I have been listening to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief for 20 years.
Though Kid A is my favorite Radiohead album, Hail to the Thief is a very, very close second.
Had Hail to the Thief come out when I was in college, I would have poured over the lyrics and memorized the whole thing, but adulting is harder. Though I have been listening to Hail to the Thief since its release, I never much even looked at the songs and the titles let alone the lyrics. And yet, in so many listens, surely over 100 and maybe approaching 200, much of the lyrical content has soaked in.
I love all the sources for the lyrics: Orwell, Dante's Inferno, fairy tales and folklore, and 1970s children's TV. Brilliant.
Reading over the WIKIPEDIA page for the album, Radiohead later disliked the album for a variety of reasons, but I don't agree with them.
Maybe it can help you, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_to_the_Thief
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_to_the_Thief
Lyrics and themes
[edit]Yorke's lyrics were influenced by what he called "the general sense of ignorance and intolerance and panic and stupidity" following the 2000 election of the US president George W. Bush.[20] He took words and phrases from discourse around the unfolding war on terror, which he described as Orwellian euphemisms, and used them in the lyrics and artwork.[2] Yorke said the "emotional context of those words had been taken away" and that he was "stealing it back".[2] Though Yorke denied any intent to make a political statement,[2] he said: "I desperately tried not to write anything political, anything expressing the deep, profound terror I'm living with day to day. But it's just fucking there, and eventually you have to give it up and let it happen."[23]
Yorke, a new father, adopted a strategy of "distilling" the political themes into "childlike simplicity".[20] He took phrases from fairy tales and folklore such as the tale of Chicken Little,[4] and from children's literature and television he shared with his son, such as the 1970s TV series Bagpuss.[3] Parenthood made Yorke concerned about the condition of the world and how it could affect future generations.[24] Greenwood said Yorke's lyrics embraced sarcasm, wit and ambiguity,[25] and expressed "confusion and escape, like 'I'm going to stay at home and look after the people I care about, buy a month's supply of food'."[19]
Yorke also took phrases from Dante's Inferno, the subject of his partner Rachel Owen's PhD thesis.[26] Several songs, such as "2 + 2 = 5", "Sit Down Stand Up", and "Sail to the Moon", reference Christian ideas of heaven and hell, a first for Radiohead's music.[27] Other songs reference science fiction, horror and fantasy, such as the wolves and vampires of "A Wolf at the Door" and "We Suck Young Blood", the reference to the slogan "two plus two equals five" in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the allusion to the giant of Gulliver's Travels in "Go to Sleep".[28]
Radiohead struggled to choose a title.[3] They considered using The Gloaming (meaning "twilight" or "dusk"), but this was rejected as too poetic[29] and "doomy"[2] and so became the album's subtitle.[30] They also considered the titles Little Man Being Erased, The Boney King of Nowhere and Snakes and Ladders, which became the alternative titles for "Go to Sleep", "There There" and "Sit Down. Stand Up".[4][12] The use of alternative titles was inspired by Victorian playbills showcasing moralistic songs played in music halls.[25]
The phrase "hail to the thief" was used by anti-Bush protesters as a play on "Hail to the Chief", the American presidential anthem.[31] Yorke described hearing the phrase for the first time as a "formative moment".[2] Radiohead chose the title partly in reference to Bush,[32] but also in response to "the rise of doublethink and general intolerance and madness ... like individuals were totally out of control of the situation ... a manifestation of something not really human".[3] The title also references the leak of an unfinished version of the album before its release.[25] Yorke worried that it would be misconstrued solely as reference to the US election, but his bandmates felt it "conjured up all the nonsense and absurdity and jubilation of the times".[2]
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- Days ago: MOM = 3419 days ago & DAD = 075 days ago
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