I was watching the trailer for “Slumdog Millionaire”, which looks crazy kick-ass and I’m hoping to catch it this weekend, when during the second part of the trailer I heard one of my favourite songs in the history of songs from one of my favourite bands in the history of bands: Sigur Rós’ “Hoppípolla.”
Simply put, this song is what it sounds like to fly. All of the light and happiness and unbridled optimism I can imagine are wrapped up in its melody. “Hoppípolla” is an Icelandic term for puddle jumping, and it’s easy to see how that same energy breathes in the music. That moment where you abandon responsibility and your feet decide, for no legitimate reason other than because it will feel good; to leave the hard, narrow sidewalk and dive, without caution, into water.
There is a great official video for the song, but my fave version of the song is from the trailer for their 2007 live double-DVD “Heima.”
And here is the full version of them performing “Hoppípolla” live from “Heima.”
If I ever got to see Sigur Rós live, in Iceland, huddled inside a vast grassy field surrounded by jutting grey mountains, together with a bunch of tall, blonde, wind-blown Icelanders, as the sun set into a million colours, I think I would absolutely fucking die.
When I do die, I want them to play this song while my ashes fly off a cliff and into the trees. It is beauty itself.
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