Debut

Bjork's Debut (1993) is still one of my favorite records. I loved The Sugarcubes but I thought that the male singer was annoying and wrecked a lot of their songs so I was happy to see that she was going out on her own.

I would've rather she'd done more of the songs with a full band as opposed to all the techno, but, still, there are some great songs here.

The album starts with "Human Behaviour" which still sounds new and fresh all these years later. I don't care for "Crying". When my brother heard it he said, "Is she saying 'Frankenstein needs you?'"

I like the idea of doing a live song for the album- "There's More to Life Than This"- it seems so spontaneous. Things slow down with "Like Someone In Love" with the harps and everything, and then speed up again with "Big Time Sensuality" ( a lot of remixes came out later, but none improved on the LP version).

Side Two begins with "One Day", an exciting song, followed by- maybe the best song on the album- "Aeroplane". It's hard to describe it, please just buy the album.

I always skip "Violently Happy". It represents all the things I dislike about Bjork's solo carreer. But "Come To Me" and "The Anchor Song" close out the album nicely.

(Some later editions of Debut include "Play Dead". Mine doesn't and I've never heard it, but I'd like to.)

Debut was also re-released on DuelDisc and the other side of the disc has all the music videos. I like the idea; Talking Heads did the same thing with their albums, but now that you can see anything on Youtube anytime, a lot of the appeal is gone.