Bjork cries “Tibet! Tibet!” at a concert in Shanghai

China Photos/Getty Images

Give Björk points for chutzpah. At the end of her song, “Declare Independence,” the iconoclastic Icelandic pop singer shouted, “Tibet! Tibet!” The incident would be unremarkable were she not in Shanghai at the time. Naturally, her outburst wasn’t reported in China’s rigidly state-controlled press, but it has stirred up nationalist anger online. And it made the closing moments of her concert a little awkward:

The atmosphere was very strange, uncomfortable compared to the rest of the concert,” said audience member Stephen Gow, a British teacher who lives in Shanghai. People didn’t boo, Gow said, but they left the Shanghai International Gymnastic Center hurriedly.

Björk appears to use the song as a neo-Wilsonian Mad-Lib. Last month, she dedicated it to Kosovo, and in the video for it, she wears an outfit bearing the flags of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, both Danish territory.