Radiohead's OK Computer has possibly had a greater impact on the music world than any other album since Nirvana's Nevermind. Polls throughout the world have nominated it as the album of the year, the decade, or in the instance of the UK's rock bible Q, "The Greatest Album of All-Time".
While much of its appeal can be attributed to its glorious melodies, soaring guitar lines and artistic yet accessible arrangements, a great deal of the hype has centred upon Thom Yorke's lyrics, a series of poetic illustrations of the dislocation a late twentieth century human being feels from the technological world (s)he is immersed in.
However, as with much great pop music, the lyrics can't be separated from the music. As we shall see with regard to the first single Paranoid Android, the lyrics only tell part of the story - the music doesn't just underpin the words, but provides key subtext and ironic counterpoint. Furthermore when brought together, I suggest that the song does actually tell a story - a rare thing in modern music - and one that serves to underpin the ideas and messages of the whole album. This is no longer pop, this is art.
Indeed, the thematic holism of the album recalls that unfashionable mainstay of self-important rock-as-art: the concept album, a feeling further underlined by the proggy arrangements and the soundscapey flow of the album. Indeed it is a remarkable achievement that the album is so highly regarded both by critics and audiences, given that many of the conventions are so clearly related to a genre generally reviled by modern critics, and pretty much ignored by audiences. And even if Yorke has gone so far as to say he hates prog-rock, the artistic thrust of the album does suggest that the band may be following an artistic manifesto to break the pop rules, much as prog did in the 70s. It isn't prog though; it's pop-rock that has learnt the lessons of prog's demise and tamed its indulgent excesses, but embraced its rejection of pop's repetitive formulae.
Hints were there on 1995's The Bends, an album which built slowly by word of mouth to become a minor classic. Over the course of six non-hit singles it eventually managed to dislodge the "one-hit wonder" tag that the band was still wearing from their breakthrough hit Creep, a song the band themselves had all but disowned by the time of OK Computer. The triple-guitar interplay that The Bends was built on, while still used to construct pop-rock songs, provided a richness and depth that belied the tag of novelty act that some had been ready to pin on them. In fact although The Bends had never made any significant dent on the charts worldwide, it's slow-burn impact was such that OK Computer was one of the most highly anticipated releases of 1997.
From the outset, the Oxford-based quintet made it clear that from now on they were following no rules other than their own. Released a month prior to the album, the first single was a piece so far removed from the Beatlesque formula of mid-90s Britpop that its appearance in the upper reaches of worldwide charts felt like a perverse ripple from an alternate universe. At 6:22 in length and with a three-movement structure, no discernible verse or chorus, and violent shifts of mood, Paranoid Android resembles a mini-opera more than anything else on the charts at the time. Indeed, the most common comparison was to Queen's magnum opus Bohemian Rhapsody, although where that epic seemed to be having fun with the pomposity of an operatic pop song, Paranoid Android revels in its drama.
The band must have loved the contradictions - an uncommercial epic, perversely released as a single, climbs to the top of the pops. And yet even though something was clearly connecting with people, what exactly was it? Internet newsgroups buzzed with questions, suggestions and ideas. There were undoubtedly suggestions of a violent reaction to upwardly mobile culture and aspirations, but what did the song mean? Thom Yorke himself was elusive - the closest he'd come to an answer was to suggest prior to a live performance that it was about "the fall of the Roman Empire". Certainly sounds operatic.
Taken literally, it's hard to reconcile Ancient Rome with the "androids" and "Gucci little piggies" of the lyric. But if we use the Roman Empire as an analogy for the modern U.S.-led Western Democratic "Empire", it provides one of two key clues to the meaning of one of the most dense and dramatic songs of the modern pop age.
The other is the title. "Paranoid Android" is a phrase with its origins in Douglas Adams' seminal sci-fi comedy masterpiece The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy (as indeed is the album title "OK Computer"). In the story (which came in radio, television and novel versions) Marvin the Paranoid Android was an ultra-depressed robot created by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. (Marvin's most well-celebrated expression was "Life. Don't talk to me about life", a sentiment that Radiohead's detractors might well suggest the band has adopted as a slogan.) The marketing division of The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were described in Adams' universe as being "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came".
I believe that Paranoid Android is the story of that revolution, a tale of the modern desktop proletariat throwing off the shackles of their technocratic oppressors. And ultimately it's a revolution that fails, as absolute power corrupts absolutely and the sad cycle of human exploiting human resumes.
The OK Computer CD booklet offers us lyrics to all the songs on offer, lyrics which appear as white type apparently scattered across a black background without concern for spelling and grammar, complete with cross-outs and mistakes. Paranoid Android's in particular are a mess. They read less like conventional lyrics and more like ravings expressed in the typographical artifice of our time - in fact one might say they look like they've been spat out by a paranoid android. For our analysis of the song we will provide excerpts from these lyrics as provided, complete with their 'errors'.
Paranoid Android opens with our protagonist, a Mr. Average, a turn of the millenium middle-class worker, tossing and turning in his bed. Acoustic guitars and percussion set up a gentle yet restless atmosphere; a vocal line climbs to a chillingly high falsetto to offer a plaintive cry:
please could you stop the noise im tryin a get some REST?
from all the unbornchikkenVoicesin my head?
He's kept awake not only by the noise of the throbbing urban culture that surrounds him but by guilt: his job involves destruction rather than replenishment; his car is burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gasses; every egg he eats is a chicken that never gets born. And if he changes his life, what difference will it make? The eggs will still be eaten. The earth is still dying. The change has to be seismic.
huh whats's that??
