Big Time Sensuality - Background

Background

"It's not erotic or sensual even if it may sound like that. As you know, you create pretty deep, full-on love relationships with friends. A lot of it is also about myself. I can be a coward a lot of the time and there comes a moment when I write a song when I get quite brave. It's a lot about me dealing with myself rather than attacking other people. Would I like to know the future? No. There's a side to me that likes to plan a little bit ahead and there's a side that just needs to be free. I've got problems with booking airline tickets - I always change them. Sometimes I wonder if it's just for me to feel free. To kind of not be nailed in is really important to me".

After leaving The Sugarcubes, Björk traveled to London where she began having contacts with electronic music, and that inspired her to change her musical style from the pop-rock sounds of the Sugarcubes to a more alternative and electronic style of music. "Big Time Sensuality" was one of the last song to be written for Debut, and was originally planned to be the first single from the album, but it got delayed by the release of "Human Behaviour". It was then intended to be the third single, but it got delayed again by the success of "Play Dead", and was finally released as the fourth single in November 1993.

The song was co-written by Björk and Nellee Hooper and produced by Hooper, which helped her in writing and producing her first two albums. The singer's meeting with Hooper inspired her in writing the song: "I think it's quite rare, when you're obsessed with your job, as I am, when you met someone who's your other part jobwise and enables you to do what you completely want". The lyrics deals with enjoying life to its fullest and, in spite of its name, it was inspired by Björk's friends. The lyrics deal also with braveness: "I’ve got a lot of courage, but I’ve also got a lot of fear. You should allow yourself to be scared. It’s one of the prime emotions. You might almost enjoy it, funny as it sounds, and find that you can get over it and deal with it. If you ignore these things, you miss so much. But when you want to enjoy something, especially when it’s something you’ve just been introduced to, you’ve got to have a lot of courage to do it. I don’t think I’m more courageous than most people. I’m an even mixture of all those prime emotions".

After the release of Debut, Björk's songs received numerous remixes from different producers. "Big Time Sensuality" received three different remixes from the Fluke. One of them, called the "Fluke Minimix", was chosen by Björk to receive a single treatment instead of the original, and the remix was performed on different occasions and a music video was made of it. An extended version of the "Fluke Minimix" was used as the "single version" of the song, and is also the version used in the video. However, this version was not available until the release of Björk's Greatest Hits, as the version featured on the single was shorter.

The single also contained "Glóra" ("Gloria") and "Síðasta Ég" ("The Last Me") as B-sides, two songs that were recorded by The Elgar Sisters, a group formed in the early eighties by guitarist Guðlaugur Kristinn Óttarsson and Björk. "Glóra" is an instrumental track which features a flute-solo played by Björk, that wrote and produced the track. "Síðasta Ég" was written by Björk, Óttarsson and Þór Eldon Jónsson, a member of the Sugarcubes, and was produced by Björk and Óttarsson, with guitar played by Óttarsson.