The Haunting of ‘Space Song’: A Memory of Iceland

Me in Iceland, November 2015

In 2015, I went to Iceland for the Airwaves Music Festival. The trip was planned with someone I was seeing—a whirlwind romance that felt magnetic, inevitable, like gravity. But by the time we arrived, that gravity had dissolved. We weren’t together anymore. The romance was gone, but the trip remained. So we went, not as lovers, but as friends—or at least, we tried to be.

Iceland is unlike anywhere else. It feels ancient, as if the earth itself just exhaled its first breath. Black sand beaches stretch endlessly, glaciers loom like sleeping giants, and the air feels impossibly clean, almost too quiet. It’s a place that strips you bare, leaving you alone with the enormity of the landscape—and your own thoughts. In that vast, otherworldly space, it’s hard to ignore the emptiness you carry, even with someone by your side.

I first heard Beach House’s “Space Song” during their performance at Harpa. The room felt suspended in time as the song unfolded, its ethereal chords wrapping around the stillness of the crowd. The melancholic, haunting sound seemed to blend with Iceland’s primordial energy, amplifying the loneliness I’d been trying to suppress. It was beautiful, raw, and a little overwhelming—just like Iceland itself. 

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That song became a touchstone for the trip. It punctuated the isolation I felt—not just the distance between me and the person I came with, but the distance between myself and everything else. Iceland’s vast, otherworldly beauty mirrored that isolation, making it impossible to ignore. The relationship was over, and I was alone, standing in one of the most breathtakingly remote places on earth.

Nearly a decade later, “Space Song” started trending on TikTok. It was surreal to see a moment so personal, so tied to a specific place and time, suddenly everywhere—set to dreamy visuals, shared memories, and soft nostalgia. Each time I heard it, I was back in Iceland, standing in the cold wind at the edge of a black sand beach, staring out at an ocean that seemed to stretch forever.

The song doesn’t just remind me of that person—it reminds me of Iceland. It reminds me of how small I felt, how awe-inspiring the world can be, and how profound it is to stand alone in the vastness of it all. “Space Song” haunts me, not because of heartbreak, but because it captured something I couldn’t put into words: the beautiful, lonely quiet of a place that feels both primordial and otherworldly.