![]() We were just like, “Oh my God, we’ve earned the lightness!” When I was writing Utopia and still singing the Vulnicura songs, I felt like I was having an affair from my own grief. When we did the last gig, me and Alejandro went in the dressing room and had a few glasses of champagne. We did Carnegie Hall, and the whole room was sobbing. When we did the concerts, that became even more exaggerated. The narrative on Vulnicura was so heavy, the story was so important and prominent, and the instruments and beats served that story. It’s almost like an optimist rebellion against the normal narrative melody. ![]() The melody’s like a constellation in the sky. The first song I wrote on this album, the opening song, “Arisen My Senses,” is the opposite. Looking back now, the melodies on Vulnicura are very sad, and there’s short spaces between the notes. I started listening to completely different music, very euphoric, hyper, free music. You just lift off like an air balloon and float up to the sky. It was really exciting to drop all those rocks off and suddenly be really free. All the sounds are heavy-the beats are like rocks. Writing with Ghersi, she could let her guard down and simply play, an approach that brought bright, bubbling synths, an Icelandic flute ensemble, and the sounds of birds into the album’s mix. ![]() Björk describes their intergenerational creative union as a rare bond. It’s also the product of a fruitful mentorship Ghersi is 28 and Björk, who has been recording music since she was 11, is about to turn 52. The result of a collaborative writing process with Venezuelan producer Alejandro Ghersi, aka Arca (who co-produced most of the songs on Vulnicura), Utopia often sounds like a conversation between two brilliant musical minds communicating on their own telepathic wavelength. But it can also be rejuvenating, and Utopia is saturated with a honeymoon glow, even as it occasionally calls back to darker moments from across Björk’s career. Of course, opening yourself up to people you might not trust yet can be terrifying. For her, Tinder is shorthand for a heightened emotional space, the kind where sparks seem to flow in all directions, and connections with new people come readily. The joy and excitement that courses through Utopia recently led Björk to jokingly dub it her “Tinder album,” though, as she notes during a phone conversation from her home in Reykjavik, she’s never actually used the dating app.
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