“Bachelorette” by Björk

"Bachelorette" went out on 1 December 1997 as the second single from Homogenic, Björk's third studio album, and it arrived with a past: the song was first written for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Stealing Beauty, and when that project was withdrawn, she kept it. Wanting words on an epic scale, she turned to her friend Sjón, a poet in Iceland, and told him the whole story over days of red wine at the kitchen table until he had the lyrics.

The song follows Homogenic's beats-and-strings plan, theatrical and emotionally charged. Björk produced and arranged it, a string section of violins, violas and cellos lines up against Trevor Morais's electronic drums, and timpani, timbales, harp, glass harmonica, accordion, pipe organ and Alp horn pile on the drama. Spike Stent mixed it, and the video's surreal art direction won it an award at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.