Radiohead - Little by Little

Here’s the third song off the album, “Little by Little.” It’s channeling these worldly sounds while driving through a thick groove of headiness and percussion. You can almost feel Thom Yorke’s shaking pulse throughout the song’s seams and everything just seems to burst with stunning skill. There’s darkness in it sure but it’s amazingly good darkness.

So there’s the fact that Yorke’s voice sounds just so perfect on every word right? I mean, I certainly don’t think that could be a gross exaggeration because it is downright perfect, it really is. I love the way he sings about never being nervous, never getting judged before affirming, “I’m no idiot, I should look…once you’ve been hurt you’ve been around enough.” The last line in particular is so apt about everyone today that’s ever been hurt at one point or another (that’s everybody) in that once you've been hurt that first time, you’re in a way, ruined forever. And not in a bad way per se, but you’re always gonna be that much more careful, that much more weary and that much more skeptical of jumping into something with anyone else. No one likes to be hurt, ever. But I also think the song’s about how ‘little by little’ we just tend to grind away, we tend to die a little, we get a little more sordid. He sings that routines and schedules and how they 'drug and kill you' and that, is in my opinion what Radiohead have always been about. They’ve always been about telling it like how it is - morbid and critical and absolutely vivid with imagery. That’s why people find them so ‘weird’ and how it could be ‘depressing’ music when really, it’s gorgeous stuff. In the end, they make another observation, ‘I’m just a tease and you’re such a flirt,’ it’s just such great stuff. – Bryan