My Favourite Lyric On Every Radiohead Song

I’ve looked at some of my favourite lyrics from Bowie, LCD Soundsystem, Talking Heads and Muse, so I think it’s time I pick some of my favourite lyrics from one of the most depressing yet thought-provoking bands of our time – Radiohead.

They have a reputation for sombre and morose lyrics, but I think that’s doing them a disservice. They weave some of the most fascinating stories I’ve heard in song, and sometimes the individual lines really affect me. So, what’s my favourite lyric from each Radiohead song?

Before we begin, you can check out some of my related blog posts below:

Pablo Honey

“Why should I believe myself, not you?” (You)

“I want a perfect body, I want a perfect soul” (Creep)

“He was a stupid baby who turned into a powerful freak” (How Do You?)

“Stop whispering, start shouting” (Stop Whispering)

“I’ve bled and I bleed to please you” (Thinking About You)

“I want to be in a band when I get to heaven”(Anyone Can Play Guitar)

“Soul destroyed, with clever toys, for little boys, it’s inevitable” (Ripcord)

“Your words surround me and asphyxiate” (Vegetable)

“Nowhere to sit without a gun in my hand” (Prove Yourself)

“Even though I might, even though I try, I can’t” (I Can’t)

“I feel better now you’ve gone” (Lurgee)

“I am fused just in case I blow out” (Blow Out)

The Bends

“Everything is broken, everyone is broken” (Planet Telex)

“I’m just lying in a bar with my drip feed on, talking to my girlfriend waiting for something to happen” (The Bends)

“You’d kill yourself for recognition” (High and Dry)

“He used to do surgery for girls in the eighties, but gravity always wins” (Fake Plastic Trees)

“Pieces missing everywhere” (Bones)

“I call up my friend, the good angel, but she’s out with her answerphone” ([Nice Dream])

“You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts” (Just)

“My brain says I’m receiving pain” (My Iron Lung)

“I wish that I was bulletproof” (Bullet Proof … I Wish I Was)

“Troubled words of a troubled mind” (Black Star)

“Just like your dad, you’ll never change” (Sulk)

“I can feel death, can see its beady eyes” (Street Spirit [Fade Out])

OK Computer

“In an interstellar burst, I am back to save the universe” (Airbag)

“Ambition makes you look pretty ugly” (Paranoid Android)

“Up above aliens hover, making home movies for the folks back home” (Subterranean Homesick Alien)

“We hope that you choke” (Exit Music [For A Film])

“One day, I am gonna grow wings” (Let Down)

“For a minute there I lost myself” (Karma Police)

“When I go forwards, you go backwards” (Electioneering)

“Either way you turn, I’ll be there” (Climbing Up the Walls)

“A heart that’s full up like a landfill, a job that slowly kills you, bruises that won’t heal” (No Surprises)

“It’s gonna be a glorious day!” (Lucky)

“Hey, man, slow down” (The Tourist)

Kid A

“Yesterday, I woke up sucking a lemon” (Everything In Its Right Place)

“We’ve got heads on sticks, and you’ve got ventriloquists” (Kid A)

“Everyone is so near, it’s holding on” (The National Anthem)

“I’m not here, this isn’t happening” (How to Disappear Completely)

“The big fish eat the little ones, not my problem, give me some” (Optimistic)

“You’re living in a fantasy world” (In Limbo)

“We’re not scaremongering, this is really happening” (Idioteque)

“Clothes are on the lawn with the furniture” (Morning Bell)

“I will see you in the next life” (Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Amnesiac

“I’m a reasonable man, get off my case” (Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box)

“A moon full of stars and astral cars” (Pyramid Song)

“We ride tonight, ghost horses” (You And Whose Army?)

“I could’ve sworn I saw a light coming on” (I Might Be Wrong)

“If you’d been a dog, they would’ve drowned you at birth” (Knives Out)

“Be constructive with your blues, even when it’s only warnings, even when you talk the war games” (Dollars and Cents)

“I’m living in cloud cuckoo land” (Like Spinning Plates)

“Don’t talk politics and don’t throw stones, your royal highnesses” (Life In a Glasshouse)

Hail to the Thief

“It’s the devil’s way now, there is no way out” (2 + 2 = 5)

“Walk into the jaws of hell” (Sit Down. Stand Up)

“Maybe you’ll be president, but know right from wrong” (Sail To The Moon)

“One gust and we will probably crumble” (Backdrifts)

“This is how I end up sucked in” (Go To Sleep)

“I will eat you alive, and there’ll be no more lies” (Where I End and You Begin)

“Our veins are thin” (We Suck Young Blood)

“Genie, let out of the bottle, it is now the witching hour” (The Gloaming)

“We are accidents waiting, waiting to happen” (There, There)

“Meet the real world coming out of your shell” (I Will)

“Hypocrite, opportunist” (A Punch Up at a Wedding)

“My thoughts are misguided and a little naive” (Myxomatosis)

“The roof is pulling off by its fingernails” (Scatterbrain)

“I keep the wolf from the door but he calls me up, calls me on the phone, tells me all the ways that he’s gonna mess me up” (A Wolf At the Door)

In Rainbows

“How come I end up where I started? How come I end up where I went wrong?” (15 Step)

“I have no idea what I am talking about” (Bodysnatchers)

“Now that you found it, it’s gone. Now that you feel it, you don’t” (Nude)

“In the deepest ocean, the bottom of the sea, your eyes, they turn me” (Weird Fishes/Arpeggi)

“I am all the days that you choose to ignore” (All I Need)

“Watch me fall like dominoes in pretty patterns” (Faust Arp)

“Because we separate like ripples on a blank shore” (Reckoner)

“Fall off the table and get swept under” (House Of Cards)

“Before you run away from me, before you’re lost between the notes” (Jigsaw Falling Into Place)

“You are my centre when I spin away” (Videotape)

The King of Limbs

“And while the ocean blooms, it’s what keeps me alive” (Bloom)

“Now you’ve stolen all the magic” (Morning Mr Magpie)

“Little by little by hook or by crook” (Little By Little)

“I will shape myself into your pocket” (Lotus Flower)

“Slide your hand, jump off the end, the water’s clear and innocent” (Codex)

“I think I should give up the ghost” (Give Up The Ghost)

“Like I’ve fallen out of bed from a long and vivid dream” (Separator)

A Moon Shaped Pool

“Burn the witch, we know where you live” (Burn the Witch)

“Dreamers, they never learn” (Daydreaming)

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, the grass grows over me” (Decks Dark)

“The wind rushing around my open heart, an open ravine” (Desert Island Disk)

“This is a foul tasting medicine” (Ful Stop)

“I feel this love to the core” (Glass Eyes)

“Sweet-faced ones with nothing left inside” (Identikit)

“Take back what is ours, one day at a time” (The Numbers)

“I won’t stop now, won’t slack off, or all this love will be in vain” (Present Tense)

“The ones you light your fires to keep away” (Tinker Tailer Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief)

“I’ll drown my beliefs to have your babies” (True Love Waits)

Aaaaand that’s that. You can check out some of my latest blog posts below: