The Curse

Agnes Obel wrote this song after reading the 2011 best seller Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. "It's a book about the mind, and there is a chapter in the book about narrative fallacies, and I thought that was really interesting," Obel said in a Songfacts interview. "How we construct these narratives of our own lives, even though so many things, almost anything that happens, is the result of a lot of things outside of our own control and doesn't have any meaning - it's completely accidental. But our minds want to put meaning into everything and to make sense of them."

The tendency for humans to search for meaning can be both a blessing and a curse, which is a theme Obel explores in this song. Art, science and discovery are all fueled by this curiosity, but so is aggression and insularity. In this song, there is a curse that could be a blessing in disguise.