Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief will always be seen as an anti-Bush album. Released in 2003 right around the start of the Iraq war, the album turned the paranoia of the War on Terror back onto the administration driving it, and even its kleptocratic title is an unsubtle reference to George W. Bush’s election victory despite losing the popular vote. Add in anxious lines about “the loonies taking over,” and a father-to-son passing of the torch moment like “maybe you’ll be president,” and it’s clear that Yorke had the 43rd president in mind when he penned at least some of these lyrics, despite some of them being written before the war in Iraq even started.
I was a sixth-grader during the 2000 election, and while I remember wondering when the whole crazy recount mess would end, I was too young and too removed from the consequences to pay much attention – I had a Zelda game to play (more on that in a future post). I discovered Hail to the Thief in 2005, when I was a suburban teenager deep into my Radiohead phase (which never really ended). I encountered the album after binging on OK Computer and Kid A, which of course are packed to the brim with their own anxieties, from “Paranoid Android” (“Off with his head, man”) to “How to Disappear Completely” (“I’m not here, this isn’t happening”) to “Idioteque” (“This is really happening”). Encountered next to those albums, it was easy for me, at peak high school cluelessness, to hear the Orwellian themes in Hail to the Thief as more of Radiohead being Radiohead rather than anything topical or politically charged.
Now 14 years later, the loonies have taken over. An historically unpopular man has entered the White House despite losing the popular vote by a larger margin than any previous electoral college victor. “Alternative facts” lead directly to policy decisions. George Orwell’s 1984 is at the top of the bestseller charts. On that dreary inauguration day, I listened to Hail to the Thief on repeat, and it has never felt more relevant to the American mood.
[Author’s Note: I initially intended for this to be a quick, ranty blog post about how an album I like makes me feel in light of current events. That quickly ballooned into thousands of words, as I found myself picking apart way too many relevant parts in each track. So, rather than show any self control or edit myself on my own website, I will split this essay into 3 blog posts, over the course of which I will dive into all 14 tracks. The first 2 are below.]
(The Lukewarm)
The album sets its Orwellian stage right away with the explosive opening track “2+2=5”. It thrusts the listener into a world where nothing adds up the way it should, and where the damage can’t be undone: “It’s the devil’s way now / There is no way out.” Everything has changed for the wrong: “January has April showers” despite what some may recall, and “two plus two always makes up five,” no matter what your eyes tell you. When the moody arpeggios finally give way to a dizzying rush of distorted guitars and drums, Yorke repeats the phrase “You have not been paying attention, paying attention,” a finger pointed at every low-information voter and nonvoter who helped executive authority fall into such insidious hands. The song manages to capture the ominous experience of living in a state where facts become true if they are repeated enough times, and then boils it down to the personal level, where the majority of U.S. voters feel both angry at what’s happening and helpless at their inability to prevent more harm.
(Snakes & Ladders)
“Sit Down, Stand Up” takes the point-of-view of the ones in power, first directing the faceless masses to follow the song’s eponymous instructions. When an administration insists on controlling the narrative, dictating what the press can and cannot do, it glosses even simple orders (like whether or not to Sit Down or Stand Up) with an authoritarian sheen. The instructions get dark quickly (“Walk into the gates of Hell”) before the speaker lays out the immense stakes in the case of any insubordination: “We can wipe you out anytime.” This is the implicit threat behind every rushed executive order, behind each unprecedented maneuver that picks apart the checks on federal control, behind every complacent assault on free speech and the media. The off-balance piano chords seem always searching for a center but never quite reaching it, because equilibrium does not exist in Hail to the Thief’s universe. All the power slips over to one side of the equation. Do what we say and do not “betray” us, or we will wipe you out.
[Part 2 coming soon]