what might have been

Björk Says Her Wu-Tang Collaboration, Which You Will Never Hear, Was ‘Magic’

Photo: MALTE KRISTIANSEN/AFP/Getty Images

Hope you filled up on thankfulness and gratitude yesterday, because you’re about to be stuffed with bitterness and resentment. In a new interview with FACT, Björk discusses her late ’90s collaboration with the Wu-Tang Clan, specifically how you will never, ever, hear it because she doesn’t remember what happened to it. “Ha! You know … I don’t know!” the singer laughed when asked about the tracks. According to Björk, she contacted the group to commission some beats for her then-upcoming album, 1997’s Homogenic. Unfortunately for music history (not really, Homogenic is still a gem), it was not to be. Explains the singer, “So, I was in Spain, and Wu-Tang Clan were supposed to come to Spain. RZA was supposed to come. But then months passed. Then the album got finished and I delivered it. Then RZA was like, ‘I’m ready! Shall I come to Spain?’”

Later in New York, Wu-Tang and Björk tried again to partner up, this time with slightly more success. “We wrote a couple of songs together. And I just felt … sometimes when you do things and you don’t plan them it’s magic. And I really think what we made was magic,” the singer recalls. “But I think because it wasn’t part of the whole Homogenic thing and it wasn’t part of what Wu-Tang were doing at the time, it was better as an idea, if that makes any sense?” It 100 percent does.

In the end, Björk enjoyed something even more magical than music: the chance to have Wu-Tang show her around NYC. “In my eyes, they’re punk. We are definitely [similar] — we do things in, like, a ritual way. The good thing was that I got to hang out with them. I got to see Wu-Tang’s version of New York,” she says. “Which was pretty cool. A very specific angle on that city that I feel very blessed to have experienced.” Oh, and don’t get too excited about any Jay-Z/Björk rumors either: “He asked me to write for one of his albums. It was a section for a song,” Björk says. “But it just didn’t happen in the end. Wasn’t meant to be.”

Björk Says Her Lost Wu-Tang Clan Collaboration Was ‘Magic’