FEATURE:
Come to Me
Celebrating Björk’s Debut at Thirty
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IT is sometimes the case…
IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins
that a classic and brilliant debut can be unappreciated by some media sources. That is the case with Björk’s Debut. Released on 5th July, 1993, there were some who were a bit miffed. Rolling Stone were among those who were a little cold and unkind. Technically, Debut was not the actual debut from Björk – as she released an eponymous album in 1977. Released just over as year after her third and final album with The Sugacubes, Björk went out on her own. With a vocal style and delivery unlike anyone in music, you could understand why some would require more time to fully grasp and appreciate what she was putting out there. The Icelandic artist was a breath of fresh air in 1993! Listen to her current album, 2022’s Fossora, and she is still innovating and releasing such beautiful and unique sounds. I have a very special love for 1993’s Debut. If some say she topped that with 1995’s Post or 1997’s Homogenic, I still think that she was at her best in 1993. Debut is a remarkable album that will turn thirty on 5th July. I am going to get to some reviews for Debut. There have been articles written that celebrate and spotlight a classic album from one of music’s most inspiring and special artists. Produced with Nellee Hooper, their partnership is incredible! The production is excellent (from both), and the songs they co-write are among the highlights. I actually think the Björk solo-writes, Venus as a Boy and Come to Me, are among the very best things on the album. Only one song is a cover, Like Someone in Love. But Björk very much makes the 1944 song her own!
I am going to start out with some features that revisit the spectacular Debut. Released on the One Little Indian and Elektra labels, the album reached three in the U.K. Since then, Debut has been named among the best albums of all time. The reason Debut is so enduring and celebrated is because of its freshness and unique edges. The idiosyncratic nature of the songs and soundscapes, coupled with Björk’s wonderful and hugely immersive delivery, means the album has stayed relevant. There was the assumption that confessional and truly revealing music had to be acoustic or ballad-led. The electricity and atmospheres of Debut’s songs show that this wasn’t the case. As such, artists like Lady Gaga and Robyn draw inspiration from Björk’s ‘debut’ album (it sort of is and isn’t, but I’ll just say that the title is semi-ironic). Classic Pop delved inside the songs for a feature in 2017. I love the sequencing of Debut. Human Behaviour is the perfect introduction. Like walking into the woods at naught (illustrated by Michel Gondry’s video for the song), you get a real sense of what the album is about. Venus as a Boy is the third track, with equal amount of intrigue and strange dynamics. Big Time Sensuality, perhaps the most rousing and euphoric song, is in the middle. I like how there are more stripped songs such as There’s More to Life Than This (recorded in the Milk Bar Toilets no less!). It is such a varied and fascinating offering from an artist who, still in her twenties, was producing such advanced and accomplished music! I want to bring in a 2013 feature from The Guardian. They celebrated twenty years of an album that started the solo career of one of the great innovators and true originals:
“Right before Nirvana's In Utero killed grunge and Blur kickstarted Britpop with Parklife, Björk's Debut – 20 years old today – sounded like nothing else. Featuring elements of techno, trip-hop, jazz and pop, and influenced by Bollywood soundtracks and the buzz of London nightlife, it's an album fuelled by the sheer force of the Icelandic artist's personality. Debut reconstructed pop music and like any album that shakes up the status quo, not everyone was initially sold: The album's thirst for experimentation came at a time when music was primarily being made by men with guitars, Rolling Stone magazine bemoaning the fact that the former Sugarcubes frontwoman had ditched rock'n'roll in favour of something "painfully eclectic", and derided Nellee Hooper's production for sabotaging "a ferociously iconoclastic talent with a phalanx of cheap electronic gimmickry."
Perhaps aware of the musical climate Debut was being released into, Björk's label One Little Indian estimated that the album would sell around 40,000 copies, based on a rough approximation of the Sugarcubes' worldwide fan base. Just three months later, and having peaked in the UK at No 3, it had sold over 600,000 and Björk was well on her way to becoming one of the world's most experimental and thrillingly batshit new pop stars. Despite a gestation of several years and featuring a number of different collaborators, Debut makes sense of all of its disparate elements and influences, be it the almost comically lush strings (arranged by Talvin Singh) on Venus As A Boy, or the drunk-sounding brass interludes that pepper Aeroplane, courtesy of jazz saxophonist Oliver Lake.
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Björk's vision for Debut started early, with a handful of the songs written while performing in various bands in Iceland. Aware that none of them really suited early punk bands Spit and Snot or KUKL, let alone the Sugarcubes, Björk eventually decamped to London to work on the album properly, initially sketching demos with 808 State's Graham Massey. What the album needed, however, was a focus – Björk's enthusiasm for all genres had led to her toying with the idea of hiring several producers. She was then introduced by Domininc Thrupp, her boyfriend at the time, to Nellee Hooper, who had recently worked with the likes of Sinead O'Connor and Soul II Soul. Björk was initially cautious of Hooper, telling The Face in 1993 that he was "too 'good taste'", until they eventually bonded over their similar approach to making music.
