Do we like Björk?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of putting her money and platform behind environmental and humanitarian causes, with the one contested stance being her very public line on Israel.
Björk Guðmundsdóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1965 and released her first album at 11. She fronted the Sugarcubes through the late 80s, then went solo and became one of pop's great shape-shifters, with Debut, Post, Homogenic and Vespertine along the way. She also won Best Actress at Cannes for Dancer in the Dark.
The recent news is mostly creative. She played a surprise DJ set at the Venice Biennale in May for the artist representing Iceland, and she says the next album arrives in 2027. The Echolalia exhibition has reworked songs from Fossora alongside new music. She also joined Rosalía on stage at the BRIT Awards for their song Berghain.
On the harm check, nothing nasty turned up: no slide into conspiracy theories and no culture-war grifting. On Gaza she wrote that her childhood friend had been detained on an aid flotilla, and she asked Iceland to stop business dealings with Israel. She also backed Iceland pulling out of Eurovision over Israel's entry. Where you land on that depends on whether you read it as solidarity or as a one-sided boycott. We found no trans-rights statement from her either way, and that's a gap, not a mark against her.
Her environmental work is the real thing. She has campaigned against open-net salmon farming in Iceland, and the proceeds of her song Oral with Rosalía fund legal cases brought by local residents. She has also filed suit against the Icelandic state alongside the group AEGIS. She told Dazed the farms send most of the benefit to two Norwegian billionaires, and she puts her own money where her mouth is.
The kindness record goes back years. She released a charity record for UNICEF after the 2004 tsunami, and put her studio albums on Bandcamp with the sales going to Black Lives Matter UK. During lockdown she live-streamed orchestral shows to raise money for a Reykjavík women's shelter. That's a lot of benefit shows for someone who could have just sold records.
The honest gaps: the reporting on how she treats colleagues is thin, and the Israel and Greenland positions will split opinion. Even so, there's no pattern of harm here, and her fans are loyal for good reason. For a family page that cares about people and the planet, she's an easy yes.