The Icelandic singer joins forces with her Spanish sister for a love song, “Oral”, the profits from which will help fight against intensive fish farming in Iceland and save the last wild salmon from extinction. In an immaculate and futuristic clip, Björk and Rosalía face off in single combat. Look.
Published
Reading time :
2 min
We could have dreamed of it, they beat us to it: singers Björk and Rosalía join forces on a new song, to discover below. Written by Björk, around twenty years ago, between albums Homogenic (1997) and Vespertine (2001), forgotten then rediscovered by the Icelander last March, Oral was updated in the company of the young Spanish star and producer Seda Bodega.
On this song “more pop than experimental” according to its author, who says she was initially inspired by Jamaican dancehall, their two deliciously youthful voices demonstrate that they are made to hear each other, mingling and responding perfectly, as they repeat the chorus “Is that the right thing to do? Oh I just don’t know” (Is this the right thing to do? Oh, I don’t know).
Saving Iceland’s wild salmon
With this piece, the two singers intend to denounce the ravages of intensive salmon fish farming in the Icelandic region of Seyðisfjörður, which according to them threatens the fish, makes them suffer, and also has an impact on the local fauna and flora by contributing to ocean acidification. Since thousands of salmon escaped from a fish farm, this has “began to alter the DNA of Icelandic salmon” And “this could lead to its extinction”worries Björk.
The profits from this song, including those of the record company, will be used to support the inhabitants of the fjords opposed to this industry and to cover their legal costs, via the Aegis association, while they only seek to save the last wild salmon from the north of the island.
Artists are “the canary in the coal mine”
In an interview with Guardian, Björk believes that artists often end up becoming environmentalists. She compares them to “canary in the coal mine” (These birds served as a warning to the miners. If they stopped singing, it meant that there was a gas leak and that they had to evacuate quickly before an explosion). “It’s our job to have our detectors and antennas on constant alert, to read what we feel in our environment and to be aware of it. We take this emergency into account and we want to act”she explains, hoping that this action will inspire others.
Oralwhich is a love song and is not about fish, as Björk is keen to point out in the Guardian, is accompanied by a strange, immaculate and futuristic music video by Spaniard Carlota Guerrero. Björk and Rosalía, probably dubbed and corrected in the image thanks to artificial intelligence, confront each other in a martial arts fight, before ganging up, swords in hand, against the camera.
Björk will close her Cornucopia tour in France at the beginning of December: it will be on the 2nd in Nantes and the 5th in Bordeaux.