'After writing pages and pages of words about the third world and wars and world politics,' Jam! reported, 'Yorke thought of Chomsky's writings and ended up boiling it all down to just one phrase: 'Cattle prods and the IMF.'' According to Yorke, the title was chosen 'as a joke.'Īccording to a 1997 profile, Yorke spent a lot of time 'ploughing through the collected works of the brilliant media critic, especially the classic text, Manufacturing Consent.' Chomsky's writings helped inspire the album's most explicitly political song, 'Electioneering,' with its scorching guitar and acerbic lyrics. It was borrowed from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy science fiction series, which features a character named Marvin, the Paranoid Android. Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyĭespite how well it sums up the Radiohead aesthetic, the title 'Paranoid Android' did not originate with Radiohead.

But the sputtering-garbage-disposal outro of 'Karma Police'-an effect Ed O'Brien achieved by overloading a digital delay processor-sounds suspiciously similar to the ending of 'Souvlaki Space Station,' released four years prior.ĥ. Was Radiohead listening to shoegaze icons Slowdive in 1997? Who knows. The song 'Souvlaki Space Station' by Slowdive 'We liked how he was cutting up beats quite minutely.' You can hear this influence on the beat-heavy 'Airbag,' which samples and splices up a recording of Phil Selway's drumming.Ĥ. was a big influence on OK Computer,' Jonny Greenwood told SPINin 1999. It's not a stretch to say Radiohead was paying attention. was released during the fall of 1996, when Radiohead was recording OK Computer in a historic mansion owned by Jane Seymour. Party on, Thom.ĭJ Shadow's trip hop masterpiece Endtroducing. It was reportedly inspired by another iconic track with an unusual, multi-part song structure: Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' (which is much more fun at karaoke).

'Paranoid Android' contains four distinct sections, sudden changes, yowling guitar interjections and surreal lyrics.

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