Paranoid Android by Radiohead

 Paranoid Android: The Music Video (pretty crude and explicit so watch at your own risk)

Paranoid Android by Radiohead was released in 1997 as part of their album ‘Ok Computer’. It’s a concept album dealing with the fast-paced developments of modern life. It was described as a blend of multiple different songs that were all meant to be the same song. In this sense, it was kind of inspired by Bohemian Rhapsody, however, that’s as similar as they get. The lyrics are inspired by Thom Yorke’s distaste of so many things present in the world at the time. He got one of the main parts of the song by hanging out in a bar and running into a violent woman. The line “kicking, screaming, Gucci little piggy” is inspired by this event.

I think Paranoid Android is great. The lyrics, to me, feel like, at times, a bunch of cool one-liners strung together but it’s coherent, it’s in a way that makes sense and it’s all about feeling overwhelmed by your surroundings. The changes in rhythm are drastic but it still flows. It’s cacophony in a way because a lot of the sounds shouldn’t make sense together but they do.

Huffington Post says “‘Paranoid Android’ is a song about seeing evil in the world around you, and being absolutely terrified by it.”

I also love looking at it in the context of when it came out. It’s been known as era-defining, and I don’t know about that because I wasn’t alive. However, I can understand how much of a pleasant surprise Paranoid Android, or OK Computer as a whole, would’ve been following Radiohead’s last couple classic grungy rock albums.

I’m not even talking about the video here but I think it’s definitely worth mentioning. It’s absurd- simplest way to put it, crude, well-animated.

Please could you stop the noise
I'm trying to get some rest
From all the unborn chicken voices in my head
What's that?
What's that?

When I am king, you will be first against the wall
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
What's that?
What's that?

Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy
You don't remember
You don't remember
Why don't you remember my name?
Off with his head, man
Off with his head, man
Why don't you remember my name?
I guess he does

Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height, height
Rain down, rain down
Come on, rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height
Rain down, rain down (that's it, sir, you're leaving, the crackle of pigskin)
Come on rain down on me (the dust and the screaming, the yuppies networking)
From a great height (the panic, the vomit, the panic, the vomit)
God loves his childrean
God loves his children, yeah