Who knows why we connect with some artists, but Radiohead became something like The Beatles to me. I liked “Creep”, but it wasn’t until the opening notes of “Planet Telex” that I felt my life was changing. With subsequent masterpieces OK Computer, Kid A, and In Rainbows, many Thom Yorke lyrics make me cry. If I were an actor who needed to cry on demand, I know exactly which ones I’d turn to.
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“Dawn Chorus”
When Zane Lowe first heard “Dawn Chorus”, it brought him to tears. So Lowe asked Thom Yorke how it made him feel, writing it, singing it. Yorke, visibly uncomfortable, simply responded, “Same, same.” The song appears on Yorke’s solo album Anima, and if you’re in the mood to bawl like a child, crank this one and just let it flood. Pure catharsis.
If you could do it all again
A little fairy dust
A thousand tiny birds singing.
“Suspirium”
You might wonder how a song from a horror film can make you cry. The answer lies in the opening lines to “Suspirium”. Italian director Luca Guadagnino invited Yorke to compose the soundtrack to his remake of the 1977 horror classic, Suspiria. And the soft piano chords project a sense of falling, failure, and some eventual ending. It’s the humbling reality that we’re all standing on shaky ground.
This is a waltz thinking about our bodies
What they mean for our salvation
The little clothes that we stand up in
Just the ground on which we stand.
“Codex”
People often look to the ancients for wisdom. Someone who’s been through this before. Some kind of guidance, advice, but more specifically, hope. This track appears on The King Of Limbs, and its title is taken from an ancient tree. “Codex” finds the narrator staring into clear water. Rebirth, cleansing, or do-over. All of the above. Perhaps a spiritual car wash is what’s needed to clear away what you think you’ve done wrong.
Sleight of hand
Jump off the end
Into a clear lake
No one around.
“Fake Plastic Trees”
Yorke recorded “Fake Plastic Trees” after seeing Jeff Buckley perform in London. While working on The Bends, Yorke recorded it alone, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. He was too embarrassed by how vulnerable the performance was, but his bandmates convinced him to keep the take. “It’s like seeing yourself in the mirror for the first time,” he said of the song, “catching yourself unaware.” Exactly.
And if I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted
All the time
All the time.
“Exit Music (For A Film)”
Years ago, when I read Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, I desperately wanted the president to escape the assassination. I knew how it was going to end, but still, I hoped for another outcome. Yorke wrote the lyrics to “Exit Music (For A Film)” for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, you root for Romeo and Juliet to escape their feuding families. You want them to be together. Yorke said, “It’s [“Exit Music (For A Film)”] about two people who can’t be together and are naïve and young enough to believe that they’ll go see each other in the next life, so they choose to go there.”
Sing us a song
A song to keep us warm
There’s such a chill
Such a chill.
Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images
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