Although I'm very fond of Björk, and firmly in awe of her artistry, I've always found her about as sexy as Tinkerbell. The corkscrew hairdos and floppy swan outfits and the chin resting on the limp wrists, fingertips waving—I appreciate them all as theater, but they kind of disqualify her as crush material. But the photo above opens up other possibilities—possibilities that, as I'll explain farther down, have been there all along. Of course, I realize that the nude and natural Björk in this shot is as much a mask as this, or even this. But she inhabits it expertly, right down to the tongue and the laugh, which makes me think Björk—unlike that robot Madonna—is in on the secret, that the "big time sensuality" she sang about was real to her.
While she projects an image of a voracious, almost post-human creature out to consume the world (“I don’t know my future after this weekend, and I don’t want to!”), there is a tender, highly romantic strain in her work. She falls in love, which sounds like a simplistic statement, I know, but not everybody does. She gets weak in the knees; she crumbles—“unravels,” as one song has it. Her songs dwell in the fleeting but all-consuming stage when things get heavy. “Love is a two-way dream,” one of her songs goes.
My favorite Björk song in this mode is one of her least known. In “Come to Me” the love sounds unconditional; the only rule is to not talk about it—which means that the song, although addressed to another person, is never actually delivered to that person. Which brings up the weirdly lonely aspect of falling hard. It’s that extra dimension that gives Björk’s love songs their heft.
Every once in awhile I stumble upon some song that, even in the digital era of no unturned stones, has never been transcribed anywhere online—no chords, no tabs, nothing. You know what that means: I have to do it myself. (I also clean up the dirty dishes in my house that people leave lying around.) Playing this thing on guitar, I'm struck by the almost Spanish quality of its melody, something that doesn't come through at all in its rather spacey recording. I also have to confess to not knowing the name of the chord that comes after the second word in "You know that I adore you..." and has the effect of the floor suddenly dropping out from under you. You can just stay on the B-flat, that will "work," but I've found that lifting the finger off the first string creates a downshift essential to the tune.
And yet, I have no idea what the resulting chord is. I've looked everywhere for this chord, which in tabs would appear as 0333XX. I've asked no less than three of my more musicologically-astute friends what this chord could be, and they've told me it doesn't exist. I've tried to give it a name. But I've turned up nothing.
Come To Me
(Björk Guðmundsdóttir)
A--------------Bb
Come to me, I'll take care of you
A-----------Bb
Protect you; calm, calm down
A--------------------Bb
You're exhausted; come lie down
A------------------------------Bb
You don't have to explain, I understand
Instrumental: A Bb A Bb
Bb---------B?-------Am
You know that I adore you
Am---Bb----------Am-----Cmaj7-----F
You know that I love you
Fmaj7--------------C
So don't make me say it
C--------------------Bb
It would burst the bubble
Bb---------E-----E7
Break the charm
Jump off—your building's on fire
And I'll catch you, I'll catch you
Destroy all that is keeping you down
And then I'll nurse you, I'll nurse you
I'll touch you
You know that I adore you
You know that I love you
So don't make me say it
It would burst the bubble
Break the charm
END
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