I don’t know if that’s actually a good thing to admit… personally wishing I had my heart shattered into irreparable pieces from a love gone wrong. However, listening to Björk’s new album Vulnicura I feel as though I’ve missed out on a poignant life experience.

My break ups have always been one sided, usually my side, and each time I’ve managed to walk away relatively unscathed.

Post break up I’ve never found the need to cradle a bottle of wine and sob my way through the lyrics of  I Will Survive or Burn by Usher,  (although one of my ex-boyfriends had stated , mid argument, that that would be his post breakup anthem of choice – was I meant to be moved by the gesture?) .

Björk’s album makes me feel like I have gone a decade of relationship failures without genuinely bearing the emotional scars. Vulnicura kind of makes me wish that Björk’s pain was my pain and that Björk’s words were my words.

The shitty misery of her separation from partner Matthew Barney is visceral throughout the entire album. Take for example, track 10, Black Lake, ( Björk’s ten-minute polemic on the relationship) which literally has a heartbeat. As Björk takes jabs at the domestic union that once was, interjections of  arrhythmic thumps can be felt underneath some of the albums most honest  lyrics “My soul  “boom boom …boom  “torn apart …“boom boom …..boom boom ..boom  “ my spirit”  boom boom …boom ….boom  “ is broken”  boom boom …boom …

Each track on Björk’s ninth studio album is as heartbreaking as the one that precedes it. Lionsong makes me want to take her aside, tell her she is in a  "safe space” and engage in a 24 hour D&M . Family has her demanding respect - from what the lyrics suggest - the sanctity of a happy family. In recent interviews, Björk has teared up, becoming too distraught to discuss the nature of these songs, because the pain of it is still visibly unbearable.  Listening to the album in its entirety, you can appreciate why.  

Overall Vulnicura is a collection in song, of the stuff you wish you said to your ex if you’d had your heat ripped from your chest. Or, in my case what I probably should have felt as I handed my ex-boyfriend of 3 years, his personal belongings in a garbage bag.

-Bise A

Björk’s Vulnicura is available now where all great break-up albums are sold.