Icelandic musician Björk has reflected on the grueling nature of touring, explaining how she’s managed to curate her current touring schedule to allow her to “actually have a life”.
Björk, who has been playing shows with varying frequency on a near-annual basis since the release of her 1993 album Debut, spoke to The Guardian about her change in touring, which first occurred following the release of her seventh record, 2011’s Biophilia. Instead of the standard method of visiting numerous cities in a week or a month, Björk took on a more considered approach where she stayed in locations for longer periods of time.
These quasi-residencies allowed for more space between dates and longer time spent immersed in the cities she was performing in. As an example, her Cornucopia tour was launched in New York in May 2019 and featured eight shows in the city across a month-long span. The tour ultimately wrapped in France in 2023 after a total of 45 performances. These shows also ran alongside her Björk Orkestral production, which ran for 20 shows between 2021 and 2023.
“The nuts and bolts are more flexible,” Björk told the publication. “Maybe being a woman, or a matriarch, or whatever, I try to make it more that people can actually have a life. I have gently fought, since my teenage years, this macho way of how people organise both films and tours. ‘Oh, let’s now work 18 hours a day, every single day, until everybody throws up.’ I always wanted to coexist.
“You can have a personal life,” she continued. “You can have your kids. You can have your partners there. I’m not saying I’ve succeeded,” she says, laughing, “but at least I’ve tried to create a world that is more open to things like that.”
Björk’s most recent album, Fossora, was released in late 2022 and coincided with the final stretch of her Björk Orkestral tour. Though traditional touring hasn’t been on the horizon for the veteran artist for close to 15 years, 2024 did shake up her schedule somewhat, with the year only comprising DJ sets – six of which were performed across five countries.
