“Paranoid Android” is both lyrically and musically a tour de force.  With that said, it tends to stay in the late 90s in a way that stops it from being a “classic” as we look back at meaningful music from the 50s or 60s, for example.  Indeed, there is something very 90s about “Paranoid Android” which defines the mood of the decade, yet doesn’t quite transcend it.  

One themes of the “Paranoid Android” is alienation–of course, it’s Radiohead.  This anchors it to the 90s alternative music scene.  The song is profound–when Thom Yorke sings “rain down, rain down on me,” it seems to encapsulate depression in a moving way, and it brings the song to a crescendo, while demonstrating his vocal range.  In this section, Yorke bursts from the falsetto of the verses and shows his prowess as a vocalist. 

When Yorke squeals, “You don’t remember, you don’t remember, why don’t you remember my name?” It is the voice of a collapsed ego avenging itself of the “in-crowd.”  A consummate outsider–in a cool way! 

As to that theme, though, we’re not really in a world in which one has the time or resources to luxuriate in one’s sense of alienation anymore.  Oh trust me, no one was more depressed in a fashionably tortured artist way than me in the late 90s.  But we had that sense of comfort in the 90s, that we could express our alienation in music, and it was a profound statement.  The baby boomers didn’t get us; they had missed something existential and apparently very dark, if we are to judge by the music.  

Yet none of that angst seems to be related to our current troubles, and as such it leads to a dead end both artistically and politically.  

Another theme of “Paranoid Android,” which again felt especially profound and relevant in the 90s, was a lashing out at the rat-race which is corporate America (or maybe England too).  “Kicking, squealing, Gucci little piggy,” is a rebuke to those that would value material things such as designer brands, a particular aesthetic of 1990s alternative.  “The yuppies networking” is another contemptuous reference to Yorke’s peers who might have been striving for success in business, or some other enterprise he found to be insufficiently introspective.  

This 1990s era antipathy to climbing the corporate ladder is a 1960s ethos too, as the 1990s in some ways sought to echo the hippie generation.  That message just doesn’t resonate anymore either, with our globalized economy, one is lucky to eke out any kind of living, let alone scoff at material success.  We’re in a time of more intense competition and even racial strife, so that the idea of shunning success in order to sulk to Radiohead’s music seems extremely inadvisable.  Anyway, what was the alternative implied by “Paranoid Android”–that we should also become alt-rock stars like Radiohead?  

Again, this is not to show irreverence towards what is musically a sophisticated and epic song.  The unconventional guitar riff and sweeping coda make “Paranoid Android” a masterpiece for its time, and possibly Radiohead’s best song.  It perfectly expresses the uniquely anxiety-ridden artistic soul of Thom Yorke and the band’s powerhouse musical statement of the album OK Computer, an album which kept the “band” feel of Radiohead while also daring to experiment.  But there’s a definite time stamp on “Paranoid Android” that makes it more nostalgia and an artistic detour of a very particular era. 

Grade: A

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