Björk Guðmundsdóttir's works have consistently posed a challenge to pop and art music as well as to those critics who have explored her music. The broad diversity of her approach to media and genre has made her oeuvre particularly enigmatic. Nicola Dibben premises this key trait of Björk's work, calling her a whole artist who "communicates her ideas through the integrated use of all media at her disposal" (Dibben 2009, 23). To uphold such an interpretation of Björk's work and artistic position, Dibben veers from many previous texts on the pop artist that presuppose a chronological biography as its organizing structure. Instead she adopts a thematic approach to all her artistic projects regardless of genre or release date. She investigates Björk's critical reception, dividing the book into themes surrounding many of the basic binaries the artist bridges, particularly her understanding of pop/avant-garde, nationalism/globalism, and nature/technology. By providing a concerted and accessible analysis of the artist's music, Dibben adds a formalist dimension to past critiques of Björk's work. Dibben's book provides an in-depth academic treatment of the artist as both a cultural and musical figure of great importance. Björk offers an intriguing case study of the artist and adds to a continued conversation about the role of music in the face of digital utopianism and globalization that will assuredly be a standard for any subsequent study on Björk.
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