“Pagan Poetry” by Björk

"Pagan Poetry" went out in November 2001, the second single off Vespertine, Björk's fourth studio album, and it lays desire bare: a song that sets sexual pleasure beside emotional fulfillment, wanting a love that satisfies the body and stays faithful too, without being sure both can be had at once. The title itself stands in for how tangled that feeling runs.

She wrote it alone and produced it, with Marius de Vries adding production and Mark "Spike" Stent mixing. There's a music box on the recording, captured by Erik Gosh, and that was a long time coming: Björk had long dreamed of making music with music boxes and had been collecting them while she waited for the right song. It turned into a moderate hit, reaching 38 in the UK and 15 in Canada.

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