Happy Anniversary: Bjork, POST

23 years ago today, the woman who first came to fame as frontwoman for The Sugarcubes released her sophomore album on Elektra, an LP that found her entering into a number of new collaborations, dipping into a variety of different musical styles, and ultimately landing in the top 10 of more than a dozen countries.

Recorded partially at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas and partially at Fon Studios in London, POST was originally supposed to be produced by Nellee Hooper, or at least that’s what Bjork had hoped, since she’d liked what he’d done for her when he produced her cleverly-titled debut album, DEBUT. Hooper, however, suggested that she should produce the album herself, and although she eventually swayed him to join the project, he did a bit of swaying himself and talked her into serving as co-producer…and as co-producer, one of the decisions she made was to bring in additional musical collaborators.

Bjork began work on the album at Compass Point, an exotic locale which inspired her to utilize some equally exotic recording methods, including stretching her microphone cord to a beach to that she could – according to Rolling Stone – “sing to the sea.” In regards to the material, there were new compositions, of course, but she also took some songs that she’d written with Graham Massey of 808 State and recorded prior to the sessions for DEBUT – among them “Army of Me” and “The Modern Things” – and repurposed them for POST. After returning from the Bahamas, she was supposed to submit the finished version of the album, but instead she spent several more months working on the songs, in some cases going so far as to completely re-record them, all the while continuing to write even more songs.

When POST finally arrived, critics fawned all over it, which was more or less to be expected, but it also proved to be a tremendous commercial success, even resulting in a top-40 album in the US. Three of the album’s singles – “Army of Me,” “It’s Oh So Quiet,” and “Hyperballad” – all climbed into the top 10 of the UK chart, but “Possibly Maybe,” “Isobel,” and “I Miss You” all making it into the top  40 as well. And as far as how the album fared on the critics’ best-of lists… Well, look, if we tallied up all of the times it’s appeared on lists of Best Albums of the Year, Best Albums of the Decade, and Best Albums of All Time, we’d be here all day.

Besides, wouldn’t you rather just listen to POST instead? Yeah, we thought you would.