"All Neon Like" is a song by Icelandic musician Björk. The song was written by Björk and produced by the singer and British producer Mark Bell for Björk's album Homogenic (1997).
Background and development
Snippets of the lyrics from "All Neon Like" were first released in the form of a poem entitled Techno Prayer, which Björk published in the July, 1996 edition of Details magazine. It featured thematic ideas that she would later explore in her 2001 studio album Vespertine, such as cocooning and thread-weaving. Björk confirmed the production and title of the track in an AOL chat interview in early 1997.
The song's production is a collaborative effort between Björk and LFO's Mark Bell, who was credited for the majority of the album's production. Björk had wanted Mark Bell to contribute to her albums Debut and Post, but he was only available for Homogenic. Like the rest of the album, it was recorded at El Cortijo Studios in Málaga, Spain.
Composition
With a length of five minutes and 55 seconds, "All Neon Like" is the album's longest track. It has been described as "spacey new age", and "ambient-jungle." For Entertainment Weeklys David Browne, Björk "sings along with the amelodic ambient and drum-and-bass rhythms, trying to do with techno what vocalese singers did with bebop nearly 50 years ago." According to AllMusic's Heather Phares, "All Neon Like" is an example of Homogenics "soothing fare" tracks, which are alternated with "dark, uncompromising songs" like "Hunter." It features "a descending five-note synth figure [which] repeats against a subtly moving, starry-toned orchestral backdrop—gaining, losing, and regaining its bright prominence in the mix." The base of much of the track, especially the verses, is formed by the "hollow, sustained chimes" of the glass harmonica, played by Alasdair Malloy. These "wavering bell tones" are first heard at roughly the 0:29 mark. According to poet and frequent Björk collaborator Sjón, "it's a soundscape that pulsates and breathes like a living organism. It's [sic] heartbeat of a rhythm rises and gets closer to you as the song progresses."
Like various songs of the Homogenic sessions, including "So Broken", the subject matter of "All Neon Like" deals with suffering. Its lyrics "tell of a 'healing' that's made possible by some sort of a cyberspatial connection," and threads that "reach out to someone who's trapped in a cocoon of emotional/physical pain." Björk sings in the second-person, taking the position of a "healer". As she "feeds the 'sick' through the threads, he gains strength to start living again." According to Sia Michel of The New York Times, Björk "compares the creative process to a spider weaving a web made of glow-in-the-dark neon thread." Björk sings: "I'll cut a slit open/ And the luminous beam/ Feeds you honey!" This stanza demonstrates one element of her style, where she takes liberties with the English language for added effect. She "memorably furnishes the song's most emphatic word ('luminous') with an extra syllable: 'lou-min-NEE-ous.'" Björk's deliberate mispronunciation, which Gina Arnold dubbed "lingua-scat," can also be noted when she sings the words "nourish" and "foetus-style".
Reception
"All Neon Like" has been met with acclaim from music critics. Spins James Hunter wrote "hearing 'All Neon Like' is like being wordlessly ushered into a hypnotically proportioned room." Heather Phares of AllMusic described it as "gently percolating." In the Homogenic review for Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Albums of the 1990s, Dominique Leone thought the song was an example of "the album's compassionate, slightly off-center romanticism." In her album review for The New York Times, Sia Michel called it "gorgeous", and a track that "[imagines] a world in which Mother Nature rules supreme but technology enhances its beauty."