The Björk song inspired by Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’
A true pioneer of experimental pop music, Björk is one of the most influential artists to have emerged in the late 20th century. After rising to prominence as the lead vocalist of The Sugarcubes, she embarked on a solo career in the 1990s, releasing her first album, Debut, in 1993.
Subsequently, Björk has been praised for her innovative approach to songwriting, popularising the use of electronic music within pop. Never afraid to limit herself to one genre, every Björk album demonstrates a wide array of influences. For example, Debut spans ambient to trip-hop, jazz, techno and industrial. Evidently, the musician looks to a vast scope of artists for inspiration, using these unending influences to craft a unique sound.
However, like all good musicians, Björk takes significant inspiration from non-musical influences, like nature, often incorporating sounds that emulate natural phenomena like frost or mud. She also looks to cinema, citing the 1973 movie The Hourglass Sanatorium as a particular favourite.
In 2007, Björk released the album Volta, which contained the song ‘Pneumonia’, directly inspired by Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 dark fantasy film Pan’s Labyrinth. The movie follows a young girl, Ofelia, who enters a magical fantasy world as an escape from her oppressive stepfather and ill mother, set against the backdrop of the Francoist period following the Spanish Civil War. Led by unrelenting French horns, the song sees Björk open with the lines, “Get over the sorrow, girl/ The world is always going to be made of this/ You can trust in it/ Unless you breathe in/ Bravely”.
Björk revealed the song was inspired by the movie, which she watched while recovering from a bout of pneumonia. “It was really frustrating because I was trying to finish my album,” she said. “I just had to sing one song and I had several choices of what would be the last song on the album. I try not to take antibiotics, but then I gave up after two weeks and took them and immediately got better.”
The singer added: “So, I went and saw the movie, came back home, and for the first time I wasn’t feeling quite as ill. I was feeling a little bit out of the thick of it. The song sort of came out of one take and ended up being the last song on the album,” she told Spinner.
Later, during an interview with the Guardian, Björk went into greater detail about why Pan’s Labyrinth struck a chord with her. “I think Alice in Wonderland is a side to all of us, which we like to keep pure, a fantasy,” she said. “The Del Toro film – I was surprised by the girl character. She’s so determined by her fantasy world that it was real right to the end. It really got me. I walked straight home and wrote ‘Pneumonia’.”
Listen to the song below.
