Declare Independence

For me, every time its starts I just burst laughing. I’m finding a lot of people don’t take it that way, which is okay. I seem to have a warped sense of humor that me and my three friends can understand, it’s very local. This one dress, for example... But I guess it’s sort of taking the piss of being myself, feeling that confrontational. I wanted the lyric to be a mix of like if you’re saying to your friend, who happens to be going out with a terrible boyfriend, and you say to the girl, "Declare independence ! Don’t let them do that to you !" [laughs] I just thought it’s so extreme, and so ridiculous to say. You know, "Make your own stamp ! Start your own currency !"

And on the other hand, you can take that concept completely different. There’s this big thing you hear in the papers always in Iceland, that we were a Danish colony for like 600 years, and we got independence only half a century ago. And there’s still two Danish colonies, which is Farore Islands and Greenland. They’re still trying to get independent, and it’s just not happening. Greenland almost got independent, but then the Danish found oil there, so... It’s not gonna happen. [laughs] It’s sort of maybe a little bit of an anthem written to Greenland.

XFM interview, April 2007