Vulnicura is the eighth studio album by Icelandic musician and singer Björk. It was produced by Björk, Arca and The Haxan Cloak, and released on 20 January 2015 by One Little Indian Records. Björk said the album expresses her feelings before and after her breakup with American contemporary artist Matthew Barney and the healing process.
Vulnicura was originally scheduled for release in March 2015, in conjunction with the Björk: Archives book and an exhibition about Björk's career at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; following an internet leak, it was released digitally two months early. No singles were released to promote the album but a series of innovative music videos were created, culminating in the 360-degree virtual reality exhibit Björk Digital. Vulnicura received widespread acclaim from critics, with many considering it one of her most honest and personal albums as well as her best output in a decade. It peaked at number 20 on the US Billboard 200 and received a nomination for Best Alternative Music Album at the 58th Grammy Awards.
The companion album Vulnicura Strings was released on 6 November 2015. It features strings-only interpretations of the Vulnicura tracks and utilises an instrument designed by Leonardo da Vinci called the viola organista. By October 2015, the album had sold 250,000 copies worldwide.
Background and recording After completing the tour for her previous project Biophilia (2011), which featured a series of apps and instruments created especially for the live show, Björk expressed interest in using the same instruments for her next project. She told The Independent: "I happen to know some of the best app programmers in the world, and I have the instruments I can just plug straight into the iPad and play whatever I have. So it seems kind of natural to work on an album where I don't have three years of prepping. But at the same time, it is a kind of extreme project."
In May 2013, Björk told the San Francisco Bay Guardian that she was in the early stages of a new album. In the same month, she told the San Francisco Chronicle she had "enough songs that I'm ready to see the next thing".
Venezuelan producer Arca co-produced Vulnicura. Björk approached Arca after her manager sent her Arca's mixtape &&&&& (2013); Arca then DJ'ed at Björk's Biophilia tour afterparty and the two started working together afterwards. Björk was not aware of Arca's work with Kanye West and FKA Twigs (on Yeezus and EP2, 2013) but she soon appreciated it along with Arca's knowledge of her own discography. Arca described working with Björk, whom she has called a musical inspiration, as "healing", and said: "The way she exists as a human is a big influence on the way I exist as a human."
On 7 October 2014, Björk announced on her Facebook page that she would not attend the British premiere of her concert film Björk: Biophilia Live at the BFI London Film Festival because she was too busy working on the album, and confirmed a 2015 release date. British musician and producer The Haxan Cloak announced on Twitter on 6 January 2015 that he had worked on the album, calling the collaboration "an honour".
On 14 January 2015, Björk posted a handwritten note on her Facebook page announcing the album's title, Vulnicura, its track list and a March 2015 release date. Vulnicura means "Cure for Wounds" (Vulnus + Cura) in Latin, and Björk described it as "a more traditional album than Biophilia for what concerns songwriting. It's about what may come to a person at the end of a relationship. It talks about the dialogues we may have in our heads and in our hearts, the healing processes."
The music on Vulnicura has been described by critics as incorporating electronic, avant-garde, and ambient music.
The album is primarily composed of string arrangements and electronic beats, as a return to the sound Björk pursued on her 1997 album Homogenic. In an interview with Pitchfork, Björk exposed how working on string arrangements served as a way to keep her mind busy after her breakup: "The only way I could deal with that was to start writing for strings; I decided to become a violin nerd and arrange everything for 15 strings and take a step further."
The involvement of Arca came in late stages of the writing process, which Björk described as "such a contrast, the most fun music-making I've ever had, with the most tragic subject matter [...] I just sat next to [Arca] for weeks, and we did the whole album. It's the quickest I've ever worked [...] It's one of those crazy things in life where people from opposite ends meet, and you've got so much to teach each other."
Release and artwork On 18 January 2015, just days after being publicly announced, and two months ahead of its scheduled release, a supposed full version of the album leaked online. At the time, no official release date or cover art was confirmed, nor was Anohni's featured participation in "Atom Dance". The illegal leak was compared to the one that happened to Madonna and her album Rebel Heart, whose several songs in their demo form were leaked online during late 2014.
