Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [69]
What are our chances of success? Here, a pessimist might point to “15 Step,” the opening track of In Rainbows: “How come I end up where I started? How come I end up where I went wrong?” Yet even this seeming step back can be seen through the lens of Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal recurrence as a necessary part of the process of becoming an Over Human. The sheer drop that awaits may lock most into inaction, but for those of us that choose to take fifteen steps, it is a moment which underlines the importance and moral significance not of successful transcendence, but rather, its pursuit.
12.
The Real Politics in Radiohead
JÉRÔME MELANÇON
Songs tell us more than we realize. In its lyrics and musical structure, Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For a Film)” reveals a meaning that goes beyond what we might hear at first. The title immediately refers to its inspiration: Baz Luhrmann’s movie Romeo + Juliet, to which Radiohead was asked to contribute. This fact helps to flesh out the story of love and anger told in the lyrics. The song appears even more clearly as a new version of the story in light of what Thom Yorke said in an interview: “The song is written for two people who should run away before all the bad stuff starts. A personal song.”49
Yet this interpretation isn’t satisfying. It’s not enough to follow Shakespeare’s story, or even to focus on the moment when Claire Dane’s Juliet holds her gun to her head, which Yorke tells us inspired the song. Radiohead’s take on Romeo and Juliet leaves out a major feature of the song, in which—if we listen to the music and lyrics together—suggests another meaning. The first part of “Exit Music” tells the story from Romeo’s point of view (or Juliet’s, but we can start from the fact that a man is singing). He speaks to someone about the sadness of their lives, their plan to escape and his need for them to act together. When he sings, “there’s such a chill,” he’s foreshadowing an ending that’s not so different from the classic tragedy.
Following this mention of the “chill,” and after a long rise in its dynamics, the song topples over. The drums and bass kick in forcefully, distorted, and the tone of everything changes. Up until this point, we had a subject, Thom/Romeo, speaking to a defined character, Juliet, with whom he is running away, presumably from her father. But these lines—“and you can laugh a spineless laugh / we hope your rules and wisdom choke you”—couldn’t possibly be addressed to Juliet. She’s supposed to keep them warm, to keep them together. There’s a reversal, as the “me and you” of the first part turn against the “you” of the second part: they become a “we” who together hope that “you” choke and “are one in everlasting peace.”
Whether they’re in peace because they did run away or because they followed the more tragic path of Romeo and Juliet, one thing remains. These two run away together, they form a “we,” they speak as one—and they speak against this “you,” the father, and everything he represents. With the distortion in the bass and with the force of the words “we hope that you choke” repeated at the end of the song, this rejection is violent. It’s no longer just a matter of running away: it a denunciation of the rules and the wisdom of the other, this “you,” that stands in the way of their peace. It’s from the height that make “them” or “him” able to impose rules and wisdom on others that this spineless laugh is possible—there’s no courage, no merit involved, and only a rejection of authority. If those in authority have caused the escape or the death of our characters, then the rules are broken and the wisdom is annihilated—they amount to nothing, they are meaningless.
“Exit Music” tells us more than the story that inspired it. Asking about this “you” and what becomes of the “we” in the context of the song’s musical dynamics led us to a new way of hearing the song, away from the traditional story of Romeo and Juliet. It leads us away from asking “what