Bjork: The Package, the Fan, and a Deadly Obsession

Grease Paint Assassin MK. Two. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Macarena by Los del Rio. And why would I play you that specific slide of come on Man?

of as yet unimagined artistic evolution. Drum and bass music blared throughout the apartment and ceedy jewel cases were scattered about most of the flat surfaces. A giant projector screen was set up for future film viewing Japanese independence and red in stimpy cartoons. The video cassettes and books were strewn about everywhere, and her bed was upstairs, as was the bed belonging to her ten year old son, and the dad was.

in her home country of Iceland. Granted Iceland, back in the time of Byork's breakthrough in nineteen seventy seven, had only a population of about a quarter million people, but still fame as fame, and no matter how atomized pressure

is pressure. B York's hippy parents recognized early on that their daughter could sing, and soon after a performance of young Buork's the recording of which was arranged by her parents to be broadcast on national icelandic radio, led to a recording contract and an album was released in December of nineteen seventy seven. A series of punk bands followed for Biorkis she developed her voice, a voice like no other. As the teenage Bork strolled through her icelandic Homeland bundled

up on her way to and from school. She cut through the raw, frozen landscape and the icy mountains shooting up out of nowhere, and along the jagged coastline, and passed the bulging glaciers and floating icebergs, and through the fertile lowlands and over the black sand beaches. This dramatic landscape gave way to wicked winds, winds that whipped up in sneaky fits and starts that were there in an

instant and then gone as soon as they arrived. As Buyork walked through this maze of natural drama, she sang to herself, and when the winds gusted, she'd have to raise her voice to hear herself, And when the winds disappeared, she'd drop her voice to a whisper so as to not be heard by any curious passers by. In this way, she developed one of the most unique singing styles in all of pop music. To hear Byork sing is to hear the voice of a true original, and that originality

was born of Iceland's dynamic terrain. Just like the singer herself, Byorke's voice sores, it shoots up out of nowhere like an iceberg, and then quickly sinks below the waterline, submerging itself in the Mystery of the Deep. You could hear this style rounding into form in Buyork's first real project of international consequence, her band The Sugarcubes, a band that garnered critical acclaimed in the UK and in the US with their single Birthday and their Electra Records distributed album

Life Stute Good. In nineteen eighty eight, The Sugar Cubes appeared on Saturday Night Live in the States, but by nineteen ninety the band was broken up and b York was now a young single mother, having given birth to a son by the Sugar Cubes guitarist Door Elden, and she soon launched a solo career through a creative collaboration with Soul to Soul Alarm and Massive Attack co conspirator Nellie Hooper, and the fruit of this relationship led to

the release of Byork's first proper solo album debut in nineteen ninety three with its massive hit Human Behavior, and the album was an international commercial success, which quickly led to more success, including the brit Awards and a collaboration with Madonna for her nineteen ninety four album Bedtime Stories, and before anyone could take a beat to appreciate the whirlwinds swirling around b York, the artist continued creating Now in collaboration with producer DJ Trickey in eight o eight

State Graham Massey, and by nineteen ninety five Byorck had a second, even more successful solo album on her hands called Post. Post was in a way a perfect sophomore effort.

It reinforced every promise made on Buyorck's debut. It doubled down on the sounds Buyork first presented with excellent singles Army of Me and It's Oh So Quiet, and the album solidified Buorck as a one of a kind visual artists, with her videos for those tunes, each one presenting a new vision imagined by the artist and the groundbreaking director she chose to collaborate with Michelle Gondry and Spike Jones

among them. It was a vision that cast Buorick as a generational artist, a venerable pixie five foot four but full of roar and the slack generation's female answer to the Man Who Fell to Earth, but with beats and a total babe to boom by this time, Buorke's fame was not atomized. By nineteen ninety b York was an explosive international pop star. Nineteen ninety six was a much different time for pop stars than twenty twenty five. Nowadays,

artists pay a premium for people's attention. The premium they pay is their privacy. In exchange for relevance. Artists open up their private worlds to show the public their authentic cells, and no moment is too sacred for some and for others, even the most innocuous peak behind the curtain can result in millions of views, like shares and new followers. In nineteen ninety six, it was very much the opposite. In

the nineties, artists put a premium on privacy. Once an artists broke through, there was no need to open themselves up because the media at the time was completely different. Small armies of publicists and agents and managers ensured that the public saw exactly what the artists and celebrities wanted them to see. Spoon feeding publications to keep their clients' names in the public long enough to maintain continuous relevance. What canned photo ops, pre arranged Q and A interviews

