One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.
I almost regret doing it.
— Bjork, 2002
Bjork‘s “It’s Oh So Quiet” is a rare example of a cover song being way more successful than the cover artist would have wished. The Icelandic singer-songwriter recorded the old Betty Hutton jazz hit in 1995, only as “sort of a joke.” She didn’t expect it to be her most successful single as a solo artist. She didn’t expect it to outperform her innovative Top 40 originals: “Venus as a Boy,” “Big Time Sensuality,” “Play Dead,” and “Army of Me.” She didn’t expect it to be a Christmas favorite, or to catapult her to a level of fame that involved physically attacking an invasive reporter at a Bangkok airport. And she almost certainly didn’t expect it to be considered “quintessential Bjork” in all its whimsicality, or to go down in history as the most recognizable showcasing of her acrobatic vocals.
“It’s ironic ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ became my biggest song,” Bjork said in 2002, the same year she agreed with her fans to omit it from her Greatest Hits album. She deemed it a track she’d put the least creative effort into, and one that didn’t represent her at all, as if its immense popularity was entirely out of her hands and an abomination in her catalog. She made perfectly clear that she was embarrassed by it; that she disowned it. She therefore left us asking the important question: Who or what is to, erm, blame for this One Great Cover?
Here are a few contenders, with reasons given.
1. Bjork
The former Sugarcubes vocalist must surely take some responsibility for its success, because she had—she will have known—the vocal range, confidence, and rare charisma to pull off a cover of a Big Band number made famous by a huge star from the Golden Age of Hollywood. She’d done it before, by recording “Like Someone In Love” for her critically adored Debut album of 1993, a song Dina Shore performed in the 1944 film Belle of the Yukon and Bing Crosby turned into a massive hit in 1945. She’d performed it with eminent US jazz harpist Corky Hale, yet—granted—released it only as a deep cut in demonstration of her eclectic approach to music and versatility as a singer. Not as a single, but a mid-point contrast to the “meat” of the record that was the experimental electronic dance tracks she’d written and produced with trip-hop pioneer Nellee Hooper, from “Human Behaviour” to “Violently Happy.”
2. Bjork (again)
Bjork didn’t just pull off “It’s Oh So Quiet” for inclusion on her eclectic second solo album, Post. No, she performed it like an absolute maniac, with the explosive power of a 20-piece orchestra behind her. She oscillated wildly between whispers and ecstatic shrieks during one three-hour recording session, finishing on a scream and a barely audible shh. She displayed, indeed, the full force of her three-octave voice in absolute commitment to the song, perfectly embodying its theme of opposing emotions in relation to both being alone (“it’s nice and quiet”) and finding love (“another big riot!”). That was despite having adopted the song on a whim. Didn’t she, after all, only come by the Betty Hutton version by hearing it played on the bus during her last tour?
3. Whoever decided to release it as the third single from Post
Whether it was Bjork herself, or someone from her management team, they certainly did it in relation to Contender 4. Which was to make the bold choice to lift the one cover and most atypical track from Post, over and above the futuristic originals Bjork co-created with her pick of influential DJs and EDM producers from Hooper to Graham Massey, Howie B, and Tricky. The first single off Post, “Army of Me,” deployed a heavy synth bass, aggressive electronic textures, and a sampled loop of the John Bonham drum track from Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” (a UK #10 in May 1995). The second, “Isobel,” came with epic orchestration against pulsating, South American-inspired rhythms (a UK #23 in August). But then—ahead of the dark, claustrophobic, and eminently industrial “Enjoy,” and the gloriously acid house-flavored “Hyperballad”—it was the turn of “It’s Oh So Quiet.” Faithful to the version by the Annie Get Your Gun star. A track that looked back, rather than forward.
4. Spike Jonze
The in-demand video director behind Weezer‘s “Buddy Holly” and the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” both from 1994, jumped at the chance of collaborating with Bjork in 1995. For him, the star so often described as “elfin” was “sort of mythical, or you don’t know who she is.” She was “this mystery from another dimension or something.” He set his sights accordingly on giving her the starring role in an “It’s Oh So Quiet” film that paid homage not to Happy Days, or Starsky & Hutch, but to Hollywood musicals in glorious Technicolor. He shot it in the ultra-bright San Fernando Valley, California, and brought the Icelandic singer to the silver screen in a way that seemed to anticipate the 2016 musical La La Land, such was the life-affirming and exhuberant widescreen brilliance of it. Here you’ll find an effervescent Bjork dancing first in a tire store, then a sunny street, a colorful display of choreographed dancers, a somersaulting office worker, a tin man, a performing mailbox… Yep, Jonze gifted Bjork one of the most popular and original videos of 1995, which was all over MTV.
5. The CD-buying public
There were doubtless many more CD buyers turned on by “It’s Oh So Quiet” in late 1995 than perhaps would have cared for Bjork’s previous run of more avant-garde self-penned singles. Many doubtless caught on to its novelty aspect upon its UK release on November 13: a big band showtune by a big-voiced Icelander in the time of Blur, Cornershop, Pulp, and Oasis. Many, indeed, will have found it welcome relief from the daily feed of largely Sixties-inspired Britpop, at a point when the “reunited” Beatles were also on the scene with “Free as a Bird.” Such music fans, then, will have helped ensure the singer’s huge crossover success as the seasonal festivities got underway. They might even have been the same people who helped send Michael Jackson‘s “Earth Song” to the top of the UK singles chart. Who knows?
6. Christmas revelers
The studio audience on Top of the Pops may well have found the song challenging to dance to—and clap to—but there were plenty besides who got Christmas vibes from Bjork’s performance of the single on the UK’s top weekly music show alone. They saw her one week singing it live in the company of fur-suited dancers and band members—for that full pantomime effect. They saw her another week in a sparkly dress and glittery makeup—for that full Christmas fairy effect. They then heard the song cropping up in Christmas commercials and at Christmas parties on a daily basis, such that it most definitely went down as a seasonal hit, which reached #4 on December 17 in Britain, before going top ten in Australia, Finland, and Ireland. “It makes me warm and fuzzy,” stated one YouTuber, while a DJ on RosFM community radio in Ireland recalled playing “It’s Oh So Quiet” on a show that purposefully avoided traditional Christmas tunes: “I did play Joni‘s ‘River’ and I played this as it was current and a kind of novelty record. Plus the ‘quiet’ is Christmas Eve and the ‘riot’ is the Big Day.”
Such, then, are the categories of person responsible for turning “It’s Oh So Quiet” into a mighty hit at the end of 1995 and making a huge mainstream star out of Bjork. All are to blame for the success of the song that soon brought the singer the kind of fame and media pressure she could have done without. It was, indeed, only the following February when footage of her appeared on the “And Finally” section of ITN News, losing her “Icelandic cool” with the reporter at Bangkok airport, after a week of being stalked by her. There was “no explanation” for the attack, the ITN man said. “Perhaps the answer’s in her latest hit?” Cut, then, to the finale of the “It’s Oh So Quiet” video, when Bjork sings at top volume: “you blow, blow, blow, blow your fuse—aaaaagh!”
It’s little wonder Bjork came to resent her association with the song. Increasingly so, as she pursued an even more experimental musical direction with 1997’s Homogenic and 2001’s Vespertine, while the record gained added notoriety as a “novelty hit.” She told Record Collector in 2002 that, “I almost regret doing it because I wanted to put so much importance on making new music.” She said the “best bit was the video.” And there were plenty of her fans who felt the same way.
We can still enjoy the cover, though, can’t we? It’s One Great Cover, right? …Right?
