{"id":954879,"date":"2026-05-12T13:25:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T13:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/954879\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T13:25:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T13:25:37","slug":"lots-of-people-say-that-song-is-gibberish-its-not-its-totally-about-that-how-thom-yorke-channelled-his-tour-exhaustion-into-the-track-that-saved-radiohead-from-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/954879\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLots of people say that song is gibberish. It’s not. It’s totally about that\u201d: How Thom Yorke channelled his tour exhaustion into the track that saved Radiohead from oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Across popular music’s winding history, there have been many acts who decided to make a fan-provoking left-turn. Dylan going electric, the Bee Gees embracing disco, David Bowie ditching the mullet and platforms to become a besuited soul-boy. The list goes on. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Many of these, at the time shocking, changes were later reappraised as being pretty astute moves; fearless creatives making new music on their terms – and pulling the rest of the world along for the ride. Whether they were ready for it or not.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But Radiohead<\/a>\u2019s seemingly abrupt transition from angst-ridden, chart-bothering indie-proggers to Warp-adjacent electronic experimentalists still remains a tough pill for some to swallow.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Even now in 2026, some Radiohead traditionalists find the transition from 1997\u2019s OK Computer to 2000\u2019s Kid A baffling – the moment when their once favourite band became something else entirely. With the rockier elements now just one part of a blended soup of synthetic and expanded instrumentation. Some felt betrayed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And some still do. As evidenced by the Spectator’s review of Radiohead\u2019s O2 residency last year<\/a>, Radiohead\u2019s experimentalist evolution isn’t for everybody.<\/p>\n

But for those who took the plunge and went with the band on their journey, Kid A’s rewards were vast. The album opened the door on just what Radiohead could be, beginning a captivatingly left-field new chapter for the Oxford-hailing quintet<\/p>\n

Released on October 2nd 2000, the record stretched, shattered and splintered all previous notions of what Radiohead were, with its best moments colliding genres with delirious abandon.<\/p>\n

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From the devilish free jazz menace of the The National Anthem<\/a> to the hysterical modular-hewn Idioteque<\/a> and the unnerving transhuman vocal that intones its way through the title track<\/a>, Kid A wasn\u2019t how anybody expected the band to follow-up on the critical veneration of OK Computer.<\/p>\n

Although, as many fans will point out, the seeds of the band’s left-field turn were already being sown amid some of Computer’s more ambitious moments<\/a>, it was still largely rooted in guitars and graspable melody.<\/p>\n

But Radiohead\u2019s experimentalist-chapter really began with the writing of Kid A\u2019s first track. A pulsing grasp for serenity that was called Everything In Its Right Place.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

Everything In Its Right Place – YouTube
\n\"Everything<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Writing and shaping Everything\u2026 marked the moment when the band\u2019s central creative force, Thom Yorke, realised that Radiohead\u2019s future lay on stranger tides.<\/p>\n

In a 2001 interview with Rolling Stone<\/a>, Yorke recalled that the song\u2019s starting point was triggered by a bout of depression that hit suddenly, following a show at the NEC Arena in Birmingham (UK).<\/p>\n

Having been on the road for seven-and-a-half months, an exhausted Yorke was beginning to crack; “I came off at the end of that show, sat in the dressing room and couldn’t speak. I actually couldn’t speak,\u201d Thom told Rolling Stone. \u201cPeople were saying, ‘You all right?’ I knew people were speaking to me. But I couldn’t hear them. And I couldn’t talk. I’d just so had enough. And I was bored with saying I’d had enough. I was beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As evidenced in the legendarily downbeat documentary Meeting People Is Easy, the nearly year-long OK Computer tour was tough on every member. But for Thom the stress was particularly corrosive. It was sapping not only his interest in OK Computer, but also his entire attitude towards guitar music in general.<\/p>\n

It extended to his own listening too. Yorke replaced his previously guitar-leaning interests with a new passion for all things electronic, particularly the roster of Warp Records<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada and Autechre were filling Yorke\u2019s ears with new possibilities. \u201cIt was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices on it,\u201d Thom told Q Magazine at the time. \u201cBut I felt as emotional about it as I\u2019d ever felt about guitar music. I\u2019d completely had it with melody, I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Radiohead\"\n<\/p>\n

It’s likely that Kid A wouldn’t have sounded they way it did had Radiohead planned a shorter OK Computer tour (Image credit: Jim Steinfeldt\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In isolation at a newly-bought home in Cornwall, Thom took a well-earned breather from heading the world\u2019s most critically acclaimed band.<\/p>\n

When he wasn’t sketching landscapes and roaming the cliffs listening to Aphex, Yorke began to timidly trial new ideas on a freshly purchased Yamaha<\/a> grand piano – the only instrument in the house.<\/p>\n

