Pneumonia

Pneumonia
When people describe me as girlish, I’m never happy about it, put it that way. But I’ve been in this long enough to know that what I do and how people perceive it is different. And I think Alice in Wonderland might be a side to all of us, which we like to keep pure, a fantasy. The Del Toro film ( Pan’s Labyrinth ) - I was surprised by the girl character. She’s so determined by her fantasy world that it was real right to the end. It really got me. I walked straight home and wrote ’Pneumonia’.

The Guardian, April 27 2007

Pneumonia
Other songs are messages to herself. The elegiac “Pneumonia“ uses only French horns, building up slow-motion chords behind Björk’s voice, as she reflects on a bout of pneumonia she had in January and on whether she had made herself too isolated : “All the moments you should have embraced/All the moments you should have not locked up.“

the New York Times, 29 april 2007

Pneumonia
Björk says she wrote the song at the piano in one take, after seeing the film "Pan’s Labyrinth" — and after having pneumonia for two weeks. There is a physical sadness to wheezing away with that disease. That, coupled with the determination of the little girl in that film to believe in her imagination, whatever it took, even though no one believed her, struck a chord with me. A few days later, the song was recorded with seven horn players.

The Washington Post, 5 may 2007

Pneumonia
I had just seen ’Pan’s Labyrinth’ and I had two weeks of pneumonia. It was really frustrating because I was trying to finish my album. I just had to sing one song and I had several choices of what would be the last song on the album. I try not to take antibiotics, but then I gave up after two weeks and took them and immediately got better. So, I went and saw the movie, came back home, and for the first time I wasn’t feeling quite as ill. I was feeling a little bit out of the thick of it. The song sort of came out of one take and ended up being that last song on the album. The album needed to go to that sort of emotional, soulful place.

www.spinner.com, August 30th 2007