Arisen My Senses

This is the opening track of Bjork's Utopia album. The song was also the first one she wrote for the record and it was the initial indication that it would be more upbeat than the Icelandic singer's previous set, Vulnicura. She explained to Dazed: "Vulnicura was about a very personal loss, and I think this new album is about a love that's even greater. It's about rediscovering love - but in a spiritual way, for lack of a better word."

Vulnicura was very much a break up album following Björk's split from artist Matthew Barney. Utopia, however finds her moving on and the instrumentation reveals the Icelandic songstress' more optimistic mindset. She told Pitchfork: "Looking back now, the melodies on Vulnicura are very sad, and there's short spaces between the notes. It's kind of paralyzed. The first song I wrote on this album, the opening song, 'Arisen My Senses,' is the opposite. The melody's like a constellation in the sky. It's almost like an optimist rebellion against the normal narrative melody. There's not one melody. It's like five melodies. I really loved that."

Like the other songs on Utopia this is a collaboration with Arca, Bjork's co-producer on Vulnicura. The track samples one of Arca's first released songs “Little Now A Lot”. The Icelandic singer recalled to Fact Magazine: "I actually found a loop of a mixtape or a SoundCloud thing that [Arca] had done three years prior. I just thought it was the most happiest firework that he’d ever done. I didn’t tell him about it – I just sampled it, sang it to him and he just exploded, you know? I wasn’t really conscious of what I was doing. I was reaching for the most euphoric, antigravity moment that he’d done, and then I exaggerated that by looping it and writing a harp arrangement around it and singing on top of it these ecstatic lyrics."