This is a challenging one to review. You take a glance at this cover, and your dopamine immediately surges from the music that starts playing in your head (pick one of the bangers you like). But let’s set aside the sound and focus solely on what our eyes can see. The cover depicts Björk as a strange creature in what appears to be a Japanese empress outfit. I say creature because she’s clearly not a human: look at her body structure, the shoulders, the neck, and the predatory alien eyes. That cover screams “weird”, and the choice of colors, textures and patterns only emphasize that. But it is clearly designed that way. Björk mocks the formula when you put a sexy feminine, girl on the cover to attract an audience and boost sales. She followed it before, but here she finally cut ties with mainstream pop.

[Men] can be silly, fat, funny, intelligent, hardcore, sensual, all those different things, philosophical. But with women they always have to be feminine. Feminine, feminine. … I just like to see women who can be characters and can be themselves.

So here she is, take it or leave it. Why do I rate the cover so low then? Isn’t it genius and deserves strong 10? I’m trying to be honest with myself: I don’t like it, really. Even if we leave out the questionable reference to Japanese culture, it is still repulsive and ugly. It is not beautiful; it is not even good. And to be honest, I also don’t see any connections with the music behind it. The Homogenic album cover is bad on purpose, and giving it a high rating would be an insult to the very Björk’s idea. So, 4/10.