The one problem Thom Yorke had with ‘South Park’: “Emote more”
From accusing Kanye West of being a gay fish to, more recently, connecting President Donald Trump to Satan himself, it has been nearly 30 years since the foul-mouthed inhabitants of South Park first graced our screens, and you would be hard-pushed to find any celebrity or cultural institution who hasn’t been parodied, lambasted, or attacked in that time – although some tend to take it better than others.
At this point in time, the nature of South Park shouldn’t be a shock to anybody. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have never attempted to hide what the programme is really about, and it seems to lament the entire spectrum of celebrity, without discrimination. Still, that hasn’t stopped the show from attracting a steady stream of criticism and – in some cases – lawsuits from the very figures they have been parodying.
Kanye West, for instance, has released a multitude of different tracks referencing the show and their portrayal of him (in doing so rather proving the point that he cannot take a joke, which is how the whole fiasco started in the show). Meanwhile, Tom Cruise threatened legal action over one iconic episode in which the veteran actor refuses to come out of Stan’s closet. There are, however, a select few celebrities who have appeared on the show willingly, particularly those within the musical realm.
Among the likes of Robert Smith, Joe Strummer, and Ozzy Osbourne, one of the show’s most beloved musical guests came in 2001 when Radiohead appeared in the episode ‘Scott Tenorman Must Die’. For the uninitiated few, the episode centres around Cartman buying pubic hair from an older boy, Scott Tenorman, only to find himself typically ridiculed by the rest of the gang for not growing them himself – high-brow stuff, I know.
Humiliated, Cartman vows revenge on Tenorman and, in one of South Park’s darkest turns, kills the boy’s parents, cooks them into a chili, and then feeds said chilli back to Tenorman. To add insult to, well, cannibalism, Cartman also invites Tenorman’s favourite band, Radiohead, to share in that humiliation ritual. “They were on tour and they were in Santa Barbara. I drove up to Santa Barbara from LA to direct them in the studio,” recounted Matt Stone, who sought the band out to lend their voices to the episode.
Inevitably, though, recording voices for a cartoon is a little different to laying down the vocal track for OK Computer, which led to some difficulties in the show’s production process. Namely, Thom Yorke – perhaps the most emotional voice in British music – couldn’t seem to instil any emotion into his performance.
“I just remember how funny it was. I was sitting there trying to direct Thom Yorke to emote more,” Stone recalled. “This guy just emotes so heavily when he sings and he was sitting there reading the lines. I was like, ‘Emote more.’”
Seemingly, though, the multiple takes it took to get lines like “You know, everyone has problems, it doesn’t mean you have to be a little crybaby about it,” perfected didn’t seem to impact Thom Yorke or Radiohead’s overall enjoyment of the experience. “They were really cooperative and really cool,” Stone shared, with Parker adding: “They liked that people were made into chilli.”