The album's release date was pushed up to 20 January, becoming available as a digital download.Björk's post. Facebook. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
The artwork was designed by longtime collaborators M/M (Paris). The digital cover was photographed by also longtime collaborators Inez and Vinoodh: "She said she wanted to have a wound on her body, on her heart area, in an abstract way [...] Imagine you're Mata Hari, a seductress, but you're wounded, and there is an incredibly alluring softness around you."Artsy Editorial: As Björk Opens at MoMA, Behind the Scenes of Her Most Iconic Images. Artsy.net. Retrieved 8 March 2015 On the cover, Björk wears a black latex suit, a wound on her chest and a headpiece made of quills, which she already wore during the last stages of her Biophilia tour. Björk clarified that, during the time in between the two albums, the Vulnicura cover character started surfacing.Guzmán, Isaac: Björk Is Your Tour Guide: An Exclusive TIME Interview for Her MOMA Retrospective . Time. Retrieved 8 March 2015 The main color of the artwork is yellow, since Björk links this color to the "healing" process.Witt, Emily: The Peculiar Genius of Björk . T. Retrieved 8 March 2015 The photo shoot was filmed and transformed into a music video to accompany the album track "Lionsong".
For the physical release, a second cover art was made by Andrew Thomas Huang. In the deluxe edition, the artwork comes in the shape of an acetate slipcase.Björk's post. "The deluxe CD will include both Vulnicura covers in a beautiful foldout CD slipcase situation." Instagram. Retrieved 6 March 2015 This artwork was also transformed into a short music video for the track "Family".
To coincide with all of Björk's previous albums being reissued on limited edition colored vinyl for the MoMA retrospective, Vulnicura was later issued in a limited run of double neon yellow LPs.
Promotion Media coverage Being the follow-up to Biophilia after more than three years, Vulnicuras release was highly anticipated. Online music publications like Music Times, Time Out, FasterLouder, Gigwise, Fact, Dazed Digital, Pitchfork and Billboard included it in their list of the most anticipated albums of 2015, with Diffuser and Stereogum ranking it as the seventh and tenth most anticipated album of 2015, respectively. DIY listed the upcoming release as one of the eleven reasons to get excited about 2015, while NME included Björk in their list of 40 most anticipated comebacks for 2015.
Although not initially intended, the album was included in the Björk retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Music videos for the tracks "Lionsong" and "Black Lake" were premiered there. The video for "Stonemilker" premiered at MoMA PS1 on 22 March.
On 17 December 2015, Björk appeared on the podcast Song Exploder (Episode 60) where she detailed the creation of Vulnicura's opening track, "Stonemilker". "It's about someone who's trying to get emotions out of another person," she said. "I think it's equally hard for all of us and we're just all doing our best but I think there's also a choice. Do you want to try and then maybe fail half of the time and then succeed half of the time or whatever your odds are? Or is it your choice to not even try?" On the creation of the song: "I was walking on a beach, and I was kind of walking back and forth and the lyrics kind of came along kind of without me really editing them.... (They're) probably the most obvious lyrics I've ever written. I actually wrote a whole other lyric to this song, which was really maybe a bit too clever for its own good but something in me said, 'No, don't touch it. It has to be, like, almost clumsy or naive.' That's sort of the strength and weakness of the song at the same time." When talking about the string arrangements for "Stonemilker", Björk said, "For me it was very important... that the strings were kind of cyclical; this chord cycle that kind of gives you this feeling it can go on and on in circles and gives you this feeling of equilibrium. Like the person who's singing this song is showing some sort of harmony to someone as an example... I had 30 players, and then I would do 2 sets of arrangements so basically there are, in theory, 60 because it needed that sort of panoramic feeling to have that sort of smooth, cream-like perfection." On her collaboration with beat maker and co-producer Arca, "... it was very obvious that song was very simple so we didn't really need a crazy beat thing going on. It just had to be really supportive of the song, and almost acoustic like it's a symphony orchestra playing and the beat would come from the kettledrum or something. You know? Like a very soft support which Alejandra (Arca) provided."
Music videos The first video produced for Vulnicura was "Black Lake", directed by Andrew Thomas Huang who previously collaborated with Björk on Biophilia's "Mutual Core" video in 2012. It was announced that the video would debut at MoMA's Björk retrospective in March 2015 in an elaborate video installation. A trailer for the retrospective premiered on the MoMA's YouTube channel on 13 February 2015. The trailer is a single shot of a nude Björk lying on a black dirt field with her body literally split in half, while the official video has her walking through a black Icelandic cave in an original Iris Van Herpen dress. In explaining the evolution of the "Black Lake" video project, Björk said, "I think me and Andrew kept wanting the song to be rawer and rawer and more and more without special effects: to go totally "Ingmar Bergman" on it. So the "book cover" ended up being a book cover....." While the MoMA "Black Lake" installation consisted of 2 screens showcasing complementary edits of the 10-minute video, the final music video version, which debuted on Dazed Digital on 10 June 2015, is a composite of both videos. The installation also comprises the special room where the video is projected, which has speakers all over its walls, reproducing a surrounding version of the song mixed by The Haxan Cloak, who co-produced the Vulnicura track "Family".