At the edge of his consciousness, something else is nagging. Barely audibly, a robotic voice synthesiser intones "I may be paranoid, but not an android" (words absent from the lyric sheet). They reassure our hero that he's more than just a cog in the machine - he's a human being with "perfectly ordinary paranoia" (another phrase I've nicked from Hitch-Hikers Guide).
This flat monotone is the same voice that later in the album delivers the chilling tone-poem Fitter Happier, detailing the perfect modern life of a successful human: "a pig in a cage on antibiotics". A device that embodies what may be OK Computer's core message - that in a world where technology drives humans (rather than the other way around) we begin to operate as machines, driven to achieve the goals programmed into us by our society. And we wonder why it doesn't feel satisfying.
when i am king you will be first against the wall
with your opinions which are of no consequence at all
For this second "verse" the hysteria has dropped from Yorke's voice. He's accepted that this is not his fault, and he's looking to pin the blame elsewhere. The first line of this couplet directly recalls the Dougas Adams quote above. Possibly our hero is talking to a cybernetics marketing manager - or some other "mindless jerk" whose life is dedicated to creating a lust for technology (or money, or some other false idol of our secular world). But this appears to be a personal threat. He could be talking to a whole class of person here, but it seems more likely that the person being addressed is the hero's boss, or certainly someone with power over him - someone whose opinions directly impact on his life, even though he has no respect for them.
huh whats's that??
Again we get the robotic voice in the background, this time with a subtly different message - "I may be paranoid but no android". Here what was previously a personal reassurance has been misread - filtered through the noise like a Chinese whisper - and what we are left with now is a more defiant "no android". Suggesting not only that he is no robot himself - and don't you dare suggest otherwise - but perhaps even providing him with a manifesto to act on.
The music shifts gears - although similar in terms of instrumentation, it gains a sense of menace, shifting from the melodic chordal changes to a riffier feel. When the vocals re-enter, they are restrained but threatening.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambition makes you look very ugly
k ic k i n g s q u e e l i n g g u c c i l i t t le p i g g y
Note that the vocal delivered is actually "pretty ugly" rather than "very ugly" - but the intent is very much still the same - "pretty" actually understates it in a way that underlines the threat. The antagonist is a yuppie climbing the corporate ladder to the very top, growing fat on the spoils of others, but who our hero recognises as being nothing but a frightened child beneath.
There follows a brief passage that is the most complex musically in the whole song. The time signature smoothly but disorientingly shifts into 7/4 and the whole band is playing busy lines. The overall feel is one of industriousness. Something is being planned, orchestrated. Then…
BLAM. Johnny Greenwood blasts a single shot of pure electric energy into the arrangement. Our hero is taking action - he's burst in the door of the little piggy.
"you dont remember "why dont you remember my name?
A little reminiscent of Mr. Burns in The Simpsons, our boss here does not even care enough to remember the name of his employees. It's time to deal with subhuman creatures such as him.
off with his head. Off with his head man. why wont he reme mber my name? "
The band enters, violently crushing the acoustic riff in a wail of screaming electric guitars. The boss is indeed the first against the wall.
""I guess he does_"
As he dies, he screams the name of our hero. Looks like he does remember his name after all.
An intense instrumental section restates the riff. This scene is being repeated across the land. The revolution is here. Then it stops, as abruptly as it started, dissolving into a choir of oohs, aahs and lush keyboards. The violence is over. The city is rubble; a giant blow has been struck for Mother Nature. On top of it all, Yorke drinks in the glory of the new age.
raindownraindown come on raind down on me
froma great height, from a gra\eeaa haaaeeeeeii. haaaaeeeeeiiii
rain down rain down come on rain down on me
froma great height. from a great aaaaaaeeeeee
raindownrain down come on raindown onme.
froma great heightfrom a great
As the glorious prayer continues, a sinister subplot develops.
""thats it sir youre leaving " the crackle of pig skin
The new little piggie is showing its hide. The leaders of the revolution are now being addressed as "sir". And they are following their own agendas.
the dust & the screaming the yuppies networking
A post revolutionary world is not all about celebratory parties and the glories of the earth. There is serious human tragedy here. Someone's got to take charge. Someone's got to organise things. And humans will be humans…
the panic the vomit
the panic the vomit
The great mass of people can't cope with this type of upheaval to their lives. They need order. This utopia is unworkable. The people won't stand for it. They need something to believe in. They need…
god loves his children god loves his children yeah!
…the opium of the masses. Delivered in a thrilling, numbing dose.
While the lyrics themselves stop here, there is one final plot development. The choirs and keys disappear, and the main revolutionary riff returns in a cataclysmic finale. It suggests that the cycle will continue - as each new paradigm replaces the old, power corrupts the people involved and a new revolution will eventually be required. There's no solution here.
And does the first line of the song suggest that perhaps this whole scenario is just a dream anyway? That our hero has thought it all through in the comfort of his bed? Either way, the story - and its moral - is the same.
In just over six minutes, Radiohead create a scenario that proposes that the human condition is a hopeless affliction and that individual selfishness will always conquer ideals. On a meticulously sequenced album like OK Computer, its placement is telling. It's second on the album, following Airbag, an opening salvo full of glorious intent - a car-crash survivor filled with a new lust for life - "back to save the universe". After the despairing scenario of cultural revolution that Paranoid Android brings us, we are left to pick up the pieces through the gentle, affecting Subterranean Homesick Alien. Here Yorke suggests that perhaps the only hope is to be picked up by a passing spaceship, taken home to a land where the beings know only love, and can't understand a race of creatures that "live for their secrets".
Life. Don't talk to me about life.