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Almost alone among successful female musicians, she also doesn’t sing songs about her booty. Terrifying, isn’t it? A whole new approach to music, maybe life itself. If it wasn’t for Kylie’s butt Britain would have to depend on the GPS system. Bjork’s that different.

She started with an Icelandic band called the Sugarcubes, back in the 80s. The most memorable thing about them was this peculiar, penetrant voice. There’s an oscillator quality, and having heard it, it’s unforgettable.

Bjork is perhaps the nearest thing to the total antithesis of anyone’s idea of a “pop star” you could hope to see or hear. The voice is a bit of a distraction from the fact she’s also a very competent musician. There’s no filler, no cutesy frilly stuff. It’s “ideas” music.

She’s actually a bit more than the music museum knows how to handle. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Around me were gobsmacked faces, some mutterings of the "what is this weird shit" type (including from a few music journalists, it should be noted) and many a bemused but beaming face figuring that even if this wasn't making any immediate sense it was sure enough staggeringly entertaining. And funny.”

“Music journalist” could be called a contradiction in terms lately. It’s not music, usually, and they’re not journalists, just wannabe marketing consultants.

A sort of happy medium.

Anyone using the word “weird” in relation to music is an ignoramus. When was the last time you heard the words “sane” and “musician” in the same sentence? When was the first?

In this context we will assume “shit” is a sort of pathetic hope for their spiritual future. Or maybe a sense of direction, unrealized.

Bjork puts on quite a show, but she’s also an actual musical thinker. Her album, Medulla, is all vocals. Not an instrument on it. That was based on the principle that modern electronic music is a self fulfilling cliché. So she got a choir, and did the entire album a capella.

Most interesting of all was that it worked. The patches (preset sounds) on most music these days are older than the people playing them. The copyright-obsessed dance tracks sound identical because they are, just sped up or slowed down occasionally. The human voice is a lot more flexible, and far more maneuverable, than a robot regurgitation.

Female vocalists, in particular, also seem to manage a very high level of individuality. Yma Sumac, Buffy Sainte Marie, Ella Fitzgerald… add phone book here… women as musical instruments are in a class of their own.

Bjork proved among other things with Medulla that she’s a real musician, not some collection of oddities. The difference between a real musician and someone playing with a musical medium rather than themselves is that real musicians don’t play safe.

Hendrix, Basie, Ellington, Cole Porter, Mingus, Django Rheinhardt, are in this neighborhood. These are the people who created modern music, and they did it by going beyond the whole idea of pop and its useless, tarted up, five second fixes. Cole Porter is the guy who made music grow up. He simply ignored the music of his time. From him came the giants of modern music. None of that could have happened without the “Let’s play something with more than two chords” idea.

Music needs the people who won’t let it stagnate. Bjork is purely individualistic, but she’s definitely not watching the garbage pile up like the rest of the clinic.

Most of the so-called “rebels” of the rock world are slaves to idiom. Beatrix Potter was more Heavy Metal than that. As for the Eternal 80s of rap, and the ability to stand near a three point plug known as MTV…

Have a listen to Ellington’s “The Mooche” and you’ll hear a brass sound, which Bjork gets with her voice.

If she turns out to be a plainclothes alto sax, I won’t be in the least surprised.

Bjork could qualify as “avant garde” if she felt like it, which I gather she doesn’t, because of her approach to music. As a matter of fact she’s more fun-minded. She showed up at the Grammys wearing a swan dress, and doesn’t mind springing surprises on people visually any more than she does musically. Another healthy sign. The current version of “avant garde” is writing everything in flats. Great, except it was done, much better in the 50s.

She’s not for everyone, because she’s a bit beyond what most people have heard before. This is her site If you've heard it before, you won't hear it here.

That's not a compliment I expect to be giving a lot of use.