Familiar

Album: Citizen of Glass (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • "That is a song about a secret," Obel says of this mysterious, ethereal track. "When you lose all your privacy, when you become transparent, or when you make yourself transparent, what is it you're losing? You're losing your secrets." (from a Songfacts interview with Agnes Obel)
  • The chorus sounds like a male voice, but that's actually Obel's voice pitched down and layered to make it sound ghostly - what she calls "secret singing." The processed vocal also goes with the theme of love (especially secret love) taking place in cyberspace much of the time.
  • Personnel on this track:

    John Corban - violin
    Kristina Koropecki and Charlotte Danhier - cellos
    Daniel Matz: timbra, shakers
  • Obel's husband, Alex Bruel Flagstad, made the video for this song. Agnes explained in her Songfacts interview: "Alex knew the song was about love, and he knew that one of the ideas I had for the album had to do with new technology. So his interpretation of the song, he wanted to put in images of this technology-driven and also industrialized love world, so he filmed me and wanted me to look like a robot. He told me to sing sort of like a robot, and he used a lot of images of highways and also some really great pictures underwater. We all sort of created this emotional world that has become industrialized and technological in a way."

Comments: 3

  • Heather from Washington StateI love learning that the chorus voice is hers. That's my favorite part of the song.
  • Bill D. from VermontThe lyrics in the first line don’t make sense to me. I’ve seen them printed “Can you walk on the water with I, you and I” and with “if” instead of with. Please make that line make sense. Or maybe all the sites have them messed up?
  • Jonathan from Madison, Wihttps://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/agnes-obel-citizen-of-glass-interview-album-release-date-a7346016.html
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