LogFAQs > #953872896

236. Fever Ray If I Had a Heart (2008)
from the album Fever Ray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBAzlNJonO8

Key lyrics:
If I had a heart I could love you
If I had a voice I would sing

Few songs are as haunting as Fever Rays debut single as a solo artist, If I Had a Heart. A creeping synth chugs along and is quickly joined by an organ. Then Dreijers signature pitch-shifted vocals come in, deep and inhuman enough to suggest an otherworldly shamanic figure. Its moody and haunting, like a piece of music pulled from a parallel reality. Its singularly striking quality was immediately apparent, being used in a dozen shows like Breaking Bad and even serving as the theme song for Vikings. Its rare for a song to so viscerally suggest something has gone horribly wrong.

Yet the best moment occurs once Fever Ray joins in with their more natural voice. It shatters through the darkness, further painting this as a song of deathly yet human longing. The back half morphs into a duet between Fever Ray and their inner demon; what was once haunting becomes strangely beautiful. While they had long experimented with their voice while working with The Knife, this songs thudding instrumentation centered the manipulation like never before. Such heavy vocal effects can sometimes create a sense of distance between an artist and their voice. Here, Fever Ray claims this other voice as their own, paving the way for a dozen other queer electronic artists to do the same over the following decade.

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My top 100 games (with write-ups): https://foolfantastic.com/top-100-video-games-project/