It's this partnership, as well as Björk's relationship with Thrupp, that infuses Debut with a sense of heightened emotion; a wide-eyed naivety and wonder caught in a specific moment. Venus As A Boy, for example, sounds like it's being sung through a lascivious grin ("his wicked sense of humour, suggests exciting sex", indeed), while the single Human Behaviour sets its gaze on the human race almost from the position of an external spectator, which is in some ways how it felt to be Björk at the time. In perhaps the album's most joyous moment, Big Time Sensuality, a techno-tinged celebration of living each moment to the full, Björk's voice glides through the musical scale as she sings: "I don't know my future after this weekend, and I don't want to." By the song's end, she's grunting and cooing wordless ad-libs in a paroxysm of unbridled joy.
If the point of a debut album is to set out an artist's stall and to lay the foundations for what's to come then Debut does this better than any album in recent memory. It's an album whose influence is still felt any time electronic instrumentation is fused with folk or jazz, or whenever a new female singer is described as "kooky" or "refreshing". While pop in 2013 looks back to the early 90s for inspiration, Björk's ability on Debut to innovate by using disparate genres without losing a sense of her own identity should be the blueprint for any new artist with desires to break the mould”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Björk shot for The Face in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Glen Luchford
I know there will be a load of new features ahead of the thirtieth anniversary for Debut. On 5th July, it will be three decades since the album came into our lives. I don’t think it has aged or lost any of its genius. Albumism were among those who wrote a retrospective about Debut on its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2018. All this looking back makes me wonder whether there will be a special anniversary edition of Debut. Surely there are some demos and alternate takes which would give us more context and insight into this remarkable album. With some bigger club numbers nestling alongside intimate and more widescreen and outdoor songs (in the sense they take us into the streets and into nature, rather than the compact euphoria of the dancefloor), this is an album that provides new treats each time you pass through it:
“The aforementioned and brilliant “Human Behavior” opens the album and features a tympani sampled from an Antonio Carlos Jobim song. It’s a smart and quirky observation of us very strange humans as seen through the eyes of an animal. The song was written in 1988 while Björk was still a member of The Sugarcubes. In an interview with David Hemingway, she once explained, “I wrote the melody for "Human Behaviour" as a kid. A lot of the melodies on Debut I wrote as a teenager and put aside because I was in punk bands and they weren't punk. The lyric is almost like a child's point of view and the video that I did with Michel Gondry was based on childhood memories.”
“If you ever get close to a human / And human behavior / Be ready, be ready to get confused / There's definitely, definitely, definitely no logic / To human behavior / But yet so, yet so irresistible.”
The next track, which is a favorite of mine, “Crying” is fascinating because behind the infectious and bouncy music is a tale describing feelings of alienation living in a big city. The way in which the piano and bass is used in the song is an effective and respectful nod to the House Music that was prevalent in the club scene in the states.
Another highlight is “There’s More To Life Than This,” an homage to dance clubs that was actually recorded in the bathrooms of London’s Milk Bar. The slick production gives the impression that Björk is gleefully going back and forth from the dancefloor to the bathroom.
“Like Someone In Love” gives us a peek into Björk’s love of jazz standards and particularly Chet Baker that would reveal itself even further on her future albums. It provides a nice break before we hop back on the dancefloor for “Big Time Sensuality” and “One Day,” which Björk said was inspired by “the records that DJs play at seven o’clock in the morning when they’re playing for themselves rather than clubbers.” “Aeroplane,” “Come To Me” and “Violently Happy” keep us moving until we reach the end of the album, which is “The Anchor Song,” an ode to her native Iceland. It’s the only song on the LP produced by Björk and it is a fitting send off for the listener.
At the time of its release, Debut was a welcome respite from the endless assembly line of Nirvana and Pearl Jam clones forced down our throats by unimaginative radio programmers and lazy record executives. It was representative of everything the music industry was not: fun and experimental. It made you dance even when you thought you didn’t feel like dancing.
The global critical reception was mostly positive, with American critics being mostly harsh. The most ridiculous review came from Michele Romero of Entertainment Weekly who wrote, "On a few songs, [Björk's] breathy mewl is a pleasant contrast to the mechanical drone of Sugarcube-like techno-tunes. But most of Debut sounds annoyingly like the monotonous plinking of a deranged music box. Wind it up if you like—eventually it will stop.” Clearly Michele did not get it and possibly may have never danced a day in her life”.
