ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #098

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 098: Sugarcubes – ‘Birthday’ (One Little Indian Records ’87)

Dear friends,

there are bands which by no means would have been even halfway as sucessful as they finally became if it hadn’t been for their singer, especially if said singer was female. The Sugarcubes, fronted by Björk of course, are one example, another one will follow next week.

I guess there is no need to get into full detail re The Sugarcubes, you all are old enough. It’s pretty easy to briefly sum up their career: they started out as KUKL (and had their stuff released on the label run by Crass, which I always found rather amusing), became The Sugarcubes, released ‘Birthday’ – and this record, which was pure unadulterated emotion, changed the world basically.

If you think I’m exaggerating, as ususal – well, sort of. But come on, such a singing style was, by and large, unheard of at the time. And from Iceland they came of all places – we hardly knew where this was, didn’t we? Those who listened to Peel at the time – before there was any mention of The Sugarcubes in the music papers – might, like me, have sat in front of the radio and imagined some Eskimo with quite an angelic voice (yes, I know: a) you are not allowed to call them like this these days and b) they don’t live in Iceland anyway).

But of course Björk had her haters, Mrs. Robster and Mrs. Loser being leaders of this club, I’m afraid. I never understood this disaffirmation, to me they were absolutely wonderful, the same is true of their debut album from 1988. So when the media caught up on the band, rather quickly two camps were built, and to my best knowledge there was not much of an inbetween – you either loved them or you hated them, as easy as this.

And then, soon, it was all over. Yes, I admit, three other albums followed, but to be frank: you’ll just remember ‘Regina’ from the second one, do you? The rest was, let’s face it, not good. So what happened? Well, if you listened closely to the debut album, there was this bloke in the background occasionally, disturbing Björk’s singing, so you could argue, with some strange shouting – and this chap was Einar Örk, the trumpet player.

Now, ‘Birthday’ topped Peel’s Festive 50, became a massive indie hit in the UK, a college radio hit in the USA and naturally all the media attention centred on Björk – and, obviously, quite rightly so! This very much disgusted poor Einar, the shouter, because he thought he’d deserve attention as well for The Sugarcubes being the new star in heaven. Still no one with a single brain cell left really saw it this way though and finally Björk had enough of the tensions with Einar and went solo. To even greater success, of course, so if you carried on with what she did on her own (I did not, too much other things to listen to), light a candle for Einar next time you’re in church, because at the end of the day he sort of paved her way to absolute stardom with his stupid attitude!

mp3: The Sugarcubes – Birthday

When filling the singles box I always tried to get hold of original releases of course, that’s when they were halfway affordable. But here I deliberately went for the re-release from ’88, because the ‘Christmas’-tune on the flipside is actually ‘Birthday’, but with the Jesus & Mary Chain‘s Reid brothers on guitars – and this version is absolutely stunning! So is the one sung in Icelandic, titled ‘Ammæli ‘, first issued on a 7“ in ’86 with ‘The Sugarcubes’ translated to ‘Sykurmolarnir’.

But still: the version above is the definitive one, of course. Some wise soul once wrote: „songs are rarely “out of this world” even if it is a descriptive term used quite regularly, but “Birthday” is undoubtedly otherworldly“.

Enjoy,

 

Dirk

PS : JC adds……

The e-mail from Dirk for this one arrived in the TVV inbox last Wednesday, 18 June 2025, which just happened to be my 62nd birthday….a complete coincidence according to my dear friend from Germany!!

Anyway, it gives me an excuse to redirect you to this recent post, featuring the June book of the month, and the opportunity to win a copy as I’m running a competition to celebrate said birthday.