could only go so far. It was then as now natural, if you'll excuse upon human behavior to want to know more about the artists who inspire us enter. The paparazzi, pesky photographers, and gossipy so called journalists still exist as they always have. It's just that today they're more of a utility than a nuisance. In this digital age war for our eyes and ears, artists and celebrities court attention

and thus the paparazzi for clicks, follows and relevance. In the naval gazing nineties, artists loathed the attention of the paparazzi, going to extremes to avoid their cameras and questions lest their raw comments and unwanted candids would end up in

the pages of checkout line trash. So when itty Bitty Buork went full Sean penn On a member of the paparazzi in a Bangkok airport in early nineteen ninety six, attacking a reporter with her fists in front of her young son and also in front of numerous other cameras, this behavior was not seen as something beyond the pale. It was only a bad moment for Byorke, who had just completed an international flight. It was likely sleep deprived

and a bit beyond herself in the moment. Buorck eventually apologized and the incident wasn't in the least bit damaging to her career. Still, the images of Buick's attack were broadcast all over the world. For culture vultures, this was a delicious peak behind the curtain at Buorck's authentic self,

a young Tiger mom defending her privacy. Most people could sympathize with that, including a fan all the way over in the United States, an obsessed fan, a fan whose obsession was bending toward derangement, a fan who was in love with Byork, A fan who wrote countless letters to Byork, letters that went unanswered. A fan who had to know

that Byorke knew who he was. A fan who was sick, A fan who was racist, A fan who could not accept that his obsession, this snow white picture of creative purity, was now in a relationship with the UK DJ Goldie, a black man. This demented fan believes he had to do something about this agreement, this insult. If b York wouldn't answer his letters, if Buorck wanted to debase herself. If Buorke wanted to embarrass fans of hers like him, well, then he would just have to introduce himself to Byork.

He'd have to make sure that Byorke knew who he was, and he'd do so formally with a letter, a letter inside of a package, a package that come hell or high water, Byorke would open, and by doing so, Byorke would learn exactly who he was. And seconds later Borke will be violently blown to bits. Dark, syrapy and persistent. That's how the housing manager at the Hollywood, Florida Vambieran apartments would describe the substance seeping into the ceiling. If

there was a smell to it, he couldn't tell. But whatever it was, it didn't seem like the substance was done with the cheap acoustic ceiling tiles. Slowly it persisted through the floor from the apartment above and down into this concerned tenants apartment. There are those moments in life when the world is one way, but then you know if you open your mouths and say what you're about to say, then nothing will ever be the same again.

The housing manager didn't know exactly what the substance was, but he knew that this was one of those moments. He had to do it. One phone call and the police were there in minutes. Ricardo Lopez seen Byorke's Human Behavior video on MTV three years earlier, and it changed his life. Byork was an unimaginable beauty to Ricardo, who even to himself was an unimaginable beast. Eighteen, extremely overweight, and hopelessly unable to speak to girls, Ricardo had to

some extent already given up on the world. A Uruguayan immigrant and helpless mama's boy whose mother lived on another continent in his home country, Ricardo's life consisted of unsteady work with his older brother's Southeast Florida extermination company, Miami Mice, and increasingly locking himself away in his tiny Van Buren apartment and obsessing over celebrities. Ricardo saw himself as a

celebrity someday, not as an artist. Though he did paint and illustrate and wasn't without talent, he did not see art as his ticket to fame, but simply as a way to occupy his hands. In his overactive mind, no celebrity would come to him by other means. Ricardo had no desire to accomplish anything in exchange for his fame. He just wanted to be famous for the sake of being famous. MTV, tabloid magazines nineteen ninety, celebrity culture in general,

red carpets, gossip disguised as entertainment news shows. Ricardo Lopez lived for all of it. More and more. He saw himself as a part of this machine, alongside some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Bruce Arnold sly naturally that Ricardo needed a celebrity girlfriend. At first, he settled on Geena Davis. She was adorable, if not terribly original. But then, upon seeing Byorke blast across his television screen one night, Ricardo Lopez fell in love. B York has been an obsession.

Look at his beautiful face, as cute, innocent, sweet and shy thing. Ricardo poured his love into the pages of his diary, hundreds of pages detailing the endless appeal of the Icelandic songstress, pure as the Nordic snow. Buorke's beauty promised just as much as God does on the first day of Spring. In one day, Ricardo's love would be reciprocated Byorke would come to love him the way his mother did, but differently, in the way that Ricardo imagined.

