The Björk chain reaction is wildly at play: a couple of days ago, Björk’s new album, Vulnicura, was leaked, and said leakage led to the album’s rushed official release, which has incidentally now led to the publishing of this incredible interview with the artist by Pitchfork (titled “The Invisible Woman: A Conversation with Björk” instead what should have been an obvious titular frontrunner, “Pitchbjörk”). In it, Björk gushes about her fandom for Joni Mitchell and her collaboration with co-producer Arca, while noting how many times her music’s been misrepresented — despite her 30 years of making music — as having been the work of her male collaborators; she cites journalistic perceptions of Kanye as the example of this imbalance:
I have nothing against Kanye West. Help me with this—I’m not dissing him—this is about how people talk about him. With the last album he did, he got all the best beatmakers on the planet at the time to make beats for him. A lot of the time, he wasn’t even there. Yet no one would question his authorship for a second. If whatever I’m saying to you now helps women, I’m up for saying it.
It seems to be a good day for interviews; Margaret Cho was interviewed by Buzzfeed about her new TLC late-night talk show, All About Sex. The article begins with the interviewer observing as Cho shoots a promo for the show, repeating variations of the phrase “I can’t believe she bit off the entire nipple” until she finds the perfect formula. Cho’s presence on TLC will, it seems, bring some actual insight to an otherwise vacuous network: when asked about why she wants to talk about sex, she responded, “It is a subject that is infinitely interesting because it’s connected to identity, and also desire. It’s a subject that’s intertwined with all these ideals about identity and self and purpose.”
With such a panoply of desires and identities out there, there’s no telling whether the show will, at some point, address this phenomenon; of course, it won’t actually need to, as The Daily Dot’s EJ Dickson has already done such a thorough and thoughtful job: “Why are straight women watching so much lesbian porn?” she asks. “Isn’t this genre, which mostly consists of blondes with elephantine tits disinterestedly lapping at each other’s vulvae, ostensibly targeted at male viewers? And, perhaps the most puzzling question of all: Do the hetero ladies jilling off to gay porn harbor secret gay feelings, or is there another, more complex dynamic at play here?”
Johnny Depp, ‘Mortdecai’
One thing that’s almost certain is that nobody’s “jilling off” to Johnny Depp anymore: after years of exclusively playing roles that are more ridiculous-looking than that pictured above (which certainly wouldn’t be a problem if they didn’t also belong to unfathomably ridiculous films), people seem to have come to the unanimous decision that Depp is no longer a sex symbol, but rather a walking prediction of what’ll first hit costume shops and Rite Aid’s discount DVD stands each year. Is it still even worth it to lament the fact that beneath those mustache bristles and makeup blankets lurks an excellent talent? Sometimes it seems he’s too far gone. But if you’re still hopeful that one day, Depp will simply look and sound like Johnny Depp in a movie (which means you still believe Johnny Depp exists), here’s a list that’ll help you through these rough, Depp-thless times.