Celebrating Björk’s 60th Birthday

She turns sixty and we celebrate not only her longevity but her fearless artistry. From her early days as a teenage prodigy in Iceland to becoming one of the most influential musicians of the last four decades, Björk has consistently defied convention. She has created art traversing pop, electronic, classical, and experimental music, making her a singular figure in global culture. But also, she has transformed live performance, visual storytelling, and fashion into extensions of her art. Her iconic videos and stage presentations have become cultural touchstones, while her collaborations with visual artists, designers, and technologists continually push the boundaries of what music can be. She embodies the fusion of sound, visual art, and activism.

“I’ve learned that the deepest pain can be transformed into the most powerful music,” she said in a 2015 interview with Pitchfork about Vulnicura, reflecting on heartbreak and the album’s emotional intensity. Anyone who has related to Björk’s work has ever felt less isolated, challenged and hopeful, all at the same time. She’s kind of the cool guardian angel of pop music and the creator of the most intriguing musical universes. 

As we honour her sixtieth birthday, we look back on the moments, works, and collaborations that define her enduring legacy, celebrating the eclectic, transformative, and boundary-breaking career of one of music’s most singular figures.

Homogenic is the moment Björk detonated her full artistic identity. Torn between Iceland’s volcanic vastness and 90s London’s chaos, she fused violent electronic beats with sweeping strings to create a new cinematic language for pop. Tracks like Jóga and Bachelorette feel tectonic, emotional earthquakes rendered in orchestral colour. The album was brutal, unified, and world-building, setting a new benchmark for avant-pop. With Homogenic, Björk stopped being a rising star and became a cultural architect whose influence resonates through every ambitious pop auteur that followed. The cultural impact of this album is still developing, that’s how visionary the artist’s work is.

Debut was Björk stepping into her own spotlight after the Sugarcubes, and doing it with dazzling, genre-shattering confidence. Blending house, jazz, trip-hop, world music, and pure curiosity, the album introduced her as a singular force in 90s pop. Its emotional playfulness and club-infused sophistication turned her into an international phenomenon almost overnight. Debut bridged underground London nightlife with mainstream audiences, proving that experimental pop could be both intimate and global. And set an important issue, all along present in the artist’s career: Björk does contribute to the acknowledgment of unknown cultures with respect, especially inclined to the original histories of each, and their ecosystems. Violently Happy is the perfect example of what a trendsetter she has always been — noting it was made in 1994.

Björk turned the music video into a laboratory for art, technology, and imagination. Collaborating with Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Nick Knight, Chris Cunningham, and other visual revolutionaries, she created iconic pieces like Human Behaviour, Pagan Poetry, and the robot-love masterpiece All Is Full of Love. These weren’t promotional clips; they were short films that blurred surrealism, futurism, vulnerability, and fashion. Björk used the medium to build worlds, not just visuals, influencing generations of filmmakers, designers, and pop artists. The Gate remains one of her most compelling artistic efforts, an ode to love in the purest way contextualised in another possibility of a world that uses tech cleverly.

The Swan dress wasn’t a gimmick; it was a cultural shockwave. Björk walked into Hollywood’s most self-serious ceremony wearing a creature of whimsy, humour, and defiance, laying eggs on the red carpet and challenging every expectation of ‘acceptable’ female celebrity aesthetics. People mocked it at first, but the dress became a symbol of artistic autonomy and anti-conformist glamour. Today, it stands as one of fashion’s most iconic red carpet moments, proving Björk’s unmatched ability to turn spectacle into rebellion. Not only has she shown the world of fashion designers that there were different worldwide, but she has successfully inserted a very specific sense of humour into it 

With Vespertine, Björk staged a soft revolution. In an era obsessed with pop spectacle, she whispered instead of shouted, weaving music boxes, harps, choirs, and microbeats into a luminous interior world. The album captures the sensual magic of domestic spaces: the hush of winter, the electricity of solitude, the glow of private desire. Vespertine predicted ASMR, ambient pop, and the confessional electronica that would define the 2010s. It is one of her most delicate and most radical creations, in which she showed how rebellion lives also in tenderness. Inez and Vinoodh took the original black and white photograph of Björk in the infamous Marjan Pejoski swan dress, and M/M (Paris) added illustrations, including a swan and the album title, to the image, for the album cover, which is another thing Björk has been known for; her amazing vision to capture disruptive images to represent her work.

Björk’s live shows feel less like concerts and more like rituals. From the volcanic fury of the Homogenic string ensemble to the crystalline Vespertine choir, from the custom instruments of Biophilia to the cathedral-like spectacle of Cornucopia, she transforms stages into ecosystems. Her shows integrate technology, choreography, couture, and narrative into multisensory experiences. Every artist selling ‘immersive tours’ today is borrowing from the innovations Björk established decades earlier.

The Icelandic artist treats global sound traditions with reverence and curiosity. From flamenco collaborations with Spanish artist Raimundo Amador to working with Inuit throat singers, Icelandic choirs, and international ensembles, Björk builds bridges rather than appropriations. Her borderless sonic universe reflects a deep respect for cultural specificity while imagining entirely new hybrid forms. Through this cross-cultural dialogue, she has expanded the emotional and geographic possibilities of avant-pop.

In Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, Björk delivered one of cinema’s most haunting performances, so emotionally raw and immersive that she swore she’d never act again. Her portrayal of Selma earned her the Cannes Best Actress Award and remains a landmark in film history. The accompanying soundtrack, Selmasongs, fused her musical innovation with cinematic storytelling, turning the film into a devastating blend of narrative, sound, and emotion. Writing on Facebook, the star joined the #MeToo movement by describing abuse by a filmmaker she had worked with. She did not name the director, but by that time, she had only made one film — now she’s also participated in Robert Eggers’ The Northman (2022).

Björk’s activism is a natural extension of her artistry: passionate, uncompromising, and both local and global. Spanning environmental protection, humanitarian aid, and political advocacy, she has campaigned against Iceland’s commercial salmon farms, promoted ocean conservation, raised awareness about climate collapse, and defended fragile ecosystems. She serves as a UNICEF ambassador, fundraises for disaster relief, supports LGBTQ+ and refugee rights, and speaks out on international issues such as Palestinian rights, Kosovo independence, and Chinese government policies, proving that a cultural icon can also be a steadfast protector of people and the planet.

Biophilia redefined what an album could be. It wasn’t just music; it was an interactive app suite, an educational curriculum, a scientific collaboration, and a live show powered by invented instruments. Björk blended natural science with art and technology, teaching kids physics through music and turning songs into living, modular systems. Long before tech companies tried immersive albums, Biophilia set the gold standard for multimedia innovation, and it was also the inspiration for a fantastic documentary in which the artist dialogued with Sir David Attenborough (When Björk Met Attenborough, Channel 4, 2013). Attenborough also recorded the voice that presented the app with the same name that Björk released along with the album.

The artist’s relationship with the media has always been combative — not out of ego, but out of necessity. She resisted infantilisation, challenged sexist interviews, and confronted paparazzi invasions that other artists endured in silence. At times she withdrew entirely, prioritising her mental health and artistic autonomy. Her clashes with the press exposed the industry’s misogyny and ultimately shifted public understanding of how female innovators deserve to be treated. She didn’t change for the media; the media had to grow up. She also prepared the space for other non-native English-speaking artists to not feel intimidated by the language barrier or pronunciation. But, without a doubt, Björk’s best moment with the press took place in a Bangkok when she reacted ‘violently happy’ after a reporter harassed her and her child.

Vulnicura is heartbreak rendered with almost surgical clarity. Combining orchestral strings with Arca’s fractured electronics, Björk documented the dissolution of love in devastating detail — from rupture to healing. The album’s emotional transparency resonated globally, becoming a beacon for listeners navigating their own grief, and also opening a channel in which she refers to the female experience during breakup in detailed moments throughout the album. It stands as one of the most powerful expressions of personal pain ever captured in contemporary music. The whole project is an exploration of her breakup with visual artist Matthew Barney, and the title itself is a play on words combining ‘vulnerability’ and ‘cure’. Stonemilker is one of the most devastating songs ever, in which the singer desperately begs for “emotional respect.” Shot on location in Iceland by award-winning director Andrew Thomas Huang, she presented a 360 degree film performing the haunting song.

Björk’s DJ sets are unpredictable, ecstatic, and deeply educational. She blends global folk traditions with cutting-edge electronic experiments, rare tracks with personal favourites, creating a sonic journey that feels like being inside her creative brain. Beyond technique, her sets serve as cultural curation, uplifting overlooked genres and giving underground scenes global visibility. When Björk DJs, she expands the musical map. Notable sets include a four-hour set at the opening of Sónar in Barcelona and a performance at the Tri Angle Records fifth-anniversary show.

Björk has long championed women and LGBTQ+ artists, not as a trend, but as a structural necessity. She has also stood for herself and pointed out sexism in the music industry. “Some media could not get their head around that I was not ‘performing’ and ‘hiding’ behind desks, and my male counterparts not. And I think this is sexism,” she explained in an interview to The Guardian when the male performers at the Day and Night festival in Houston, including Aphex Twin and Matmos, played similar DJ sets but didn’t get the same critique that they weren’t performing. But in 1994 she was already highlighting sexism, as she explained in an interview: “Men can be silly, fat, funny, intelligent, hardcore, sensual, philosophical, but with women, they always have to be feminine. Feminine, feminine. ”

Björk collaborates not for clout but for genuine alchemy. Her partnerships, including Arca, Anohni, Zeena Parkins, serpentwithfeet, Mark Bell, Matmos, Alexander McQueen, Iris van Herpen, or Jenny Holzer, represent a constellation of creative disciplines spanning fashion, film, or music. She invites others into her universe and pushes them toward their most daring work, often amplifying emerging voices long before the industry recognises them. These collaborations expand her world and reshape the cultural landscape at large. The most recent and exciting one is in Berghain, the lead single in Rosalía’s Lux (the Spanish singer recently called her “the most fascinating human being I have ever met”). Both artists already share a collaboration: the song Oral, released in 2023, and both donated all their rights to income generated by this song to the AEGIS non-profit organisation to combat open pen fish farming in Iceland.