Björk & Rosalia ‘Help Fight Fish Farming in Iceland’ With New Single: Listen

Two of the most daring and imaginative minds in contemporary popular music have finally linked up on a song together — but not in the way you might expect. Critically-acclaimed cross-genre artists Björk and Rosalía have collaborated on a new single to raise money for the fight against fish farming in Iceland. On YouTube, the song is simply titled “Help Fight Fish Farming In Iceland.”

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“I am offering a song me and Rosalía sang together. The profits will to help the fight against fish farming in Iceland. It will come out in October,” read a press release. “People at the fjord seyðisfjörður have stood up and protested against fish farming starting there. We would like to donate sales of the song to help with their legal fees, and, hopefully, it can be an exemplary case for others.”

The new collaboration arrives as the Björk’s first musical release of the year, and the latest in a string of singles from Rosalía. At the top of this year, before she and Rauw Alejandro called it quits, the pair released a joint EP titled RR. Two songs from the three-track project — “Beso” (No. 4) and “Vampiros” (No. 32) — hit the top 40 on Hot Latin Songs. The Grammy winner also released “Tuya” (No. 38) and “LLYLM” (No. 22), both of which also hit the top 40 on Hot Latin Songs.

Last year, Björk unleashed Fossora, her tenth studio album, which peaked at No. 100 on the Billboard 200 and earned a Grammy nomination for best alternative music album. Earlier this year, in recognition of Record Story Day (Apr. 22), Björk released an expanded double LP edition of her 2010 joint EP with American indie rock band Dirty Projectors.

“Iceland has the biggest untouched nature in Europe, and still today it has its sheep roaming free in the mountains in the summers, its fish has swum free in our lakes, rivers and fjords, so when icelandic and norwegian business men started buying fish farms in the majority of our fjords, it was a big shock and rose up as the main topic this summer,” the press release continued. “We don’t understand how they had been able to do this for a decade with almost no regulations stopping them. This has already had devastating effect on wildlife and the farmed fish are suffering in horrid health conditions and since a lot of them have escaped, they have started changing the DNA in the Icelandic salmon to the worse and could eventually lead to its extinction.”

In addition to releasing the song on YouTube, Björk also posted a video to her official Instagram page featuring a snippet of the track with the press release overlayed over a picture of a fish just like the YouTube upload. Rosalía commented a simple white heart on the post and shared it to her Instagram Story.

Björk’s reps confirmed to Billboard that a full version of the song will be released this month, with an exact date yet to be confirmed. The song’s proper title will also be revealed at that time.

“There is still a chance to safe the last wild salmon of the North. Our group would like to dare these business men to retract their farms! We would also like to help invent and set strict regulations into Iceland’s legal system to guard nature,” the press release concluded. “The majority of the nation already agrees with us, so this protest is about putting the will of the people into our rule-systems.”

Listen to Björk and Rosalía’s passionate new duet above.

Billboard

Billboard