Time to Document

Abstract

In recent years, Björk has defied pop music criticism’s persistent myth of male genius by asserting her authorship as a singer, songwriter, composer, and producer. She expressed these concerns during a 2015 Pitchfork interview with Jessica Hopper by reflecting on the press’s minimization of her production work throughout her career and her desire to reclaim her creative authority as a model for younger female-identified artists. During this portion of the conversation, she mused, “I’ve sometimes thought about releasing a map of all my albums and just making it clear who did what.” Her impulse to challenge masculinist creation myths through documentation became the catalyst for Björk: Sonic Symbolism, a 2022 podcast miniseries sponsored by Mailchimp in which she discussed her albums’ creative processes with friends Oddný Eir and Ásmundur Jónson in a series of interviews. The title, which Björk defines as “a visual shortcut to describe sound,” provides the podcast’s framework for her articulation of authorial control, which she examines through album art that illustrates each cover’s mood and character; poetic synopses of each album’s unique audiovisual language; and references to her various studio, video, and stage collaborators. By using close listening to examine Björk’s conversations with Eir and Jónson and the episodes’ illustrative song segments, this article posits that Björk’s engagement with podcasting as an audio storytelling medium allows her to foreground her distinct speaking and singing voice as both a feminist intervention upon the recording industry and as a sonic metaphor for authorial control.