The first few notes will seduce and haunt listeners for years. As the opening track on Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A, "Everything In Its Right Place" is the deconstruction of rock music incarnate. Eschewing guitars and drums for an electric piano and drum machine, Thom Yorke manipulated his voice and changed the history of his band and the possibilities of post-modern music forever.
Struggling in the wake of the the band's worldwide success and the burden of the seminal rock album OK Computer, Thom Yorke and company finally made headway in the studio with the experimental recording of a series of songs that would ultimately become Kid A. "Everything In Its Right Place" represented the band's utter disregard for its previous work and an expansion into a musical consciousness that few have ever contemplated, let alone realized. Written late one night by Yorke on a piano at home and recorded the following day, "Everything In Its Right Place" allowed the band to leave behind their collective frustrations and grievances and move in an entirely new direction.
The song feels like the soundtrack to the opening lines of Yeats' poem "The Second Coming":
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Indeed, Yorke's repeated refrain is never believable. And his strange incantation--"Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon"--perfectly describes and obscures an impending collapse signaled by the music's strange time signature and memorable, eerie keyboards.
One of the few songs consistently featured in Radiohead's set-lists, "Everything In Its Right Place" is a bellweather for not only Radiohead's future creative ouput, but all other serious bands that follow in the new millenium. In Radiohead's own impressive musical story, the song serves as a sonic cantilever of the band's willingness to build further and further away from the edge.
Why listen? "Everything In Its Right Place" is the opening track of the greatest post-rock record of all time. Rarely, if ever, has a band changed so drastically due to self-overhearing. Radiohead's evolution from OK Computer to Kid A represents the force of a band's self-augmentation due to overhearing its own musical dialogue with its peers and the public, but primarily, its previous creative ouput and internal conversations and expectations. This self-augmentation gave way to a creative consciousness that expanded into unheard of realms and altered the very essence of popular music. By deconstructing the rock album, favoring rhythm over melody, and experimenting with electronica, jazz, 20th Century classicism, Krautrock, and ambient music, Radiohead produced music and atmosphere that, while difficult to embrace initially (according to some), has resulted in an undiminished power with every passing year. "Everything In Its Right Place" is everything that is right with music, the creative mind, and their boundless possibilities.
Why listen? "Everything In Its Right Place" is the opening track of the greatest post-rock record of all time. Rarely, if ever, has a band changed so drastically due to self-overhearing. Radiohead's evolution from OK Computer to Kid A represents the force of a band's self-augmentation due to overhearing its own musical dialogue with its peers and the public, but primarily, its previous creative ouput and internal conversations and expectations. This self-augmentation gave way to a creative consciousness that expanded into unheard of realms and altered the very essence of popular music. By deconstructing the rock album, favoring rhythm over melody, and experimenting with electronica, jazz, 20th Century classicism, Krautrock, and ambient music, Radiohead produced music and atmosphere that, while difficult to embrace initially (according to some), has resulted in an undiminished power with every passing year. "Everything In Its Right Place" is everything that is right with music, the creative mind, and their boundless possibilities.
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