Thom Yorke

Yago : When you recorded "I’ve Seen It All" for Selmasongs with Thom Yorke in the studio, was there an instant click ? What was it like, being in the studio with him ?

Björk : We’ve known about each other for a while. [We were] always just about to do something together, and we were just waiting for the right situation. I was really excited about this song ; I thought that I finally had a song that deserved his voice, ’cause he’s definitely my favorite male singer in the world. I asked him, and he being the kind of guy he is, full of integrity — there’s not a grain of artificial, show-business behavior in him — he kind of insisted that he would turn up [in the studio] and be there for quite a while, so the communication in the song, the recording, was real and genuine. It wasn’t just a turn-it-on, you know, "I recorded my bit in Las Vegas and he recorded his..." you know, [like] we never met or something. It was the opposite, and that actually came from him, ’cause I was all just kind of being in work mode, "Yeah, we have to get it done," and he was all, "No, no, no."

I guess that comes from him being in a band. At that stage, he just finished [Radiohead’s Kid A], so he’d done three years of being in a room with five people, and it’s all about communication. You can be playing a song, but if you’re absentminded, it’s not good. It’s all about the actual effort you make to bond with someone.

So yeah, we sung for, like, four days, a few hours a day — maybe I’m exaggerating ; I’m not sure, truthfully — until we came to that place. Because I think the way I sang that song was pretty [Björk makes explosion sound], and for him, it’s a very different approach. He made me sing it differently. It’s kind of more sensitive and more in touch, you know. I was very flattered by his effort.

MTV news, march 2001