My 2004 profile of Björk, a personal favorite among articles I've written for The New Yorker, appears in Listen to This. The impetus for writing the piece came from my editor, Daniel Zalewski, one of the book's two dedicatees. (The other is David Remnick.) I was at first reluctant to take it on; I'd fallen in love with Björk's music, at the urging of my husband Jonathan, but after struggling to do justice to Radiohead, several years earlier, I'd sworn never to write about pop music again. Daniel prevailed, and I made the acquaintance of one of the most purely, vitally creative people I've ever encountered. Sasha Frere-Jones, who covers pop music for the magazine and knows vastly more about it than I do, recently interviewed Björk in Stockholm, on the occasion of her receiving the Polar Prize. Sasha describes the experience via his Tumblr site, which supplants his long-standing blog.
Their chat touched on last May's Rites of Spring event, where I improbably found myself DJing next to Björk and other luminaries. I thought I'd post more of the Stravinsky / Lachenmann / Bieber / Xenakis mashup that I played that night. Much to my surprise, it has failed to become an international dance hit, although there is still time, particularly in the event of a mass extinction or nuclear winter.
Later I offered a Bieber-Lachenmann variation, which none other than Questlove singled out as a highlight:
I'm available for weddings and bar mitzvahs!
