I totally agree here. It’s one of her greatest gems.

I also think we are disagreeing by agreeing here. I think in many of her later works she gets the emotion just right, and it is because she can be startlingly straightforward. I use “sincerity” in a different way than you do, I think, because for me it is almost entirely a negative – sincerity, means for me, a desire to appear sincere, whereas I think Bjork is more just emotionally naked. Bjork never ever seems to me like she wants to manipulate you into feeling her feelings. She wants to express them as clearly as possible so that you can understand and sympathize with her.

I think her emotional complexity has also progressed an enormous amount since “Crying”, so even though she still gravitates toward upbeat, she’s been mixing it with increasingly negative and sad emotions. It’s why I like Medulla so much, particularly for songs like “Desired Constellation”, “Who Is It”, “Mouth’s Cradle” and “Triumph of the Heart.”

And as I said later, I think her “playacting” is part of a pop persona she’s putting on. Debut feels very much like Bjork is doing a pastiche of different pop styles, and some of the pastiches work really well, and for me, some of them seem really flat. “Crying” seems flat. Maybe Bjork did cry around London for a bit, but as Simon Cowell might say, “I don’t believe it.” As a young artist it’s important to try on different styles, and I think, in this respect, “Crying” is important.

But thanks for the disagreement, Liam.

She expresses her sadness, but she does so without wallowing in it. There’s no self pity, more of a desire to work through the grief in order to move on. There are many “sad” or “negative” tracks she’s done – So Broken, Sod Off, Play Dead, Unravel come to mind.

I agree with you that she isn’t shedding any tears when she sings “I’ve Seen It All”, but I don’t believe it comes from a reluctance to express negativity. What I’ve always found so depressing about the song is that it comes from the vantage point of someone who has given up the struggle and resigned themselves to their fate. It’s as if she’s saying “Your tears won’t prevent this from happening, so let’s move on to another battle, shall we?”

I love it so far.