The Radiohead song inspired by Noam Chomsky
The landscape of British music in the 1990s was largely dominated by the battle of Britpop, which saw Blur and Oasis go head-to-head in a highly publicised chart race. At the same time, Radiohead provided a healthy alternative, rising to prominence with their 1995 album The Bends.
While they’d earned success with their single ‘Creep’, taken from their less positively received debut album, Pablo Honey, the band’s sophomore album showed lyrical and musical refinement. Yet, in 1997, they delivered an album that blew everyone away: OK Computer. The record was hailed an instant classic, demonstrating Radiohead as a cut above most of their contemporaries.
The album contains tracks such as ‘Karma Police’, ‘No Surprises’, ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ and ‘Paranoid Android’, all of which remain some of the band’s most iconic songs. Lead vocalist Thom Yorke explores capitalistic isolation, technological development, consumerism and political turmoil, and the result is an album that perfectly captures the state of the modern world. Over 20 years later, it continues to ring scarily true.
The eighth song on the album, ‘Electioneering’, is one of the band’s most explicitly political tracks from this point in their career, paving the way for the songs that comprised 2003’s Hail to the Thief. ‘Electioneering’ is an upbeat cut that sees Yorke sing from the perspective of a politician, opening with the lines “I will stop, I will stop at nothing/ Say the right things when electioneering/ I trust I can rely on your vote.”
Within the song, Yorke references “cattle prods and the I.M.F,” the International Monetary Fund, which loans money – with many terms and conditions – to poorer countries. Yorke once revealed that the line was inspired by Noam Chomsky, explaining in a 1997 interview, “There’s no other way to say it, really.”
Yorke had been “reading a lot of Chomsky, and I had that feeling when you read Chomsky that you want to get out and do something and realise, in fact, that you’re impotent.” Known for his political and social criticism, Chomsky has written many anti-war essays; thus, it is unsurprising that Yorke has found inspiration in his work.
Additionally, Yorke explained the story behind the line, “Trust I can rely on your vote”, revealing: “I had this phase I went through on an American tour where we just seemed to be shaking hands all the time, and I was getting a bit sick of it and upset by it. So I came up with this running joke with myself, where I used to shake people’s hands and say, ‘I trust I can rely on your vote.’ They’d go hahaha, and look at me like I was a nutcase. But the phrase sort of carried on. It was like a mantra.”
Listen to ‘Electioneering’ below.
