Radiohead/Nightmare Fuel
Radiohead: Masters of scaring the hell out of people.
- "A Wolf At The Door."
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Steal all my children |
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- "Like Spinning Plates" is extremely unsettling, from the distorted vocals in the first few lines to the fact that the music itself is another song played backwards.
- Nearly any of the promotional 'blips' that were made for Kid A. Downright creepy scenes and imagery, and incredibly apocalyptic and futuristic.
- "Climbing Up the Walls" is the most well-known example. It's about a song about people living next to an insane asylum being unable to sleep at night for fear of someone coming in the house (sung entirely in a slurred, unintelligible tone over a musical duel between screechy strings, electronics and loud guitars). About it, Thom has said:
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"This is about the unspeakable. Literally skull-crushing. I used to work in a mental hospital around the time that Care In The Community started, and we all just knew what was going to happen. And it's one of the scariest things to happen in this country, because a lot of them weren't just harmless... It was hailing violently when we recorded this. It seemed to add to the mood. Some people can't sleep with the curtains open in case they see the eyes they imagine in their heads every night burning through the glass. Lots of people have panic buttons fitted in their bedrooms so they can reach over and set the alarm off without disturbing the intruder. This song is about the cupboard monster." |
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- The metal scream at the end just adds to the effect.
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Climbing up the WAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH |
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- "Kinetic": the lyrics sound like they're from the perspective of someone trying to escape an inevitable (and horrible) fate.
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Keep moving... please keep moving... |
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- "Fitter Happier" is a list of random, vaguely authoritarian slogans set to a minimalist soundscape and an out-of-tune piano. The list itself is spoken by a computer.
- The phrases get worse and worse as they go along;
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[[AC:fitter, happier |
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- The conclusion of "Where I End and You Begin."
- Stanley Donwood's artwork, especially for Kid A.
- The final third of "Paranoid Android" is endlessly chilling.
- During the final reprise freak out of "Paranoid Android", mixed quite low in the background, there of blasts of what sound like White Noise on normal speakers, but on headphones you can hear that it's (presumably) Thom screaming his lungs out and babbling incoherently.
- The video for Karma Police can be horribly unsettling sometimes, especially when the view shifts to Thom's unreadable face or the terrified hunted man.
- "Bloom (Mark Pritchard RMX)" and "Separator (Anstam RMX pt ii)" are both quite dark and ominous.
- "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors".
- The album cover for The King Of Limbs.
- The song "Kid A" is initially only kind of unsettling. It gets creepier when you figure out the lyrics ("standing in the shadows at the end of my bed...") and the fact that to Thom they represent something so horrible he distorted his voice in the song to distance himself from it. The speculation regarding what exactly that is doesn't help (the creepy pied piper imagery suggests pedophilia, while Thom has hinted it's about cloning or mind control). Then you look up its pages in the maze section of the Radiohead website, one of which is a picture of a man with his eyes sewn shut. And then you look up the lyrical outtakes, made by Thom's usual semi-comprehensible stream of consciousness to seem like they were written by a lunatic:
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i am the bloody pied piper rats and children follow me out of town a scarecrow that dont scare the crows nowadays i get panicked i have ceased to exist my words you know are out of ink. drooling looney tunes moving room to room did you lie to us tony? we thought you were different but now were not so sure now you know were not so sure. we can blow a hole in anything thatchers children see you on the way back down. kill the enemy within unhinged cowboys and indians moving statues yur safe until you look away. i would like to change back now please to the shadow of my former self. iam the bloody pied piper. & the rats and the childrenll fllow me around so you hade better make it worth my while. please allow me the suspension of your disbelief the benefit of the doubt. |
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- A lot of weird stream-of-consciousness-style text (in addition to the exceedingly morbid and surreal art) can be found in their aptly-titled book Dead Children Playing which pretty much showcases all of Donwood/Yorke's artwork from OKC to HTT. A little snippet:
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just a million mobiles and modems squawking and sputtering and hissing like piss on a fire like a million gallons of piss on an inferno just think of it ok? just think of that. Vertebrae being sawn apart sounds like this. |
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NOTHING NOTHING YOU JUST IMAGINED IT A NOISE NOTHING A SILENCE JUST THE HOUSE "SETTLING". WHOS THAT WHOS THAT NOTHING IMAGINED IT WHOS THAT OUT THERE/ IN THE KITCHEN THERES NOTHING IN THE COLD COLD LIGHT NOBODY BEHIND THE DOOR NOTHING. |
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EVERYBODY STOPS AND GAWPS |
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- Really, while the song "Kid A" may be the strongest example, the entire album Kid A has a very eerie, nihilistic, and very wrong atmosphere throughout it. The whole album, while never being outwardly scary, is very undeniably creepy. And it gets worse and worse the more you listen to it.
- Starting with "Everything In Its Right Place", which is in 10/4 time, by the way, with it's strange synths and Thom's distorted voice, combined with its constant build up.
- "The National Anthem" has some very strange noises placed constantly throughout the whole song.
- "How To Disappear Completely" is extremely bleak throughout... and then come the Psycho Strings.
- "Treefingers" is very soothing taken out of context, but after the ominous tunes preceding it is more Nothing Is Scarier than anything. It should also be noted, that placing it in a "sleep" playlist is a very bad idea. There's something very wrong with the song.
- The horrifying, distorted wailing of Thom Yorke at the end of "In Limbo". In fact, the second half of the song seems to be a slow descent into madness. An epic Last-Note Nightmare.
- "Idioteque" starts off pretty calm, but pretty much everything from the bridge on is pretty much one big Last-Note Nightmare.
- "Morning Bell" carries on the trend of Last-Note Nightmares, and is overall somewhere between soothing and dark. It doesn't seem particularly creepy until, suddenly, all the instruments but the drums cut out and this line is repeated over and over:
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Cut the kids in half |
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- "Motion Picture Soundtrack" is a big case of Mood Whiplash, pretty much an inversion of Last-Note Nightmare. In fact, it's pretty much Sweet Dreams Fuel in any other context. But in this case, similar to "Treefingers", on Kid A it pretty much ends up being Nothing Is Scarier. Especially with the two minutes of silence at the end.
- "Nude."
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You'll... go... to... hell... for... what... your... dirty... mind... is... thinking...! |
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- The Kid A hidden booklet.