Homogenic

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<b>100 Best Albums</b> “I’m the hunter/I’ll bring back the goods,” Björk intones on <i>Homogenic</i>’s spooky, skittering opener. In fact, the Icelandic superstar’s third album would prove to be one of the most highly regarded releases of her career, a rippling tapestry of techno innovation and orchestral songcraft. The urgency of the lyrics here are no mistake: The singer had been deeply affected by a string of personal incidents, including the highly publicized suicide of a stalker who had attempted to assassinate her with a letter bomb, and the exhaustion of an extensive tour for her previous album, <i>Post</i>. That tension manifests on tracks like the towering, string-laden “Bachelorette”—“I’m a fountain of blood/In the shape of a girl”—and siren-like ballad “Jóga,” with its urgent couplets about emotional rescue and states of emergency. Recorded almost entirely at the home studio of her tour drummer Trevor Morais in Málaga, Spain, <i>Homogenic</i> also marked Björk’s departure from <i>Post</i> and <i>Debut</i> producer Nellee Hooper. In his place, collaborators including Scottish DJ Howie B, British producer Guy Sigsworth (Madonna, Britney Spears), and LFO’s Mark Bell stepped in. (Bell in particular became integral to the production, and would go on to work with her on over half a dozen albums until his untimely death at age 43 in 2014.) The album soon found fans all over: Thom Yorke famously called “Unravel” “one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard”—he performed a reverent cover with Radiohead in 2007—and legendary fashion designer Alexander McQueen signed on to direct the music video for “Alarm Call,” reportedly with so much enthusiasm that he provided a 100-page treatment detailing his ideas. Few moments in Björk’s remarkable visual arsenal, though, can match Chris Cunningham’s robot-romance video for glimmering closer “All Is Full of Love.” It’s now considered a modern classic, as is the whole of <i>Homogenic</i>: an unforgettable melding of electronic and organic artistry, sung in the key of strange.

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