[4] On 3 August 2017, Dazed released their autumn issue featuring Björk, in which she revealed that her upcoming album will include a song titled "The Gate", and that a music video for it had already been shot by Huang.

[2] The single is an ambient[11][12] and electronica song,[13] featuring a "sparse" composition,[12] which, according to Slant Magazine journalist Sal Cinquemani, "opens like a hymn, with psalm-style vocals and minimal accompaniment followed by a series of digitized vocables reminiscent of singing whales.

The vocals for the first minute of the song do not form clear lyrics, but their phonemes, at relevant moment, recall words from a Catholic Mass: "fili" and "sanctus.

""[14] The journalist moreover observes that "the musical complexity swirling around the vocals germinates gradually, as she rephrases the line "I care for you" over and over again, as if convincing herself of the point in real time.

The didgeridoo-like electronic gulps that underscore her vocal lattices [...] morph into high, sensuous glissandos, and the music itself seems to be forming the gate's giant arches.

Pitchfork awarded "The Gate" with their "Best New Track" label, with Philip Sherburne writing, "Björk has never shied away from bold metaphors, and here, with her egg-shaped portal into love's domain, she aims bigger than ever.

"[23] Vulture has described the song as "straight-up haunting" and "poetic",[15] while DIY defined it as a "six-minute swirling opus that's delicate and emotional, gathering momentum as it goes.

[25] Mike Wass of Idolator named it an "ambient adventure", which "could be interpreted as modern poetry or complete gibberish depending on your standpoint, but it's undeniably gorgeous and easy on the ears".

[11] On a similar note, Highsnobiety critic Jake Boyer observed how the singer "has delivered a seven-minute, spellbinding piece of breathy electronica.

[21] On a different note, Rich Juzwiak of The Muse expressed a negative review of the song, calling it "utter tuneless" and criticizing the singer's vocal delivery, stating "it increasingly sounds like she’s just singing to herself as she goes about her day, without a care in the world, including whether listeners will actually want to hear her sing-song the same handful of words".

[31][32] "It’s the type of painstaking, ambitious work you’d hope for in an unattainably perfect world," wrote Marc Hogan, "every detail full of love.

Not lovers in the quotidian romantic sense, but in a broader cosmological way... "The Gate" is a declaration of hope sung by a woman refracted and re-formed into a luminous whole".

Building a world like this takes a village and I feel blessed to be in this company of artists.” Dancer Leo Morimune and choreographer Nina McNeely were motion captured to help create the balletic movements of the fractured digital avatars in the video, and Björk's hair was done by Johnny Stuntz and her make-up by past collaborator Andrew Gallimore.