Gobbledigook by Sigur Rós

Album: Mee sue í eyrum vid spilum endalaust (2008)

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This originally had the working title of "Gobbedigobb," which in Icelandic means "Clippety-clop." However it was mistranslated by management as "Gobbledigook" and renamed accordingly.
The album title translated into English from Icelandic means "With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly."
This is the first album in the band's career to be made outside of Iceland. Apart from their own facilities in Reykjavik, the band also recorded this in New York, London and the very un-Icelandic Havana, Cuba.
Ryan McGinley, a photographer friend of Sigur Ros guitarist and vocalist Jónsi Birgisson, did the album sleeve. It was taken from a flyer for McGinley's visual art exhibit, I Know Where The Summer Goes. McKinley is the youngest photographer ever to have a solo exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art.
Jónsi Birgisson explained to The Sun July 4, 2008 how they wrote this just after watching the Eurovision song contest: "That was a fun song to do. It's the most loose and free song form we've ever done. It has a funny story. We wrote it on the night of the Eurovision song contest. We were in a rented farmhouse, it was a long evening, we watched the whole contest, and afterwards our brains were so fried we had to write Gobbledigook. The title means nothing, it's just some bulls--t line that means some sort of prank. It translates badly into English - something like things going wrong, like roofs falling down on to your head."
This single along with the rest of the album was co-produced by U2 and Depeche Mode producer Flood. Birgisson told The Sun how their early working days were fraught with friction. He said: "We didn't get on at first. There was a clash. He came to Iceland and we were already in the middle of writing songs. But Flood doesn't work like that - he usually works with a band from scratch and writes with them until the end. We had been writing for 14 years so his methods were a bit hard to take on board. He kept butting in, saying, 'Oh, why don't you put a guitar here or there?' and we'd reply with a firm, 'No!' So we sent Flood home and finished writing our songs - and after that he was perfect. We, too, had to stand back and learn from him and he did help. He has this great focus and works hard. He kicked us up the arse."

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