Ah, the rock opera single. Much maligned, it has nonetheless had its enthusiastic exponents. Notable highlights of the genre include ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Good Vibrations’ and The Beatles’ ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’, a direct inspiration for this song. Radiohead updated the template for the late-90s with this tense, unsettling observation on fashion, culture and vapidity - and created a song that artistically rivalled all of the above.

While The Bends was an excellent album, with a top-rate set of guitar-based songs that dealt with isolation, paranoia and a general feeling of dread, 1997’s OK Computer was a revelation. The verse-chorus-verse structure was subverted, the lyrics tried to make metaphors of the daily commute, European integration, loud taling and German automotive engineering. Instead of talking about his own maladjustment, lead singer Thom Yorke widened the issue to include a general malaise in society, one that was directly linked to the way we lived.

For the millions of us on the comedown from Britpop’s hollow journey, this rang very true. Coming as the first single off of OK Computer, ‘Paranoid Android’ was one of the most unlikely hits of all time, while at the same time being strangely comforting in how weird and “far out” it was.

The song is split into four sections, starting with acoustic guitar and a soft guitar figure, with Yorke crying in a high-pitched voice about the “unborn chicken voices in my head”. The first of several great riffs has him dragging out the words “What’s that”. Feelings of impending dread and doom were never felt so keenly since Ian Curtis.

While the song shifts gears, with new riffs and tempos introduced and left behind, Yorke aims at familiar Radiohead themes like ruthless ambition, arrogance, egotism, business networking and so on, juxtaposing these targets with “off with his head”, “panic”, “vomit” and other disturbing feelings.

The general impact on the listener is that the protagonist is having a really bad time at some event or other, and fantasises secretly about molotov-ing (verb?) the whole place, nay the whole world. Vintage Thom Yorke, in other words.

The video is a story on itself - check the Wikipedia article for the background on this. Musically, it’s amazing, especially with headphones on in a darkened room (which I always called “the Pink Floyd experience”). Guitars duel with each other over intermittent feedback bursts, the bass goes all over the register, and the drums switch tempo as the canvas for the madness.

So, then, truly a great moment in music - and OK Computer is the first time I heard an album and considered it a classic on first listen. Here’s the video for ‘Paranoid Android’.

Last 5 posts by Dave

• 'Sunflower' - Paul Weller, 1993 - December 18th, 2008
• 'Brilliant Mistake' - Elvis Costello, 1986 - December 16th, 2008
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• 'Careering' - Public Image Limited, 1979 - December 10th, 2008
• 'We'll Meet Again' - Vera Lynn, 1939 - December 5th, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Alternative / Indie, Rock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.