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****

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