Human Behaviour - Background and Inspiration

Background and Inspiration

"After The Sugarcubes, I guess I had a mixture of liberation and fear. It had been obvious for a while in the band that I had different tastes than the rest. That's fair enough - there's no such thing as correct taste. I wrote the melody for Human Behaviour as a kid. A lot of the melodies on Debut I wrote as a teenager and put aside because I was in punk bands and they weren't punk. The lyric is almost like a child's point of view and the video that I did with Michel Gondry was based on childhood memories."

—Björk talking to David Hemingway about the song.

"Human Behaviour" was written by Nellee Hooper & Björk, and was produced by Hooper. The song was first written in 1988 when Björk was still the leading singer of the Sugarcubes, but she decided not to release it with the band.

The song was inspired by David Attenborough documentaries and by the relation between humans and animals. Björk explained to Rolling Stone, talking about the inspiration for the song: "'Human Behaviour' is an animal's point of view on humans. And the animals are definitely supposed to win in the end." On a recent Q&A with fans on The Guardian website, Björk revealed more information about the writing of the song: "I wrote it I was referring to my childhood and probably talking about how I felt more comfortable on my own walking outside singing and stuff than hanging out with humans..."

This is the first song on the "Isobel song cycle", a transcendental cycle in Björk's discography which goes from "Human Behaviour" to "Wanderlust" (2007).

The B-side contained in the cassette edition of the single is the reggae-influenced "Atlantic", which was produced and written by Björk. Its lyrics talks about Björk's family: "My son has eight grandmothers and eight grandfathers and it's about the love and the complications of that".