The bottom of the sea
Your eyes, they turn me
Why should I stay here?
Why should I stay?
I'd be crazy not to follow
Follow where you lead
Your eyes, they turn me
Sunk without a trace
The bottom of the deep
Your eyes, they turn me
Turn me into phantoms
I follow you to the edge of the earth
And fall off
Everybody leaves
If they get the chance
And this is my chance
Eaten by worms
And we’re fishies
Picked over by the worms
And we’re fishies
We’re fishies
We’re fishies
Hit the bottom of
Hit the bottom to escape
Escape
Hit the bottom of
Hit the bottom to escape
Escape
Escape
I think it's a track four, is Arpeggi. (The sombre song, e.g. Fake Plastic Trees/Exit Music/How To Disappear Completely/You And Whose Army/Barkdrifts)
Another possible interpretation would be to say it's about finding inspiration in love. The narrator is stuck at the bottom, unable to free himself because he is lacking the inspiration to move ahead. The eyes that turn him are those of someone who comes along and inspires him to believe that he can do something. He now has something to go towards. Perhaps the light that he wasn't able to see down there in the bottom of the ocean.
So this could be a song about an artists' struggle to escape writer's block and start creating again.
There is something about Radiohead, and Thom in particular, that registers so deeply and intimately in the brains of those of us who truly love them, that makes them feel they belong only to us.....those who don't get it cannot understand why they resonate so deeply for us.....and that fact in and of itself makes us happy to be in that select group. It's as if Thom is tapping into our subconscious to bring the lyrics out.
to begin with, i believe it's obvious thom's actually not saying "we're fishes" (that sounds really funny though, and don't get me started on ALL i mishear from thom's purposely muffled accent) but "weird fishes", since the title of the track on the record says "weird fishes/arpeggi". secondly, i don't know about the search for god, to me it sounds more like someone obsessively and slef-distructively infatuated with someone whose eyes haunt them, to the extent where they get lost in it and would go to any lengths. yes, for a bloody pair of eyes. i'm only saying this because i myself have had the rather uplifting yet daunting experience of being almost literally dragged around by the eyes of mean little person who was out to break my heart, but of whom i was not wary. "everybody left if they got the chance", but i just stared back, hypnotized, waiting to "get eaten by the worms and weird fishes" as "i hit the bottom". so, there.
I love it when people make every Radiohead song political
sure a good number are but hunting among the metaphors with that in mind is pretty lame
http://www.nme.com/news/111840.htm
This song was written by Johnny Greenwood, performed by the London Sinfonietta and was sung by Thom Yorke for the South Bank Ether Festival. There are a few recordings of Arpeggi around the internet - I found a link on http://www.ateaseweb.com so look there for this.
Just a couple of things about the above lyrics - it's "phantoms" as opposed to "fantasies" (see half-way through) and the penultimate section ("in the bottom of...we fishies") should read:
"Eaten by the worms And we’re fishies Picked over by the worms And we’re fishies We’re fishies We’re fishies"
Rdec, thanks for the update. I edited your lyrics by taking out "the" in "eaten by the worms." It doesn't sound like he actually says "the" :)
i will also host this song :) cheers!
http://www.andrewrocks.com/musics/radiohead_arpeggi_live_ether_27_03_05.mp3
Fair enough. ;)
this song is going to be on the next album, i read that on atease.com its awesome though, the lyrics sound good to me, i think the next radiohead album is going to be the best album ever
the musice is a bit like modern classical composers such as steve reich or philip glass but i'm sure by the time it gets on the album (let's hope so!) it will as with so many of their songs sound very different. from what we've heard so far i agree that it could be an awesome album