Daily Archives: March 9, 2026

Monday Night Mojo – Top 10 Music (Mojo & Funk): Special Mention (Mojo) (3) Radiohead – Paranoid Android

Posted on by

Shot from the animated music video

 

 

(3) MOJO: RADIOHEAD – PARANOID ANDROID (1997)

B-Side: Just (1995)

 

“When I am king, you will be first against the wall

With your opinion which is of no consequence at all”

 

And so Radiohead anticipated all political arguments on the internet…

Radiohead moved from their alternative rock origins to a more “echoey, operatic rock” in their landmark 1997 album, OK Computer, although I always find a combination of melancholy and barely or mostly suppressed anger in the lyrics and persona of its distinctive lead singer Thom Yorke.

Paranoid Android” was the lead single from OK Computer. Its title, taken from Marvin the Paranoid Android in Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, bears little relation to the “darkly humorous lyrics…written primarily by singer Thom Yorke following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar”. The song fused together parts from different songs each written by a different member of the band, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the nineties as it were, even if the band denies that as their intent (although it was an influence) – “not unlike ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ being played backwards by a bunch of Vietnam vets high on Kings Cross-quality crack”.

And the lyrics bear little relation to the surreal animated video, commissioned by the band from Magnus Carlsson, Swedish creator of the animated series Robin, using the title character and his friend from the series – the band deliberately didn’t send Carlsson the lyrics (to avoid too literal a video) and so the concept for the video was based entirely on the song’s sound. The band make a cameo appearance in the video as animated versions of themselves in the bar (although without too much verisimilitude, particularly given the style of animation). I also remember a rumor that one of the characters in the video was meant to be a caricature of then Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

As my B-side entry, I have a soft spot for their single “Just” from their 1995 album The Bends (the preceding album to OK Computer). While I do like the song itself, including its lyrical attack on narcissism (“you do it to yourself”), my soft spot particularly comes from the combination of the song with its musical video.

 

“Yes, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you why I’m lying here… but God forgive me… and God help us all… because you don’t know what you ask of me.”

 

And as for the balance of my Top 10 Radiohead songs:

 

(3) Go to Sleep (2003)

(4) Karma Police (1997)

(5) Everything in its Right Place (2000)

(6) Street Spirit (Slow Fade Out)

(7) Subterranean Homesick Alien (1997)

(8) I Might Be Wrong (2001)

(9) Pyramid Song (2001)

(10) There There (2003)

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Revamped) – Introduction

Posted on by

 

One of the most iconic photographs of war – Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press

 

TOP 10 WARS – REVAMPED!

 

Yes – I’ve done this before but this time it’s revamped!

Admittedly not by much – the top ten entries remain the same (as opposed to my special mentions where I throw in a few revised entries) but I have shuffled a couple of entries slightly in placement order.

I’ve also added a new rating within each entry. To my previous four ratings for each entry – art of war, world war, forever war or still fighting the war, and just war (or good guys and bad guys) – I’ve added a new alternate war rating for plausible alternate history victory scenarios.

Finally, I was prompted to revamp my Top 10 Wars as I am drafting my Top 10 Warfare list – ranking my top ten types of warfare in history.

 

Anyway, here’s my original introduction (with alternate war ranking added):

 

I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, from the comfortable armchair of hindsight and the fortunate perspective of being well removed from any firsthand experience of them. History, particularly military history, has always been something of a hobby of mine. So of course I have ranked my Top 10 Wars of history.

Just some notes – these are not ranked by scale of destruction or historical impact, although I’d like to think that most or all of my entries would rank highly by those criteria. They are also not ranked by moral justifiability or in terms of being ‘good’ wars, to the extent that such a term can be used for wars, if at all. Rather, they are ranked in terms of historical interest to me and I tend to be interested in the broader themes of history, so I have preferred a broader classification of the wars in each entry, although I do nominate individual wars (or conquests or invasions) within each entry.

 

Just some further notes – I have some ratings within each entry:

 

ART OF WAR

Rating the wars by the art of war shown in them, typically by the victors of course, albeit based on my more idiosyncratic application of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

 

WORLD WAR

Rating the wars by their scale – some wars might well be considered world wars (or at least part of world wars) beyond the two twentieth century wars formally designated as such, from World War Zero to World War X.

 

FOREVER WAR / STILL FIGHTING THE WAR

Rating the wars by their span, particularly for those wars we are arguably still fighting.

 

ALTERNATE WAR

Rating the wars by their plausible alternate history victory scenarios – that is, how plausibly they could have gone the other way.

 

JUST WAR (GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS)

Perhaps most controversially, rating the wars by taking a shot at choosing moral sides or nominating the good guys and bad guys – or not, since history usually does not repay moral judgements.

 

So these are my top ten wars in history. You know the rules – this is one of my deep dive top tens, counting down from tenth to first place and looking at individual entries in some depth or detail of themselves.