BBE News: 20 YEARS OF BBE RECORDS

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20 YEARS OF BBE RECORDS #BBE20 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of BBE! Relive last 20 years: check out the BBE20 blog and be sure to visit back again and again as we'll update it several times a week all year long!

Björk's Debut: celebrating 20 years of innovation

Two decades after its release, the Icelandic artist's first album has never sounded more relevant, says Michael Cragg

Right before Nirvana's In Utero killed grunge and Blur kickstarted Britpop with Parklife, Björk's Debut – 20 years old today – sounded like nothing else. Featuring elements of techno, trip-hop, jazz and pop, and influenced by Bollywood soundtracks and the buzz of London nightlife, it's an album fuelled by the sheer force of the Icelandic artist's personality. Debut reconstructed pop music and like any album that shakes up the status quo, not everyone was initially sold: The album's thirst for experimentation came at a time when music was primarily being made by men with guitars, Rolling Stone magazine bemoaning the fact that the former Sugarcubes frontwoman had ditched rock'n'roll in favour of something "painfully eclectic", and derided Nellee Hooper's production for sabotaging "a ferociously iconoclastic talent with a phalanx of cheap electronic gimmickry."