Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [96]
—Martin Heidegger, “Why Poets?”
In the time of hedonist fascism nobody dares scream or judge what is so pathetically suspended in mid-air, which is life itself—nobody till now, that is. Meaning that if you aren’t mad you’re crazy—we are being eaten body and soul and no one is fighting. In fact practically no one sees it, but if you listen to the poets you will hear, and vomit up your rage.
—Lester Bangs, “Richard Hell: Death Means Never Having to Say You’re
Incomplete,” in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
If you ask, “What is Radiohead’s music about?” one answer crops up more than any other: “alienation.” All Music Guide says that Radiohead tells “tortured, twisted tales of angst and alienation,” while Paul Cantin’s review of OK Computer for the Ottawa Sun (to take one typical example) calls it a “superbly realized collection of songs focused vaguely on the alienating effects of modern living” (August 19th, 1997). But I have a problem with this answer—the same problem I’d have if you explained that my favorite food is made of “food.”
For starters, alienation is hardly unique in Radiohead. It runs throughout Radiohead’s discography as well as that of their influences: Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, DJ Shadow, Pink Floyd, and Bowie. Plus, we can find alienation within the music of a host of other rock bands: Bauhaus, Joy Division, The Stooges, The Clash, The Doors, Ramones . . . This list could go on forever and run through Reggae (as well as its ancestors, ska and rocksteady), rap music (from The Sugarhill Gang, through Public Enemy, to The Roots, Outkast, and Eminem), to industrial music (Nine Inch Nails is the obvious example, but certainly also think about Skinny Puppy, Ministry, or even—especially?—Throbbing Gristle). And then there’s the Blues! My point is not that alienation is a played-out theme or that Radiohead is unoriginal for writing songs that express this theme in some way (any more than I should refuse to eat my dinner because “it’s only made of food”). Rather, my point is that alienation is a central theme in all of culture, especially as it’s expressed in music.
But if that’s the case, then why is it the case? What is this “alienation” that mass culture seems to be reflecting back at us? For fear that we get carried away playing “armchair philosopher” and stagger off into the dizzying heights of abstract speculative questioning, let’s begin by asking not “What is Radiohead’s music about?” but rather, “How does Radiohead express the theme of alienation in their music?”
Aliens Hover
For reasons I’ll come back to later, it seems to me that we can divide Radiohead’s music into (at least) two major stages. The first begins with their debut album Pablo Honey (and its predecessor, the Drill EP) and culminates with OK Computer. The second stage begins with Kid A and Amnesiac, and has carried through the present. For now, notice two things that signal the “break” marked by Kid A: first, the return to album liner notes with no printed lyrics sheets (Pablo Honey did not have lyrics sheets, but both of the following two albums had them); second, the introduction of the theme of “disappearance” (“How to Disappear Completely”), which will become a major theme in not only the subsequent Radiohead albums, but Thom Yorke’s solo work as well (The Eraser).
So how is the theme of alienation expressed in Radiohead’s early work? It comes through most clearly as the feeling—a feeling that is given almost constant expression in Radiohead’s music—that one doesn’t belong, that one is not at home in one’s surroundings (not at home in the world, even). This is central to the band’s first hit single, “Creep”—“What the hell am I doing here? / I don’t belong here.” But notice how often it crops up in different forms throughout the whole album. “Creep” gives us a first-hand account of the feeling of alienation, while the very next track on Pablo Honey, “How Do You?” puts it in the third-person perspective