Not a particularly versatile pianist at that point, Yorke gleefully came at the instrument from a non-musicological angle. Avoiding the obvious, Yorke’s head swam with the off-the-wall attitudes of IDM’s boundary-pushers.<\/p>\n

During the first week, Thom ended up clanking out the song that would ultimately signal a sea change for what Radiohead could be; Everything In Its Right Place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat and [Pyramid Song<\/a> from 2001\u2019s Amnesiac] were both written in the same week – the week I bought a piano,\u201d Thom told Mojo. \u201cThe chords I’m playing involve lots of black notes. You think you’re being really clever playing them but they’re really simple.”<\/p>\n

Yorke\u2019s new track was deliberately ambiguous from a theoretical point of view, with its central motif transitioning between three chords – C<\/strong>, Dbmaj 7<\/strong> and Eb6<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The tonal centre of Everything\u2026 is difficult for some musos to agree on. It\u2019s generally assumed to be in the key of C, with the chord of Dbmaj 7 lent from the C phrygian minor mode, although an extra F<\/strong> chord briefly appears during the verse section, adding to the uncertainty.<\/p>\n

The order of the chords alters throughout Yorke\u2019s arrangement, but never deviates far from the central cycle.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Radiohead\"\n<\/p>\n

Everything In Its Right Place found Yorke intentionally losing the music theory – and guitar-band – rulebook (Image credit: John Shearer\/WireImage\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Although not the norm, these chords certainly felt different for Thom. Inverting and throbbing, the new music implied a breadth akin to the sensation of gazing over a precipice down into a wilderness of unchartered territory.<\/p>\n

Everything In Its Right Place became one of the few solid ideas that Yorke had for the band\u2019s then-untitled fourth album.<\/p>\n

Yorke reconvened with his bandmates, Jonny and Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway, all of whom were also eager to explore new songwriting approaches.<\/p>\n

Radiohead worked at a variety of studios spanning Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire to work-up new ideas with a slew of electronic and vintage instruments, modular synths and modern gadgets.<\/p>\n

But these free-flowing, deadline-free sessions became fraught with tension as conventional guitar sounds and live drums became increasingly sidelined in favour of weirder avenues.<\/p>\n

Being one of the more structured ideas, Everything In Its Right Place was trialled with a variety of full-band arrangements – but a wall was repeatedly hit. It didn’t really feel like Ed O\u2019Brien\u2019s contributions on rhythm guitar and Phillip Selway\u2019s live kit were adding to the song.<\/p>\n

Producer Nigel Godrich was underwhelmed; “[Nigel] didn’t think much of Everything In Its Right Place when he heard it, he didn’t think it was going to be any good,\u201d bassist Colin Greenwood told KCRW.<\/p>\n

Unimpressed with the lack of obvious hook, Godrich considered that perhaps Thom’s new idea needed to be tackled in a different way. Perhaps, by emphasising the music’s essential oddness.<\/p>\n

So, while recording at a mansion in Batsford Park in Gloucestershire, Godrich did what any good producer would do. He sent everyone but Thom home, locked the doors, and brought in a Prophet-5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Working through the night, Godrich and Yorke re-built the track on the Sequential Circuits\u2019 synth monolith, backing it up with a Crumar DP-80.<\/p>\n

Although landing on a sound that harked back to a Fender Rhodes, it was these synths that became the bedrock of a new electronic arrangement.<\/p>\n

Routing the output into Pro Tools, Godrich painstakingly scrubbed and manipulated the waveforms to accentuate the synth\u2019s swell and creatively modulate the EQ. Using a DAW in this expressive, experimental way was pretty forward-thinking for 1999. \u201cHe made all these mad sounds that no-one had done before and it was amazing,\u201d said Colin Greenwood in an interview with KCRW.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Prophet-5\n<\/p>\n

The Prophet-5 was the heart of the sound of Everything In Its Right Place (Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n

On the Prophet-5, the pair landed on the song’s trickling four-note opening riff, which seemed to unpack itself into the central chordal structure elegantly.<\/p>\n

The widening colour palette of the arrangement mirrored Yorke\u2019s lyric-writing, which had become unmoored from traditional structure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThom always used to just carry notebooks with him everywhere we went,\u201d Nigel Godrich relayed to Interview Magazine<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019d be eating, and he writes stuff down all the time. For Everything In Its Right Place it was just me and him in a room, and he\u2019s like, \u2018Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon\u2026 Oh, I can\u2019t say that.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Yes, you can. That\u2019s great.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This particular lemon line was, as Thom later admitted, a call back to the bleak mental state that hit him during the OK Computer tour, which Yorke felt was manifested across his face in a sort of contorted frustration.<\/p>\n

As he explained to Rolling Stone; \u201cIn England \u2018sucking a lemon\u2019 refers to the face you pull because a lemon is so tart. That’s the face I had for three years.”<\/p>\n