Only artists can love, tapping into the same deep reservoir of empathy and sensuality they mind for their work.

Ricardo's Entertainment Weekly arrived in the mail. At first, the magazine sat untouched on his makeshift plywood desk, amid the squalor in his small apartment, dirty styrofoam takeout containers, sticky empty soda cans, filthy clothes, paint supplies, old newspapers, trash bins, overflowing wet towels hanging over various pieces of cheap furniture, all of it barely masking the layer of real filth below it, all covering his entire living space, and on

the walls numerous paintings, drawings, and posters of Byork captured in what Ricardo Lopez believed were better days, because, as his Entertainment Weekly had just informed him, Bjork had changed these days. Byork was dating a black man, the producer in DJ Goldie. And there they were, right there out on the town and the pages of his magazine. Look at the way he dressed. What the hell is that all about? Didn't Goldie have any class? Didn't he know he was the luckiest man on the planet to be

on the arm of such a pure soul. But Bjork was no longer pure. B York was damaged. This was a betrayal that Ricardo was certain Buyorke could never recover from. After this, after being with this man, with Goldie, the purity was gone, and Goldie knew it, and now Ricardo knew it. And now Ricardo had to make sure that Buorke knew it. So Ricardo took his pen to paper. He found Bjork's London address and wrote Byork countless letters, and not one of them was returned. And this further

fueled Ricardo's rage. After all, he'd given her the best of him. Why wouldn't she acknowledge him? Why wouldn't she write back? Did she think she was better than him? And there was that old song Murder. He said it was the B side to the original version of It's Oh So Quiet, the song Buorke covered and released on her second album. The actress Betty Hutton first recorded the American version back in nineteen fifty one, Murder. He said

the song. Buorke must have heard that song, and that song was this situation that Ricardo now found himself in. In that song, the singer makes fun of the man pursuing her. The singer thinks her suitor is beneath her because of the way that he talks. Murder, he says, like some classless buffoon, not knowing how to converse in polite society.

didn't return his fucking letters? Did she even read them? Did she even care at all about him? Why? Why didn't she return his letters? Ricardo Lopez slipped into madness and thought murder. He said, Okay, then one final letter to my love. I am are old angel of death for her. The authorities thanked the housing manager for making the call and politely asked him to vacate the premises, but not to go too far in case they needed

him for anything else. The lead crime scene investigator saw the video camera set up in Ricardo's apartment, and he immediately delegated a junior officer to start reviewing the tape to get to the bottom of just what the fuck it was that had happened in this hell hole of an apartment over the past few days. In no time, the authorities discovered on that tape a reality far worse than the horror show they were currently standing. Smack dab

in the middle of. One of the camera's videotapes revealed that Ricardo Lopez had indeed drafted one final letter to his love to the international pop star Buyork, and that Ricardo Lopez had placed that letter in a box which, upon opening would trigger an explosive device that would spray deadly sulfuric acid all over Byorke's face. Before this happened, though, Buorke would know from the letter in the box who Ricardo Lopez was, and that was the point she had

to know before Buorke died. She had to know who he was. And now it was only a matter of time before that happened, because that letter and that letter bomb that package was on its way via international mail the Buork's London apartment, and it would arrive and no more than four days.

the next week, the clock was ticking. Florida police, who had discovered the existence of the bomb and pieced together its intended target across the pond, notified New Scotland Yard. Immediately, New Scotland Yards sprung into action. A specialist operations group is assembled to counter this potential crime of terrorist obsession. The only problem was that at the moment, with the package in transit, there was little investigators could do to

thwart this deadly threat except wait and pray. With the package tucked away in a cargo plane high above the Atlantic Ocean, authorities went to work and forming local London mail sorting stations of the situation and what type of package to be on the lookout for. They did not inform Byork. Authorities were confident they'd locate and destroy the deadly package long before it reached its destination. Decided, for the time being, anyway, that there was no need to

notify Byork of the impending danger. If any pesky journalists or paparazzi were to find out, it would be a much bigger, much harder to control public crisis. For now, the situation seemed contained, but time was of the essence. After her Wembley Stadium gig, Byork settled into her cozy apartment with her son for a couple of days off, investigators got a lead on which plane the package might be arriving on. A bomb squad was dispatched to heathrow

