Radiohead, Nick Drake and melancholy
My sisters like to say that I'm not really black because I've got a fair bit of rock music in my extensive music collection. In the spirit of this not-quite-blackness, I'm going to do a fair bit of blogging about this part of my collection starting today. It's long, esoteric and self-indulgent. Normal fare will not be resumed shortly.
The defining feature of both Radiohead and Nick Drake is the melancholy nature of their music. It's probably no suprise- Nick Drake killed himself after a lifetime of depression and chronic shyness while Thom Yorke (Radiohead's lead singer) has confessed to battles with depression. Howevever I've realized that it's really two different types of melancholy- Yorke and Drake are not really on the same point on the 'sadness spectrum' so to speak.
Drake's most famous-and best- album Pink Moon is melancholy both in tone and delivery. The entire album is just him and his accoustic guitar (with the exception of the title track where he uses a piano as well)and he sings like he is on the verge of death. The title track sounds like a challenge to anyone who doesn't quite understand his condition ("And all of you that stand so tall...pink moon is going to get you all")It reaches its peak with Parasite which despite being achingly sad, is also one of the most beautifully written songs of all time. Bazi quite rightly said he had never heard a song with so much self-loathing. I especially like the image of the first line
Lifting the mask off a local clown
Feeling down like him
The song continues in this vein- Drake is 'travelling in sin' and he's 'a parasite hanging from your skirt.' In Place to be he's grappling with his place in the world (although intriguingly the last line is a strong hint that there is a girl in the picture)With Things Behind the sun (my joint-favourite song on the album) He reveals a very pessimistic view of human nature and sounds oddly like Emily Dickinson.
Please beware of them that stare
They'll only smile to see you while
Your time away
And once you've seen what they have been
To win the earth just won't seem worth
Your night or your day
There are one or two songs in which he sounds almost hopeful- From the morning and Road.. Most of the album however sounds almost like a cry for help. It's filled with the kind of melancholy that made his sucide seem almost inevitable. He doesn't even seem angry- just resigned to everything.
With Radiohead on the other hand you get the feeling they are on a different part of the same spectrum. Thom Yorke- the lead singer and writer of virtually all their songs- suffered from depression and it comes through in much of their music. The chorus of Planet Telex just about sums up the worldview of their music (Everything is broken, Everyone is broken)and sad wistful songs like How to disappear completely and Bullet proof [I wish I was] merely reinforce this.
It's become widely-accepted that their landmark album OK Computer is mainly about alienation from the modern world but even The Bends had songs that fit into this mould- a kind of complete failure to understand what is going on, discomfort with technology and a failure to fit in. Infact all of Radiohead's output can probably be summed up as grappling with the sense of being an outsider.
There's a similarity between Street Spirit (also known as Fade out) and No suprises and they serve as a good representation of Radiohead's brand of melabcholy with lyrics like "Rows of houses...all bearing down on me" (Street Spirit)and No suprises ("I'll take a quiet life....a handshake of carbon monoxide")Sometimes it's a fear of physical decay brought about by ageing (Bones)but through it all there are several common threads- fear, alienation, confusion. Two more outstanding examples are High and Dry and Fake plastic trees. Even his love songs are affected-it's probably no coincidence that he was chosen to write the theme song for the modern film version of Romeo and Juliet in 1996. The result is Exit music for a film and its as unconventional a love song as there is (the dying lovers tell those who kept them apart 'we hope that your rules and wisdom choke you' towards the end of the song)
It always struck me as odd that OK Computer finished with The Tourist in which Thom Yorke is scolding tourists who don't take in the sights and just dash from one landmark to another just so they could say they've been there. You get the feeling that right at the end of the album he's let his guard down.
With Radiohead's music, you get the feeling that Yorke-unlike Drake- can see hope but he's not reaching out to it- at least not quite yet. He can see beauty in melancholy (Pyramid Song offers the best example of this). Or maybe he sees it as an affirmation of his existence in the sense that he chooses to be this way. You know that famous quote about man being condemned to be free? Yorke's music shows an acute understanding of that. There's an Oasis song that goes something like this:
I'm free to be whatever I...whatever I choose
and I'll take the blues if I want
I think that sums it up quite well.
The defining feature of both Radiohead and Nick Drake is the melancholy nature of their music. It's probably no suprise- Nick Drake killed himself after a lifetime of depression and chronic shyness while Thom Yorke (Radiohead's lead singer) has confessed to battles with depression. Howevever I've realized that it's really two different types of melancholy- Yorke and Drake are not really on the same point on the 'sadness spectrum' so to speak.
