Bjork, Greatest Hits and Family Tree box set

You know, there just aren’t very many pop recording artists these days who are making what we’d call “art” in the high-brow sense of the word. And any time we start making a list (you know how we love lists around here!), the little elfish one from Iceland lands right on top, every time. Her whole recording career has been marked by a quirky-spirited quest into what it’s possible to get away with, while still calling her compositions pop music. This is a more complex and interesting paradox than it might seem. Bjork has proven many times—think “Army of Me” and “Hyperballad” for starters—that you can push the envelope lyrically and musically, while at the same time attracting sustainable commercial interest. There is the possibility, of course, that her successes were an accident of the time—that she thrived in the brief moment in the 90s when alt-rock radio created so many unlikely rock stars. Privately, we feel half her success can be chalked up to incredible car-audio systems that stand up to the audio gymnastics of which she’s capable. But that’s a conversation we’ll save for the coffeeshop, after we’ve had a chance to sign up for this chartered omnibus back in time.