I think the real gem on the album is One Day. It is the song that surprised me most when I first heard it – though I cannot put into words why. Like Someone in Love is a gorgeous reading of an older track. Play Dead – one of those great ‘lost’ Bond themes that was never in contention but should have been (see also Kylie Minogue’s Confide in Me) – was on the reissued edition of Debut. The final track on the original release is the wonderful and oddly entrancing The Anchor Song. One might think that, at a time when nothing like Björk existed, the press would be sniffy and snobs. They might take shots at the eccentricity and unconventional music. Many knew Björk from The Sugarcubes, so Debut did not take them by surprise. What might have been surprising is how successfully Björk transitioned to working as a solo artist; surpassing anything by her former band by a mile! NME gave their take on Björk’s Debut back in 2000:
“Five years on and 'Birthday' still sounds ridiculously stark and extraordinary because of it. But, then, as you found yourself consumed by its strange beauty, in walked Einar The Irritant barking a bizarre psycho-babble rap, bringing even the most goo-goo eyed back down to earth with an ugly bump.
Is should, therefore, come as some relief to find Bjork left to journey alone without the ideas of a group cluttering up the landscape. The surprise, though, is that she has fashioned an album as elaborate, unique and fresh as 'Debut'. It's hard not to bellyflop straight into the deep end, cry, "Album of the year, end of story", and float off on a sea of hyperbole. 'Debut' takes you to strange, uncharted places. No group could make an album like this - too many ears to please. But, although this is very much Bjork's album (you get the impression that these are songs she's carried in her mind, like secrets, for years), the contribution of producer Nellee Hooper is vital. The man behind Soul II Soul's symphonies, he has managed to throw manifold ideas into this exotic soup without making it sound cluttered and overdone
With his involvement and Bjork's previous solo dalliance with 808 State it would be easy to assume she's become a fully fledged house diva. Not so; 'Debut' may walk the same side of the street but it wanders into jazz, film soundtracks, pop too. Heck, there's even a couple of songs Babs Streisand wouldn't blink at covering. And then there's the just plain weird (natch).
The first three tracks are built from hypnotic loops. On 'Human Behaviour' a swampy kettle drum jazz vibe circles around Bjork's rasping larynx, trying to find a melody but eventually settling for the search. 'Crying' swims on a niggling piano riff, while the wonderful 'Venus As A Boy' creates an Arabic mantra. Here, as on most of the album, the tonsil gymnastics are kept to a minimum, but it's still a vastly disarming sound: a voice only a lifetime of Marlboro abuse or a guttural foreign language where people have names like Gudmundsdottir could create.
There's a bonkers part in 'There's More To Life Than This', though, where she sounds positively possessed. Allegedly recorded live in the Milk Bar toilets, a muffled house beat chunders away somewhere in the distance amid giggling chatter, then a door is closed and Bjork is left to sing alone about nicking boats and sneaking off into the night. This woman is quite patently barmy.
But even this is ill preparation for 'Like Someone In Love'. Accompanied only by 80-year-old harpist Corki Hale, it's the kind of tearful ballad you'd expect to find in the sad interlude of some crackly old black and white Judy Garland film. More fun, madness and surprise follows - the pulsating grind of 'Big Time Sensuality' and 'Violently Happy' plus the sweet unearthly breeze of 'One Day' which ripples along to baby gurgles and ambient fizzes.
This is an album that believes music can be magical and special. It will either puzzle you or pull you into its spell. And if you fall into the latter category, 'Debut' will make every other record you own seem flat, lifeless and dull by comparison.
9/10”.
Dare to immerse yourself in the jungle and mystique that comes with Aeroplane. Be helplessly swept into the delirium of Big Time Sensuality. Marvel at the seeming contradictions and polemics in the title for Violently Happy – and how long the song resounds in the brain even after one spin! The majestic, mysterious, beautiful, wild, original and peerless Debut is thirty on 5th July. With so many sounds, moods and scenes presented throughout this extraordinary debut album, people will be discovering new layers and pleasures in Björk’s masterpiece for years more. Some say the 1995 follow-up, Post, is superior, but you cannot fault the confidence, conviction and sheer quality that comes through in Debut. It is among my favourite albums ever, because I struggle to put into words why it means so much. As it turns thirty soon, I wanted to celebrate an album that I hope gets a reissue or new treatment – so that it encourages those new to it to go and buy it. Maybe get the videos remastered in HD (as you can see, they are a little bit hit and miss in terms of visual quality and clarity!). When Björk released Debut on 5th July, 1993, it is not an exaggeration to say that she created beautiful and vibrant shockwaves that…
STILL reverberate to this very day.