Inspired (along with several other songs) by a car accident Yorke and his girlfriend had been in years before; muses on "the feeling you get when you realise that you've just missed having a serious accident, and the feeling of elation that follows.""Paranoid Android" (notes)
The most ambitious track, a mutating six-minute sprawl in the tradition of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the Beatles' "Happiness is a Warm Gun" that took the band eighteen months of practice to play live. Rooted in a harrowing experience Yorke had in a druggy Los Angeles club, he later passed the track off as a lark, but NME's Luke Lewis (who declared it the best single of the last 15 years) objects:- Big band arrangementFar from penning a universal hymn of woe, Thom Yorke claims he picked the title as a self-mocking "joke", and says the lyrics are "not personal at all." Bassist Colin Greenwood remembers the writing process being "a laugh", the result of "getting wasted together". When the band came to actually play the song live, according to guitarist Ed O' Brien the whole thing was "completely hilarious" and had them "pissing ourselves as we played". Anyone would think they'd written 'My Humps', not one of the towering rock songs of the 20th Century.Don't miss the phenomenal cover version compiled from dozens of amateur YouTube videos (previously). Other notable takes:
And yet... they protest too much. I have a theory. I think that Radiohead knew they'd written an era-defining masterwork, but - in a very British way - felt embarrassed by the grandeur of their creation, and ever since then have bashfully tried to make light of it. They're not fooling anyone. [...] Anyone with ears and a brain can tell that this is a song about the horror of modernity. Thom Yorke surveys the whole grand sweep of humanity and finds he's disgusted by all of it. [...]
Besides, this idea that 'Paranoid Android' was intended as a joke - a sozzled attempt to rewrite Queen’s 'Bohemian Rhapsody' - doesn't quite tally with Yorke's own account of how he wrote the lyrics. They came to him at 5am following a hateful night out amongst coked-up music biz types in Los Angeles.
"I was trying to sleep when I literally heard these voices that wouldn't leave me alone," he recalled in 1997. "Basically 'Paranoid Android' is just about chaos, chaos, utter fucking chaos."
When pressed to reveal more about the "kicking squealing Gucci little" piggies who inspired the song, Yorke described them as "inhuman… you do often see demons in people's eyes. They're like fucking devils…. Everyone was trying to get something out of me. I felt like my own self was collapsing in the presence of it."
Hmm. So not quite dashed off as a rib-tickling novelty wig-out then? Lest you doubt that 'Paranoid Android' burns with a core of genuine misanthropy, note the hex on the single sleeve. The ensuing world tour was called Against Demons. 'Paranoid Android' is a song about seeing evil in the world around you, and being absolutely terrified by it.
- Weezer
- Mike Massé acoustic guitar (previously)
- Christopher O'Riley on solo piano
- jazz pianist Brad Mehldau's 9-minute interpretation
- Male and female a capella
- early demo version
- Easy Star All-Stars reggae version
- Sia Furler's soul version
- University of Arizona marching band
Namechecks Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues and evokes the fanciful "Martian poetry" style to take an anthropologist's eye to mankind's troubles. The need for vintage soft keyboards has led to the track not being played on live tours in the last decade."Exit Music (For a Film)" (notes)
Written for the end credits of Romeo+Juliet and partially inspired by Zeffirelli's 1968 version, which had moved a 13-year-old Yorke to tears and wonder why the two lovers never tried to just run away from their families. The intimate vocals were recorded on the manor's stone steps."Let Down" (notes)
A melodic musing on the disappointment of glib sentimentality promoted in the media; guitarist Jonny Greenwood plays in a different time signature to amplify the feeling of disconnection and disorientation. For aural effect, it was recorded in the spacious manor ballroom at 3 a.m."Karma Police" (notes)
Named for a band in-joke about the "karma police" nabbing anyone who misbehaved, equated with the overly regimented atmosphere in large organizations. Originally passed on by Marilyn Manson, the concept for the backseat music video led to a hairy situation where Yorke was stuck in a car leaking carbon monoxide fumes (referenced later in "No Surprises")."Fitter Happier" (notes)
A bleak piece dominated by increasingly surreal robotic pronouncements on ways to live a better life (voiced by the same synthesizer Stephen Hawking uses). Yorke claimed the list of imperatives was "the most upsetting thing I've ever written.""Electioneering" (notes)
Late '90s Britain was swept by the landslide victory of Tony Blair's "New Labour" party, but this angry broadside held no illusions about modern politics. Inspired by both the Poll Tax Riots that helped remove Margaret Thatcher from power and the gladhanding "rope line" atmosphere that dogged the band's American tours."Climbing Up the Walls" (notes)
An eerie track from the perspective of various creeping horrors, from serial killers to insane asylums to "the monster in the closet." Prompted by Yorke's experience working part-time in a sanitarium emptied of many dangerous patients by Conservative budget cuts. Incorporates a string section modeled on Krzysztof Penderecki's nerve-wracking "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.""No Surprises" (notes)
The first song recorded for the album (and on the first take). The music video, involving Yorke locked into a 2001-esque space helmet slowly filling with water, was somewhat disturbing to make, even with special effects tricks to speed up the submersion sequence."Lucky" (notes)
Recorded in five hours for a charity benefiting Bosnian War victims, the band considered this track their best. Brian Eno agreed, calling it "the most beautiful song I've heard for a long, long time.""The Tourist" (notes)
A slower, spacier closing track written by Greenwood as a reaction the breakneck pace of the other tracks. Thematically linked to the rampant pace of technology as well as to the opening track's car crash, implying a kind of Joycean circularity to the album.MeFi Music Challenge:
Airbag: unSane, The Great Big Mulp, naju, davejay, Corduroy, bedheadOther:
Paranoid Android: InfidelZombie, chococat, Ardiril, Jofus, ignignokt, ZsigE
Subterranean Homesick Alien: snsranch, dobie, god hates math, Rube R. Nekker, burnmp3s, dismas
Exit Music (For A Film): askmeaboutLOOM, koeselitz, th3ph17, two lights above the sea, O9scar, the_very_hungry_caterpillar
Let Down: dubold, pyramid termite, The World Famous, curious nu, fleacircus, theichibun
Karma Police: uncleozzy, tigrefacile, erikgrande, Acari, michaelh, lazaruslong, modernserf
Fitter Happier: sleepy pete, azarbayejani, flapjax at midnite, Listener, threeants, freya_lamb
Electioneering: TwoWordReview, motty, muhonnin, roboton666, not_on_display, MrVisible
Climbing Up The Walls: Doleful Creature, Elmore, supercres, Captain Najork, Johnny Wallflower, Sebmojo
No Surprises: cortex, Grangousier, John Cohen, visual mechanic, OrangeGloves, the jam
Lucky: grog, cmoj, googly, idiopath, Karlos the Jackal, greenish
The Tourist: cathodeheart, qnarf, sinnesloeschen, Philosopher Dirtbike, evoque, zix
LuckyMore:
My Iron Lung
Airbag
Planet Telex
Exit Music (For A Film)
The Bends
Nice Dream
Paranoid Android
Karma Police
Creep
Climbing Up The Walls
No Surprises
Talk Show Host
Bones
Just
Fake Plastic Trees
You
The Tourist
High And Dry
Street Spirit (Fade Out)
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posted by Palquito at 12:12 PM on June 16, 2012