I've Seen It All

björk's idea

It is not a Radiohead song. Björk wrote it with Sjón and Lars von Trier for Dancer in the Dark, and it is Selma's song: the words of someone going blind, deciding she has seen enough. In the film she sings it with Peter Stormare, on a train.

For the soundtrack album, Selmasongs, she wanted someone else.

It was my idea to work with Thom. We spent four days in Spain just singing as and when we felt like it. He's a very pure soul and I know he doesn't do things lightly. So it was great that he agreed.

björk · nme, 15 august 2000

They recorded over four days in March 2000, her vocals cut in Las Vegas. It went out as the first promotional single from the album on 21 July 2000, as a download from her website, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

not everyone was convinced

MTV called it “a beautiful and eerie track, the pair's vocals careening over a techno beat, but just under a lovely set of strings… a minor masterpiece”. Pitchfork thought the pairing did not work: “when Björk's soaring, intense delivery meets Yorke's general disinterest, the chemistry is far from convincing”.

Two videos exist: the scene lifted from the film, and an interactive piece by Floria Sigismondi made for MTV, in which the viewer changes the effects by clicking. A third, by M/M Paris, was cancelled.

not a radiohead song

It sits in this catalogue as a Yorke appearance, not a band recording. Radiohead have never performed it.