"Karma Police" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead,released on 25 August 1997 as the second single from their third studio album,OK Computer (1997). It features acoustic guitar and piano,and lyrical themes of insanity and dissatisfaction with capitalism.
The song progresses from the intro into a mid-tempo section which alternates between a verse and a chorus. The verse begins with the line "Karma police",and the chorus begins with the line "This is what you'll get". After this section cycles through twice,the song switches into a second section which is based around the line "For a minute there,I lost myself". Thom Yorke's voice is put through a reverb effect and a sliding melodic figure serves as a counterpoint to his vocals.[7] In the final minute,Ed O'Brien distorts his guitar by driving a delay effect to self-oscillation,then lowering the delay rate,creating a "melting" effect.[8]
After Yorke told the producer,Nigel Godrich,that he was not happy with the ending,the pair reconstructed it with loops and samples,a technique they developed on later Radiohead albums. Godrich said:"It was the first time we did anything like that. Just us in the studio,and a forerunner of a lot of things to come,good and bad."[9]
Lyrics
The title lyric originates from an inside joke;the members of Radiohead would threaten to call the "karma police" if someone did something bad.[10] Yorke said the song was about stress and "having people looking at you in that certain [malicious] way".[11] He said:"It's for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!"[12]
The phrase ‘karma police’predates the song and appears in print in issue #399 of the Marvel Comics series 'The Incredible Hulk' (written by Peter David),released in September 1992 (cover date November 1992),in which the character Rick Jones says,"It's the karma police. What goes around comes around."[13]
Yorke and Jonny Greenwood emphasised that "Karma Police" was humorous and "not entirely serious".[11] The lines "He buzzes like a fridge / He's like a detuned radio" refer to distracting,metaphorical background noise that Yorke called "fridge buzz",one of the themes of their 1997 album OK Computer.[14] "Karma Police" also shares themes of insanity and dissatisfaction with capitalism.[15]
Yorke cited the closing refrain,"Phew,for a minute there I lost myself",as an example of his practice of using everyday phrases in his lyrics;he said he probably heard it on television.[16] According to the Financial Times,"When sung in his trembling high voice,this unexceptional phrase becomes charged with power."[16] Yorke said:"It's so ironic that for years people would write about the way I wrote lyrics as if it's like some deep heartfelt thing. It's fucking not at all. It's like collage. It's just walking down the street and experiencing something and thinking,'What would that be like if I stuck that in your face?'"[16]
Steve Huey from AllMusic described "Karma Police" as "haunting,mystifying,and exquisite",labelling it "one of the cornerstones of one of the greatest albums of the '90s".[7] The Daily Record declared it a "superb song".[24] A reviewer from Music Week rated it four out of five,picking it as one of the "standout tracks" from OK Computer.[25]Rolling Stone placed "Karma Police" at position 279 on its ranking of the 500 greatest songs of all time in 2021 and 2024.[26][27] In 2020,the Guardian named it the fifth-best Radiohead song,writing:"'Karma Police' is an enduringly odd superhit:at once relatable,inscrutable and chilling ... Yorke learned,after much saccharine bumbling,to consolidate his bleak and mawkish impulses into one."[28]
Music video
Yorke in the video
The "Karma Police" music video was directed by Jonathan Glazer,who previously directed the video for Radiohead's 1996 single "Street Spirit (Fade Out)".[29] The video is shot from the perspective of the driver of a car pursuing a man along a dark road,with Yorke in the back seat. The man falls to his knees and the car reverses,revealing that it is leaking fuel. The man produces matches from his pocket and ignites the trail of fuel. Yorke vanishes and the car is engulfed in flames.
Glazer initially pitched the concept to the American musician Marilyn Manson for his 1997 single "Long Hard Road Out of Hell". Manson wanted a video similar to David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway,which opens with a shot of a road rushing beneath the camera.[29] After Manson rejected the concept,the video commissioner Dilly Gent recommended it to Radiohead for "Karma Police".[29] According to Manson's collaborator Randy Sosin,after Manson saw the video,"Manson was like,'Fuck that.' But,you know,a good idea is a good idea."[30]
Glazer said he wanted to "shoot something very simple ... Where the whole narrative could be contained within a single sentence."[29] The running man was played by the Hungarian actor Lajos Kovács. Kovács developed cramp during the running shots,and had to have injections in his leg to keep running. He also badly burnt his thumb during repeated takes lighting the book of matches behind his back.[29]
The video premiered in August 1997. It won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.[31] In 2001,Glazer said he regarded the video as a failure,"because I decided to do a very minimalist,subjective use of camera,and tried to do something hypnotic and dramatic from one perspective,and it was very hard to achieve and I feel that I didn't achieve it".[32] He described his video for the 1998 Unkle single "Rabbit in Your Headlights",featuring Yorke on vocals,as a more successful "partner" to the "Karma Police" video.[32]
↑Pitchfork Staff (27 September 2022). "The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s". Pitchfork. Retrieved 21 October 2022. Its first two minutes are classic '90s Radiohead: tuneful and sardonic pop-rock...
↑Karma Police (UK CD2 liner notes). Radiohead. Parlophone. 1997. CDNODATA 03, 7243 8 84556 2 6.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
↑Karma Police (UK 12-inch vinyl sleeve). Radiohead. Parlophone. 1997. 12NODATA 03.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
Osborn, Brad (2013). "Subverting the Verse–Chorus Paradigm: Terminally Climactic Form in Recent Rock Music." Music Theory Spectrum 35, no. 1, pp.23–47.
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