An Airport. The plane was surged and nothing. No sign of the package, no sign of a bomb. At the same time, Byork and her son went about their daily routine in her apartment, oblivious, completely unaware of the threat against her life. You see all that damage, that's sulfuric, guys, ninety six percent. I burned myself a little bit in the tongue because I wanted to fight blue. And this is so your guests, that that was diluted big.

was no confirmation that Buorck had actually been contacted. It was just before four pm on September sixteenth, nineteen ninety six, not quite tea time at Byork's, but it was time to check the mail.

and warn her of the threat. Authorities have also just upon mail sorting stations and are frantically searching for the package from Ricardo Lopez. Back in America, US authorities were still piecing together Ricardo Lopez's madness. Some people give and some people take. Ricardo Lopez felt that he had given the best of himself to Byork and she'd taken plenty

and given back nothing. This was, of course insanity. Buorke had no idea who Ricardo Lopez was, or that he'd been trying to contact her, or that he felt aggrieved in any way, and had she known any of this. She was under no obligation to give Ricardo Lopez anything.

In fact, Byorke had given plenty. She was an artist, a prolific artist, not some charlatan who worked her way up the creative arts ladder of success and manufactured pap for shock value, fabricating headline news every couple months to keep the journalists and paparazzi hooked in order to maintain a certain level of relevance. Instead, York was constantly creating.

She constantly walked through the world, thinking about the next bit of music she was going to make, the next image she was going to subvert, the next statement she was going to drop. She was forever absorbing other people's music, films, books, fashion, processing it all and finding ways to take elements to improve upon, to break down, to discard, and then tapping into the greater infinite intelligence to create her own music

and art, art that was truly novel. This is love to create, to bring something new into the world that brings joy to others, or that provokes thought, or that compels some other sort of positive action as an act of love. It's one of the most impactful things we as humans can do in this world. Monsters do the opposite. Monsters destroy, Monsters take.

hour traffic, traffic that authorities were stuck in. Authorities who were desperately trying to reach Buorick and warn her about the impending threat on her life at the hands of an obsessed madman. After Ricardo Lopez mailed his letter bomb to Byork, he returned to his apartment. He shaved his head.

He took red and green grease paint and painted his bald skull and face a la Martin Sheen's captain Benjamin Willard in Apocalypse, now snaking his way up the river toward the unimaginable and on her way to her mailbox, Byork was taking a completely different path. And back in Ricardo's apartment, Ricardo shaved and painted for battle. Stripped down, he grabbed his gun, certain he'd accomplished all he would in this life, and then Ricardo put Byork's song I

Remember You on full blast. Ricardo looked into the camera. Ricardo breathed heavily in quick burst to juice his resolve. Buyorck blared in the background. Ricardo put the gun in his mouth. Ricardo drew quicker, heavier breaths, psyching himself up for what was to come. Then b York stopped singing. The song had ended. It all ended. As the camera rolled Ricardo Lopez bit down on the barrel of his

thirty eight caliber revolver and pulled the trigger. Once at her mailbox, b York held the package in her hands, contemplated it, what it meant, who it was intended for, and why it needed to be sent, its impact when received, and what people would think. And that didn't matter so much. What mattered was how they felt, how they felt now, and how they felt in the future. This wasn't some

grand gesture or a work of art. It was just a package, a letter accompanying the flowers that she was sending to the family of Ricardo Lopez, expressing her condolences for the loss of their son, who had just killed himself while trying to kill her. That dark syrapy persistent substance seeping down through the ceiling of one unlucky tenant's apartment back in Hollywood, Florida. That substance that was reported to authorities by the Van Buren apartment's housing manager. That

was Ricardo Lopez's blood. Five days earlier, Ricardo Lopez had videotaped his own suicide hours after mailing the package he intended to kill Byork with. Upon discovering Lopez's body. The authorities in Florida discovered a video camera on a stand just a few feet from the corpse, as well as the previously mentioned trove of recorded videotapes. When they reviewed the tapes, they saw Ricardo Lopez and all of his madness unraveling into a storm of murderous rage, hell bent

on killing Buyork. The tapes revealed the exact date and time Ricardo mailed his package, and from there the authorities were able to trace, track down, and ultimately destroy the package before it got to Buorke. Byorke, of course, lived and continues to create and remains a relevant artist to this day. Ricardo Lopez chose a different path, hate and destruction, and he died in disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in this this.

you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod dot com slash Membership members can listen to every episode of disgracelan ad free, Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events.

Visit disgracelampod dot com slash membership for details, rate and review the show, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at disgracelaandpod Rock a Rolla. He Thedann