“So much more powerful”: Thom Yorke on his all-time favourite lyricist
Not every Radiohead song is known to be the easiest thing to decipher. Since one of their albums included Thom Yorke taking random phrases and stitching them together, it’s safe to say that the linear storytelling of Bob Dylan wasn’t exactly their motivation whenever they went into the studio. It was more about the feeling behind most of the lyrics, and that was something that fuelled one of Yorke’s all-time favourite wordsmiths.
Then again, that doesn’t mean that Radiohead’s lyrics are absolute nonsense, either. Looking through albums like OK Computer, Yorke was already talking about the fears of technology that have become all too real in the modern age, and despite Kid A being hard to understand at points, the clinical presentation makes it feel like listening to a world that had gone through a nuclear winter.
And that kind of approach always went hand-in-hand with alternative music, anyway. There were bound to be some artists like The Replacements that had straightforward rock and roll tunes, but artists like Pixies were known to paint with words and make strange detours long before Kurt Cobain even thought of becoming a punk rocker back in the day.
But if Pixies took a punk rock approach to lyrics, Michael Stipe was at the peak of art-pop when listening to the first REM albums. Granted, anyone listening to the first few REM records is going to have to do some serious homework trying to decipher everything, with Stipe muffling most of the words that he says and, more often than not, sounding like he’s making things up as he goes along.
That’s not necessarily an accident, either. Stipe had talked about not being as articulate on the first REM albums and wanted to paint with words, but by the time Radiohead were putting together their first tunes, a song like ‘Losing My Religion’ was enough to turn the world of soft-rock on its head as much as ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ did.
Beyond the raw words that he was singing, though, Yorke always loved the emotional punch that Stipe managed to put in every one of his songs, saying, “Michael is still my favourite lyricist. I loved the way he would take an emotion and then take a step back from it and, in doing so, make it so much more powerful.” And by the time Stipe reached the 1990s, that kind of emotional storytelling only got more poignant.
Most artists can only dream of having REM’s slow-burn career, but listening back to Automatic for the People, songs like ‘Nightswimming’ and ‘Try Not To Breathe’ are still among the best words that Stipe ever wrote. If Yorke was singing about existential angst around Pablo Honey, Stipe was grappling with the fact that he wasn’t as young anymore and needed to make peace with his youth and enjoy the time that he has on this Earth every day.
But while Yorke and Stipe have various parts of their catalogue that are hard to parse out, both of them might think it’s pointless trying to dissect every word they say. The words might hold together on the page, but they each know that their seemingly nonsensical wordplay could mean something totally different to every single person who hears them.
