SONG INFO
Performed by Björk with The Icelandic Choir
Written by JakobÃÂna Sigurdardottir
Composed by Jórunn Viðar
The original version of this song can be found on the Smekkleysa release by Jórunn Viðar - ÚnglÃÂngurinn I Skóginum.
"It probably means "Calm of being awake".. it's hard to explain. But it's basically a lullaby, and it's the one song on the album that is not by me, it's by an Icelandic composer who is like 80 years old now. There's a funny story for that song, because I wanted that song first to be on Vespertine, and there was this music box company that was making 12" copper plates where they drill holes into the plates that is the song, and it takes forever to do them. I got them first to do 'Pagan Poetry', then 'Aurora' and then 'Frosti'. Then I sent 'Vökuró' for them to do, because the cycle of this disk takes one minute - and 'Vökuró' has four verses which each take one minute, so it was perfect, and each verse goes slower and slower which makes sense, because most songs start slow and then go fast, but since this is a lullaby it starts fast and goes slower. But it takes them so long to drill the holes in the copper plates that I still haven't got it - so it missed Vespertine.
So then we did this song for this album, and I called the composer and go "I just recorded this song, is it OK with you that I put it on my album?" and she goes "Yeah it's OK. You're obviously very influenced by your daughter." ...I go "...Yeah?". "Well she's got blue eyes, doesn't she?" and I couldn't really work out what that had to do with anything. Then we said goodbye, and then later I worked out that the song was actually sung to a little girl that has blue eyes. Four years ago when I wanted to do that song, and was having the battle with the musicbox-makers, there was no way I could have known that in four years time I would have a little girl with blue eyes. It's a little bit of a sentimental story." (Björk, XFM 25aug04)
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