Earlier this week, Björk dropped her eighth studio album, Vulnicura, seemingly out of nowhere, which may or may not have been an effort to tackle leaks and rumors. One day after the surprise drop, Pitchfork published an in-depth sit-down between Pitchfork Review Editor-in-Chief Jessica Hopper and Björk that was one of her most revealing (and tear-inducing) interviews yet.
Perhaps the most important part of the interview, which will run in full in the next edition of The Pitchfork Review, is Björk's analysis of how she's viewed in the industry as a woman. When asked about early rumors that Arca was the sole producer on her album, (He's since clarified that he co-produced on her album) she spoke on how she's never received the credit she deserves for production on her albums. Besides her immaculate advice to young women, she compares how her artistic control is viewed in comparison to male artists, like Kanye West, who Arca produced for on Yeezus.
Here are her quotes in full:
Pitchfork: The world has a difficult time with the female auteur.
B: I have nothing against Kanye West. Help me with this—I’m not dissing him—this is about how people talk about him. With the last album he did, he got all the best beatmakers on the planet at the time to make beats for him. A lot of the time, he wasn’t even there. Yet no one would question his authorship for a second. If whatever I’m saying to you now helps women, I’m up for saying it. For example, I did 80% of the beats on Vespertine and it took me three years to work on that album, because it was all microbeats—it was like doing a huge embroidery piece. Matmos came in the last two weeks and added percussion on top of the songs, but they didn’t do any of the main parts, and they are credited everywhere as having done the whole album. [Matmos’] Drew [Daniel] is a close friend of mine, and in every single interview he did, he corrected it. And they don’t even listen to him. It really is strange.
Pitchfork: How does it make you feel when this happens now?
B: I have to say—I got a feeling I am going to win in the long run, but I want to be part of the zeitgeist, too. I want to support young girls who are in their 20s now and tell them: You’re not just imagining things. It’s tough. Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times. Girls now are also faced with different problems. I’ve been guilty of one thing: After being the only girl in bands for 10 years, I learned—the hard way—that if I was going to get my ideas through, I was going to have to pretend that they—men—had the ideas. I became really good at this and I don’t even notice it myself. I don’t really have an ego. I’m not that bothered. I just want the whole thing to be good. And I’m not saying one bad thing about the guys who were with me in the bands, because they’re all amazing and creative, and they’re doing incredible things now. But I come from a generation where that was the only way to get things done. So I have to play stupid and just do everything with five times the amount of energy, and then it will come through.
The whole interview is available over on Pitchfork now and her new album is available on iTunes worldwide.
