La chanson a été écrite alors que Björk s’intéressait aux archétypes en psychologie analytique élaborés par le psychiatre suisse Carl Jung. Le morceau explore les thèmes de la pensée matriarcale du sacrifice, de l’auto-apitoiement et de la redécouverte de soi.
She now feels physically rooted, and emotionally, she says, there is no divorce trauma left to dredge. “I’m over it,” she says, waving a hand. “It’s absolutely finished.” Nonetheless, after wormholing in psychology podcasts, she became fascinated with Jungian victimhood archetypes, trotting them out at dinner parties and insisting that friends, too, identify their flavor of victimhood. Her own complex—deferring her needs to benefit staff, friends, and family—creates a “topsy-turvy” headspace, she says. “You think you’re being the hero, but you’re actually sacrificing something, and then you become a victim.”
Björk, Pitchfork
Instead of pointing at somebody else all the time, it’s so nice to rediscover yourself. To break through the concrete mask of a certain feeling at a certain time. I think in the lyrics themselves, there’s this poetry about a human situation that’s really welcoming for everyone, I think everyone can understand it
björk
Inspiration
Repérée et analysée par bjorkaeiou, la mélodie pour clarinette basse aux alentours de 2:30 est inspirée du titre « Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes » du second tableau du ballet Le Sacre du printemps de Igor Stravinsky.
On “Victimhood,” sampled fog horns conjure the murk of someone drowning in self-pity—a quality Björk used to pride herself on lacking. But she recently realized that she does tend to put other people’s needs in front of her own and then feel bad about it. “It’s a matriarch sort of problem,” she said. “You have to just own it and say, ‘Yes, I make this sacrifice.’”
The Atlantic