Drake's most famous-and best- album Pink Moon is melancholy both in tone and delivery. The entire album is just him and his accoustic guitar (with the exception of the title track where he uses a piano as well)and he sings like he is on the verge of death. The title track sounds like a challenge to anyone who doesn't quite understand his condition ("And all of you that stand so tall...pink moon is going to get you all")It reaches its peak with Parasite which despite being achingly sad, is also one of the most beautifully written songs of all time. Bazi quite rightly said he had never heard a song with so much self-loathing. I especially like the image of the first line
Lifting the mask off a local clown
Feeling down like him
The song continues in this vein- Drake is 'travelling in sin' and he's 'a parasite hanging from your skirt.' In Place to be he's grappling with his place in the world (although intriguingly the last line is a strong hint that there is a girl in the picture)With Things Behind the sun (my joint-favourite song on the album) He reveals a very pessimistic view of human nature and sounds oddly like Emily Dickinson.
Please beware of them that stare
They'll only smile to see you while
Your time away
And once you've seen what they have been
To win the earth just won't seem worth
Your night or your day
There are one or two songs in which he sounds almost hopeful- From the morning and Road.. Most of the album however sounds almost like a cry for help. It's filled with the kind of melancholy that made his sucide seem almost inevitable. He doesn't even seem angry- just resigned to everything.
With Radiohead on the other hand you get the feeling they are on a different part of the same spectrum. Thom Yorke- the lead singer and writer of virtually all their songs- suffered from depression and it comes through in much of their music. The chorus of Planet Telex just about sums up the worldview of their music (Everything is broken, Everyone is broken)and sad wistful songs like How to disappear completely and Bullet proof [I wish I was] merely reinforce this.
It's become widely-accepted that their landmark album OK Computer is mainly about alienation from the modern world but even The Bends had songs that fit into this mould- a kind of complete failure to understand what is going on, discomfort with technology and a failure to fit in. Infact all of Radiohead's output can probably be summed up as grappling with the sense of being an outsider.
There's a similarity between Street Spirit (also known as Fade out) and No suprises and they serve as a good representation of Radiohead's brand of melabcholy with lyrics like "Rows of houses...all bearing down on me" (Street Spirit)and No suprises ("I'll take a quiet life....a handshake of carbon monoxide")Sometimes it's a fear of physical decay brought about by ageing (Bones)but through it all there are several common threads- fear, alienation, confusion. Two more outstanding examples are High and Dry and Fake plastic trees. Even his love songs are affected-it's probably no coincidence that he was chosen to write the theme song for the modern film version of Romeo and Juliet in 1996. The result is Exit music for a film and its as unconventional a love song as there is (the dying lovers tell those who kept them apart 'we hope that your rules and wisdom choke you' towards the end of the song)
It always struck me as odd that OK Computer finished with The Tourist in which Thom Yorke is scolding tourists who don't take in the sights and just dash from one landmark to another just so they could say they've been there. You get the feeling that right at the end of the album he's let his guard down.
With Radiohead's music, you get the feeling that Yorke-unlike Drake- can see hope but he's not reaching out to it- at least not quite yet. He can see beauty in melancholy (Pyramid Song offers the best example of this). Or maybe he sees it as an affirmation of his existence in the sense that he chooses to be this way. You know that famous quote about man being condemned to be free? Yorke's music shows an acute understanding of that. There's an Oasis song that goes something like this:
I'm free to be whatever I...whatever I choose
and I'll take the blues if I want
I think that sums it up quite well.
posted by Minzo at 4:21 AM
3 Comments:
I have 'chosen' the blue life. yay!!
Gosh, I missed you writing about music, and reading your blog! I'm in Juba but connected now and making up for lost time.
Bazi here.
Aside from the blog comment-turned Email- I sent you, there's also a few other things I wished to point out,just so you know:
The Tourist, interestingly, was completely written by Jonny Greenwood, a.k.a., as I'm sure you know, the other Main Member of Radiohead aside from Yorke. In his own words, (And this is from the memory of reading it in early 2006, when I last heard their music until a few weeks ago) "For The Tourist, Thom didn't actually do anything. He just listened."
It was meant to sound much nicer than how it seems to read. Ahh, it has been 18 months.
Oh, and you DO read the comments you get, right?
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