Creating Music for "Dancing in the Dark" (Interview)

"I've Seen It All", the melody was something I wrote back in '97. And the like, main string arrangements, lines, I sort of had that in my head for a year or so. And then I got asked to do this film. And it seemed to fit with. The fact that I was starting to write introvert music anyway, and also the fact that I always wanted to do a musical since I was a kid. And I actually have spoken to Spike Jones about that we were going to do a musical together. And then I sort of called Spike and said, "Listen, I got this offer and I don't know if I can decide on what to do", and he felt totally cool about it, so I felt like I was [?] or something. But uh, yеah, so I ended up doing this film, and I wanted to do thе music and then the director taught me into acting, too, which I'm not sure was a good idea, sort of still makes me think which songs I would've written if I were to spend that energy hanging on set and having out-of-body experiences. Probably use that in writing songs, you know, so, but you can speculate forever, obviously. But what was good about doing the film is when I got back into the studio and it was over. I probably appreciated the studio 10 times better because, yeah, I think you should be where your heart is really, and everything else is really, I think is a waste, you know, but actually, it was the same guy who wrote the words, Sjón That wrote the words to "Oceania". And then afterwards, when I got to make my album. I thought certain people really, were really great, you know, like, Catherine Deneuve was incredible and just has all this character when she sings and there were certain songs, maybe this song was quite heartfelt to me because it lived with me a long time before I did the movie, and was quite important to me, like quite emotional song. And also, I sort of thought about working with Thom Yorke for a long time and what always felt that I didn't have 'good enough song for him to even ask him, you know, and then I thought this song was maybe, you know, something that was worth, you know, of him. So I asked him to do it, and he only came to Spain for a week. And we had, like, a really precious week together. And we would sing it over and over again, like every day, until this take came, like, sort of, towards the end.