albums of the decade - 28. Bjork - Vespertine

28. Bjork - Vespertine (2001)

Lifted from the blog Trouserpress: Bjork wrote to the newspaper I interned at - The Reykjavik Grapevine - during the summer of 2008 while I was there on an internship to comment on sexism in modern music and we responded. The coverage was just as brilliant as her greatest and incredibly textured album 'Vesperine':

Bjork:

"It could be that this is some degree of sexism. m.i.a. had to deal with this with the respected website pitchfork.com where they assumed that diplo had produced all of her kala album without reading any credit list or nothing , it just had to be, it couldn’t have been m.i.a. herself! 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"

Trouserpress:

Pitchfork responded. So did Valgeir, and blogger after blogger. But is it all just a storm in a soundboard? Sveinn Birkir Björnsson, the editor of The Reykjavík Grapevine, seems to think so. The latest issue runs the following response alongside Björk’s original letter:

Grapevine:

Dear Björk,

After carefully reviewing past issues of the Grapevine, I have reached the conclusion that you are referring to a list in the back pages of Issue 10, where DJ B Ruff is asked to name his favorite albums. At number three, he names your album Vespertine and his full answer goes: “A little heavy but it’s really impressive how well Björk’s voice mingles with Valgeir Sigurðsson’s instrumentals. My favourite Björk album.”

Seeing as this is a direct quote to DJ B Ruff, we have a hard time correcting him, without directly misquoting him. It is our policy to rather let people be wrong than misquoted.

The Grapevine has never claimed that Valgeir Sigurðsson was directly involved in the creative process of your album. In fact we have in the past published interviews with Valgeir where he directly refutes this.

But I do hope that this input from you will finally correct what seems to be a common misconception.

Editor

It’s a bit embarrassing to criticise people for not doing their research properly and then be caught out doing the same. But regardless of whether she’s right or wrong on the specifics, Björk has a point. And that’s just one reason why Wears The Trousers exists, and one more reason to love her.

(as if we needed another…)