Björk unveils captivating new video for ‘Sorrowful Soil’

“sorrowful soil is a song i wrote from random improvisations .. i kinda
thought i was writing another song but then when i edited it i threw away
most of the stuff and this is what stood there staring at me

for me, sorrowful soil and ancestress are the 2 songs on fossora written
for my mother ... ancestress is my take on funeral-music but sorrowful soil
is written 2 years before and mirrors more that last chapter .

at the time i had been working with the fantastic hamrahlid choir and
wanted to give them the piece they deserved , and with that intention
unknowingly wrote what the conductor þorgerður ingólfsdóttir said was the
most difficult piece they ever sang . it has 9 voices, not the usual 4 ( sopran,
alt, teno , bass ) which took the choir evenings of a whole summer to rehearse,
i am so incredibly grateful to them for this sacrifice and you can hear all
of it in the recording

the lyric is an attempt for an eulogy and instead of the dry fact checking :
place of birth , job, marriage , i wanted to celebrate the biological data like
the fact that most girls are born with 400 eggs ... and then in their lifetime
they make 2-3 nests...

when my grandfather passed away there was a pamphlet at the
hospital advising relatives how to talk to loved ones before they pass away.
i loved how it went really generic and universal and said that all of them
will give families to-do-lists (dry-cleaning and such)

but also ask if they did well .

the last part of the lyric is following this advice”