Oral (song)

"Oral"
Song by Björk and Rosalía
Written	1998
Released	21 November 2023
Recorded	March 2023
Label	One Little Independent
Composer(s)	Björk Guðmundsdóttir
Producer(s)	Björk Rosalía Sega Bodega

"Oral" is a song recorded by Icelandic singer-musician Björk alongside Spanish singer and songwriter Rosalía. A charity record to protest against extensive open-pen fish farming in Iceland, it is scheduled to be released on 21 November 2023 through One Little Independent.

The pair will donate the proceeds to activists who oppose industrial salmon farming in Iceland, currently in the spotlight after revelations of repeated escapes of thousands of fish into the wild.

Background and release

Björk is no strange to charity song to strenghthen environmental activism. In 2008, she released the song "Náttúra", featuring Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke, from which all proceeds went to the Náttúra campaign, an environmental group she co-founded to fight the construction of foreign-backed aluminium factories in Iceland. She founded the Náttúra Foundation that same year to support Iceland’s natural habitats and protest against aluminium factories being built there, and campaigned against the construction of an energy project in the country’s highlands in 2015, calling for a national park to be created in its stead. She has celebrated the natural world in her music, and has supported activist Greta Thunberg, praising her anthology The Climate Book.

In the wake of nation-wide protests against Norwegian-owned commercial farming operations that threaten to disrupt native ecosystems in Seyðisfjörður, Björk reviseted "Oral", a song she composed in 1998, and offered it to Rosalía, who she had met through El Guincho in 2017. The proceeds from the song will go towards anti-fish farming organized activists in the Eastfjord.

Composition

"My interpretation of the lyrics are that you’re wondering about revealing your feelings to a man, maybe crossing over from a dream state. (...) It’s totally that moment when you’ve met someone, and you don’t know if it’s friendship or something more. So you become, I guess, aroused. And you become very aware of your lips. That’s maybe why I called the song “Oral.” You don’t know what the consequences are if you act. Sometimes fantasy can be amazing, and that’s enough; you don’t have to also do things."

Björk on the lyrics of "Oral", Rolling Stone

"Oral" was written between the release of her 1997 album Homogenic and the recording cycle of Vespertine (2001). However, "it was too poppy and didn’t really fit either of those albums" so she "put it on salt". The singer had a special feeling for the song, revisiting it "every three years asking her manager to go look for it, but he could never find it because she kept giving him the wrong name". After remembering the title of the lost record in March 2023 while in a hotel room in Australia, thinking she could use it to benefit the environment, “where my heart is”, she states, she asked Rosalía to "help her update it for a contemporary audience as she wanted it "to be in some conversation with the present", with production by the Irish-Scottish producer Sega Bodega.

"Oral" is reported to be a Jamaican dancehall-inspired song about "wondering about revealing your feelings to a man, maybe crossing over from a dream state". Thus, it is not a song about fish. Also, it is not Björk at her most experimental but "as poppy and sugarous as she'll ever get".