“The Daily Mail” by Radiohead

So my first thought before even listening to this song for the first time, “OH BOY! Radiohead…this is going to be fun.” Radiohead is awesome. They are one of my favorite alternative rock bands. To be around for over 30 years is very hard to do in this ever-changing music industry full of shady people. Which is also industry rule #4080. (If you don’t know where that came from, I suggest you listen to some A Tribe Called Quest.)

So where was I again? Sorry, my millennial “attention disorder” kicked in again. Oh yeah, Radiohead. So in this blog, I’m going to talk about the song “The Daily Mail”, released as part of an EP by Radiohead in 2011. As usual, it took me a couple of listens to actually immerse myself in this song. The piano intro in the beginning is really calm and has a sort of melancholy feeling to it. But then all of a sudden the piano gets a little darker and the drums start kicking in about 8 bars after. By this time, I’m loving the heck out of this song and it was only the first time listening! The song had this Beatles feeling at the beginning and then went Rolling Stones towards the end. Around the second or third time listening to this song, I tried to understand what Thom Yorke was singing about. For some reason, I had a hard time understanding what exactly Yorke was referring to. The Government? Wall Street? Big Business? Maybe society as a whole? Apparently, ‘the lunatics are taking over the asylum’. Who are these lunatics? My guess that it’s the super elite group of people that are in power in this world. The song is also called “The Daily Mail”, which is also a super conservative British tabloid newspaper. Maybe this was Yorke’s expression of his political views. But who knows? Music is supposed to be open to anyone’s interpretation, right?

Amazing song. If you haven’t heard it already, you need to right now! Stop reading this if you haven’t listened. I’m serious just listen to the song, or any other Radiohead song for the most part.