Play Dead

Play Dead
When I met David Arnold he’d already written the score - like a three minute greatest hits of what’s in the film - and Jah Wobble had written the bass part. My role was basically to write a melody and a lyric that would make it into a pop song. Björk persuaded the director to write a whole page comprising phrases that represented the emotions of the characters in the film. At the end of the day I only used the title and one line : "Sometimes, it’s just like sinking." For the rest, I used my words, because I could see what point of view I was supposed to be singing from. It was very difficult for me because at that time I was very happy and all the lyrics I’ve done lately have been happy and hilarious. To do something so painful I had to get help from Danny.

VOX, december 1993

Play Dead
I’d just written Debut when I was asked to do this song for ’The Young Americans’. I watched the film and wrote ’Play Dead’ based on the main character. It was actually fun because the character in the film was suffering and going through hardcore tough times and at the time I was at my happiest. It was quite liberating to sit down after writing a whole album to write from someone else’s point of view. The particular character was pretty fucked up, you know. In the film, he had a girlfriend who just wanted him to be happy and in love and he just couldn’t get his head ’round it. It was just me trying to imagine what he would say to her. Things he never actually said to her in the film but things he would have said to her.

Record Collector, August 2002, August 2002