Background
The song was originally an instrumental track by British musician and frequent musical collaborator Mark Bell, performed at his live shows as early as November, 2006. Björk later added her vocals on top. The lyrics are dedicated to the Faroe Islands and Greenland, islands currently ruled by Denmark, as Björk's home country of Iceland had been.
Declare Independence was originally meant to be released as the second single from Volta in August, 2007, but due to the worldwide success of the album Björk had to perform more international promotion work than her label One Little Indian had originally planned, meaning that the previously-planned video shoot for "Declare Independence" with Michel Gondry in London couldn't take place. The deadline for the music video contest for "Innocence" (then slated as the third single) was then brought forward a month to June 10, 2007 so as to provide a finished video able to coincide with a July, 2007 release originally planned for Declare Independence.
Read more about this topic: Declare Independence
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