Sometimes music is like an IV line direct to the blood stream and one of the bands that have that effect on me are Radiohead. There’s something beautiful about Thom Yorke’s pained falsetto voice, perhaps from his unconventional look with his drooping left eye and subsequent experiences.
My top three favourite Radiohead songs, in reverse order are Street Spirit, No surprises and How to disappear completely. How can powerful lyrics like “Cracked eggs, dead birds, Scream as they fight for life. I can feel death, can see its beady eyes” not make you sit up and listen.
I love hearing the acoustic version of No Surprises. When I’m feeling really low, the lyrics really resonate with me. “A heart that’s full up like a landfill, A job that slowly kills you, Bruises that won’t heal”.
However, unlike the other Radiohead hits, I hadn’t really heard much of “How to disappear completely”, I only came across it as part of a joke.
At my old workplace on a Friday afternoon we had a shared spotify playlist and a bluetooth speaker. I would deliberately put songs on the list to wind up my friends. Songs like Sugar Baby Love by the Rubettes. I’d mix it up with good songs too, and there was a lot of office banter and friendly joshing about the playlists.
This wasn’t the first time I’d wind people up with my eclectic taste in music. As a child I would listen to a radio station that played a lot of 60s music and I was a bit of an old soul in a child’s body. On a coach trip to Italy, I brought a mixtape with me and to the displeasure of my fellow students, one day the coach driver let me play my tape. This was the time of Blur and Oasis and I was playing Neil Sedaka, Del Shannon, Buddy Holly, The Hollies and Herman’s Hermits.
It didn’t go down well but it amused me. I’ve always been a bit of a character, not afraid to poke fun at things and go against the grain. Ironically, as I got older I grew more of an appreciation for 90s music, including bands like Oasis, the Verve, REM and Radiohead.
Anyway, sometimes I’d chuck on a few more melancholic tunes to the shared playlist and my friends would comment about how it’s the most depressing music in the world, so I decided to look up the most depressing music in the world and I came across an article that rated How to disappear completely as the number one depressing ditty. I listened to it and instantly fell in love.
Even without the lyrics, the sombre string intro has this other worldy quality to it, like a gateway between the world of the living and the dead. When I’m in a bad place, I hear that sound in the back of my head whether I actually listen to it or not. It connects very deeply to my soul, it’s like a drug to me.
Then you hear the lyrics and that beautiful voice and it is just the most perfect piece of music to describe how I feel at that point.
One day I randomly came across a video on YouTube about the origin of the song, and that just made me fall in love with it even more.
The song is really about how the band became massively successful after releasing the seminal album OK, Computer. Going from playing gigs with 400 people to ones with tens of thousands of fans.
Yorke explained that he had nightmares before a big gig in Dublin where he imagined floating down the river Liffey, being pursued by tidal waves.
At this point Yorke was completely overwhelmed by the fame and the demands of the band so he reached out to another big artist, lead singer of REM, Michael Stipe for advice about how to cope with his meteoric rise. Stipe told him to pull the shutters down and tell himself “I’m not here, this isn’t happening”, and so the song came to be.
Every time I hear those words it makes the hairs on the back of my arms and neck stand on edge. For Yorke those words were about coping with fame, for me they were about the outer body experience I would have when I got into a severe depressive state. It’s as if my mind detaches from my body, separating, preparing for death like the film Ghost. Preparing to leave a host that is no longer part of me. It’s a very strange feeling. It’s not a literal feeling, it’s metaphorical. It’s not that I’m delusional at the time, I’m fully lucid, aware of my surroundings but overwhelmed by these very sombre emotions. Flooded by sadness, drowning in my own fear and tears. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anybody but the song, it brings me some comfort, a kinship with my internal feelings until I somehow climb out of that dark cave and re-emerge into the light. I always do re-emerge. It’s only temporary, it doesn’t feel like that at the time yet I’m still here, still fighting, still strong.
Rant Over 