What were your favourite lyrics from the album?
- What were your favourite "moments" on the album? Mine being the ~drop on "Losss" and a lot of her delivery, such as "sending each other these songs" while the instrumental momentarily buries her on "Blissing Me".
- What are your experiences with the album?
- When did you get into Björk, and how do you think this affected your experience with the album?
- How do you feel about Arca as a collaborator? How do you feel about his billing on the album (both on the physicals and on streaming)?
- What (inevitable) other iterations of the album or album tracks would you like to hear? We already have a different version of "Blissing Me" with serpentwithfeet and a 'harp version', is there anyone you would like her to work with in remixing tracks?