As Rolling Stone neatly articulated during their 2001 interview<\/a>, the line was also a memento of the \u2018mute, vengeful paralysis he felt in Birmingham which stayed with Yorke deep into the strange recording of Radiohead\u2019s [Kid A]\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of people say that song is gibberish. It\u2019s not. It’s totally about that,\u201d Yorke confirmed to Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Radiohead\"\n<\/p>\n

Thom wouldn’t be bored of guitars for long, but post-Kid A Radiohead was a far more instrumentally diverse beast (Image credit: Jon Super\/Redferns\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The lemon line, then, is seemingly pivotal in understanding Everything In Its Right Place’s meaning – with its titular phrase repeated like a mantra, emerging from a stormy ocean of ghostly, robotic Yorke vocal fragments which congeal around the arrangement.<\/p>\n

Using Pro Tools, Godrich pitch-shifted, delayed, reversed and effect-daubed these surrounding vocals into a hazy sonic fog. Live this was later achieved by Jonny Greenwood manipulating Yorke\u2019s vocals via a Korg Kaoss Pad.<\/p>\n

The central mantra orbits the two bridges (or, non-verse sections, at any rate) which allude to Yorke\u2019s mental disquiet, with the aforementioned lemon line being the first. The second, a more pointed admission of mental unease.<\/p>\n

There are two colours in my head
There are two colours in my head
What, what is that you tried to say?
What, what was that you tried to say?<\/p>\n

When spotlighting these particular lyrics (with the added context of Thom\u2019s quotes on his breakdown) it’s hard to not make a link to Yorke\u2019s recollection of his lack of ability to understand others after the Birmingham show, (\u201cI knew people were speaking to me. But I couldn’t hear them. And I couldn’t talk”).<\/p>\n

But, as Thom explained to Juice Magazine (as archived on the superb Radiohead archive site, Citizen Insane<\/a>), it was also a broader comment on human connection in a world where everyone\u2019s motives are suspect; \u201cI didn’t trust people at all, not even the people closest to me for ages and ages, and that means you really have nothing to hold onto. Everything In Its Right Place is about that. You’re trying to fit into the right place and the right box so you can connect.”<\/p>\n

\n

\"Jonny\n<\/p>\n

Jonny Greenwood was keen to push deeper into experimental territory; “Everything In Its Right Place was one of the first songs that we actually realised is great. That was a very important song” (Image credit: Rob Verhorst\/Redferns\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Everything In Its Right Place had blossomed into a scintillating, synth-driven tour-de-force.<\/p>\n

Upon hearing it the following day, O\u2019Brien, Selway and the Greenwoods were amazed, but also somewhat struck by how little there was for them to do, as the track was basically done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt forced the issue, immediately!,\u201d Ed O\u2019Brien recalled in an interview with XFM. \u201c[I was] genuinely sort of delighted that you’d been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it – and you haven’t contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as Ed also stated, the track laid down the gauntlet of just what the album could be, \u201cIt definitely sets the tone of it. It’s the key to this record. Everything In Its Right Place, I think it’s really tense, and actually, in its own way, really emotional. But it doesn’t have the obvious, huge crescendos that have existed on previous tracks and records of ours.”<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything In Its Right Place was important because, unlike with OK Computer, our last record, we were happy to leave parts of it empty,\u201d Jonny Greenwood told KCRW. \u201cI think in the past we’ve been too scared to leave sounds exposed or to have too much space around them, and we’ve been guilty of layering on top of what’s a very good song or a very good sound, and hiding it, camouflaging it, in case it’s not good enough, and Everything In Its Right Place was one of the first songs that we actually realised is great, even though it’s so sparse, so that was a very important song, and it also dictated how we sequenced the record, because we knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything In Its Right Place was the sound of Yorke transforming his turbulent mental health into creative fuel. Discarding the instruments, attitudes and expectations that were stifling him, Thom crafted a meditation on modern anxiety. A fusion of the age-old mysticism of mantra with an embrace of new technology and futurism. Fittingly released at the outset of a daunting new millennium, it mirrored humanity’s trepidatious first-steps into an era of profound change.<\/p>\n

For Radiohead, the door was open, and Everyhing In Its Right Place’s gravitational pull soon pulled Kid A’s other key tracks into shape. Morning Bell<\/a>, Idioteque<\/a>, Optimistic<\/a>, In Limbo<\/a>\u2026 a tidal wave of new ideas and half-formed fragments soon found alignment.<\/p>\n

Kid A was about to be born, to the chagrin of some no doubt, but to the utter and enduring joy of many, many more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Across popular music’s winding history, there have been many acts who decided to make a fan-provoking left-turn. Dylan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-954879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116561835060390929","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}