More Stupid Than the Others

Picture off Radiohead @ MySpace

Sniffing exhaust is what Scamp thinks all the other agencies are doing compared to the stuff Fallon comes up with. Whatever we think we’re doing good, it’s just shit compared to what they do.

Whatever we think or think we think about Radiohead’s song meanings, the truth is we’ll never know. I’m not here to talk about how genius the idea behind giving ‘In Rainbows‘ virtually free on the Internet, about what Pitchfork thinks, what Trent Reznor did and what Trent Reznor did next or how amazing the idea behind keeping your carbon footprint low while going to Radiohead gigs is. Or the Nude remixes. They’re cool. We don’t talk about ethics, we talk about opportunities, don’t we?

From a different perspective, Radiohead is a band we all can agree on, the kind of band the punks and mods listen to. Who was the last band to have achieved this? The Beatles? They’ve already reached cult status, which is good for them (I can say nice things) but mildly disappointing considering the meanings they gave to songs like ‘My Iron Lung‘ from a while ago. Apart from it being a personal favourite of mine, it was Radiohead expressing their frustration that people don’t appreciate their other songs apart from the ‘mainstream’ ones such as ‘Creep‘ and various others played on the radio. Well, now they’ve had their cake and their songs are equally loved and hated by many.

But let’s talk about the lyrics off ‘In Rainbows’. Whatever meaning any listener will give to them, be it “I love you but I don’t want to marry you” (‘Don’t get any big ideas, they’re not gonna happen; You paint yourself white and feel up with noise but there’ll be something missing’) or depressing/humble love where one is inferior to the other in some way or doesn’t feel like they can live up to the challenge of finding someone else (‘I am a moth who just wants to share your light, I’m just an insect trying to get out of the night;I only stick with you because there are no others’), Radiohead lyrics are sometimes so enigmatic they can add their own meaning (and video) to it and leave you puzzled, with a completely new understanding of the whole thing, everyone will be baffled and we’ll all blog about how amazing it is. Don’t get me wrong, it is cool that the music works on so many different levels.

Their newest video for ‘All I Need’ is about human trafficking and child labour.

And with it comes Thom Yorke’s appreciation of the video:

“It’s one of my preoccupations and I’m touched that the music goes with that. I never really thought of it like that.”

This is cool. To some extent.