Isobel - Music Video

Music Video

The surreal music video was shot in black and white, near Dolgellau, by director Michel Gondry. It features a number of dream-like images. Björk plays a piano that is full of pipes that fill it with water. Children play in the water, and wear masks. Björk is later shown lying beside a river wearing a dress with lights in it. She pulls some light bulbs off her dress and plants them in the ground. The light bulbs grow and act as incubators or cocoons for toy airplanes inside them. When the airplanes grow big enough, they break out of the bulbs and fly away. At the same time, numerous skyscrapers grow out of the ground and eventually are covered in cockroaches. Björk is also shown walking through the countryside, up a mountain, and beside a river.

Speaking on Eurotrash she explained the song this way: "It's the story of Isobel. She was born in a forest, by a spark, and as she grew she realised that the pebbles on the forest floor were skyscrapers, and by the time she was a grown up woman and the skyscrapers had taken over the forest she found herself in a city and she didn't like all the people there so much because they were a bit too clever for her. She decided to send to the world all these moths that she trained to go and fly all over the world, to go inside windows of people's houses, the ones that are too clever, and they sit on their shoulders and remind them to stop being clever and start to function by their instincts. And they do that by singing 'Na, na na, na na na, na na..' to them. And they say 'Oh, sorry, I was being all clever there', and they start functioning on instinct." She told the programme that she worked well with Gondry: "I guess I've got a soft spot for scientists. When I was in school I used to fall for the boys with the thick glasses who sat at the back of the class and had insect collections round their house, and I guess, in a certain way, Michel fits on to that."