Pyramid Song

Last updated

"Pyramid Song"
Radiohead pyramidsong.jpg
Single by Radiohead
from the album Amnesiac
Released16 May 2001 (2001-05-16)
Recorded8 December 1999 – 29 February 2000 [1]
Genre
Length4:51
Label
Songwriter(s) Radiohead
Producer(s)
Radiohead singles chronology
"No Surprises"
(1998)		"Pyramid Song"
(2001)		"Knives Out"
(2001)
Music video
"Pyramid Song" on YouTube

"Pyramid Song" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released as the lead single from their fifth studio album, Amnesiac (2001), in May 2001. It features piano, strings, an unusual "shuffling" rhythm and lyrics inspired by the Egyptian underworld.

Contents

After no singles were released from their previous album, Kid A (2000), "Pyramid Song" was Radiohead's first single since "No Surprises" (1998). It reached the top 10 on seven national charts, and was named one of the best tracks of the decade by Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork. The video won the 2002 NME Carling Award for best music video.

Writing

Following the tour for Radiohead's third album, OK Computer (1997), Radiohead's songwriter, Thom Yorke, bought a house in Cornwall. He spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing his new grand piano. [3] He wrote "Pyramid Song" and "Everything In Its Right Place" in the same week. [4] For "Everything In Its Right Place", he programmed his playing into a synthesiser, but found that "Pyramid Song" sounded better untreated. [4] Yorke said of the composition: "The chords I'm playing involve lots of black notes. You think you're being really clever playing them but they're really simple." [4]

"Pyramid Song" was inspired by the song "Freedom" by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, released on the 1962 album The Complete Town Hall Concert. One version of "Pyramid Song" included similar handclaps, but, according to Yorke, they sounded "naff" and so he erased them. [4] The lyrics were inspired by an exhibition of ancient Egyptian underworld art Yorke attended while Radiohead were recording in Copenhagen, [5] and ideas of cyclical time found in Buddhism and discussed by Stephen Hawking. [5]

Recording

The strings were recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a church in Oxfordshire. Dorchester Abbey, interior 01.jpg
The strings were recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a church in Oxfordshire.

The guitarist Jonny Greenwood described the challenge of working on the arrangement for "Pyramid Song": "How do we not make it worse, how do we make it better than [Thom] just playing it by himself, which is already usually quite great?" [6]

According to a studio diary written by the guitarist Ed O’Brien, the basic track, consisting of vocals, piano and drums, was recorded on 8 December 1999. [7] [ better source needed ] Radiohead's drummer, Philip Selway, initially found it difficult to follow the rhythm and felt that the recording session was going badly. He said the drum part "fell into place" when he stopped trying to analyse the rhythm and instead responded to the inflections in Yorke's piano and vocals. [8]

According to O'Brien's diary, the strings, arranged by Greenwood, were recorded on 4 February 2000. [7] [ better source needed ] They were performed by the Orchestra of St John's in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's studio in Oxfordshire, where Radiohead also recorded strings for another song, "How to Disappear Completely". [9] [10] Greenwood instructed the players to swing in the style of jazz musicians. [10] The isolated string part was included on the 2021 reissue Kid A Mnesia . [11]

Composition

"Pyramid Song" is an art rock song, [12] with elements of jazz, classical and krautrock. [13] According to the journalist Alex Ross, Yorke's piano chords are "laced with suspended tones" and "hang mysteriously in the air, somewhere between serenity and sadness". [14] It features a string section playing glissando harmonics. [14] The unusual rhythm and time signature have been the subject of debate; Selway interpreted it as swung 4/4. [8]

In a 2001 Rolling Stone interview, O'Brien said he felt "Pyramid Song" was Radiohead's best work. [9] Selway said it "ran counter to what had come before in Radiohead in lots of ways ... The constituent parts are all quite simple, but I think the way that they then blend gives real depth to the song." [15]

Music video

Radiohead released a computer-animated music video for "Pyramid Song", created by animation studio Shynola. [16] In the video, inspired by a dream Yorke had, a scuba diver explores an undersea world and enters a submerged house. [16] [17] The video won the 2002 NME Carling Award for best music video. [18]

Reception

NME named "Pyramid Song" their "single of the week", [19] describing it as "malevolent, moving, epic". The Guardian named it "CD of the week", with the critic Alexis Petridis describing it as "a beautiful, intricately wrought mesh of complex time signatures, keening vocals, elegiac strings and subtly disturbing audio effects". [20]

Rolling Stone placed "Pyramid Song" at number 94 on their list of the "100 Best Songs of the Decade", writing that it "might be [Yorke's] most blissful recorded moment". [21] In October 2011, NME named it the 131st-best track of the preceding 15 years, calling it a "ghostly hymn of stunning beauty". [22] Pitchfork named it the decade's 59th-best track, describing it as "an absolutely singular track in a catalog with no shortage of standouts". [23] In 2020, the Guardian named it the fourth-best Radiohead song, writing: "Lyrics alluding to Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha , piano seemingly exhumed from ancient civilisation and a newly spiritual Yorke, swimming with 'black-eyed angels' and a shoal of exes towards some nebulous afterlife. Torture for some; otherwise, cult-making." [24]

Sales

"Pyramid Song" was Radiohead's first single in three years, [25] after none were released from their previous album Kid A (2000). [9] It reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, [26] number one in Portugal, [27] number two in Canada, [28] number three in Norway, [29] number six in Finland [30] and Italy [31] and number 10 in Ireland. [32] It also reached the top 25 in Australia, [33] France [34] and the Netherlands. [35] On the Eurochart Hot 100, it debuted and peaked at number 13. [36]

Track listings

Personnel

Adapted from the Amnesiac liner notes. [42]

Radiohead

Additional musicians

Technical personnel

Artwork

Charts

Release history

Release dates and formats for "Pyramid Song"
RegionDateFormat(s)Label(s)Ref.
Japan16 May 2001CD [54] [55]
United Kingdom21 May 2001Parlophone [56]
Australia28 May 2001 [57]

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References

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  2. ↑ "Radiohead: Amnesiac". The A.V. Club. 4 June 2001. Retrieved 21 July 2023.
  3. ↑ Naokes, Tim (12 February 2012). "Splitting atoms with Thom Yorke". Dazed . Retrieved 4 January 2019.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Kent, Nick (June 2001). "Happy now?". Mojo . Bauer. Archived from the original on 6 February 2012. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
  5. 1 2 Greenwood, Colin; O'Brien, Ed (25 January 2001). "Interview with Ed & Colin". Ground Zero (Interview). Interviewed by Chris Douridas. KCRW.
  6. ↑ "All Songs +1: A Conversation With Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood". NPR . Archived from the original on 5 August 2016. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
  7. 1 2 O’Brien, Ed. "Ed's Diary". Green Plastic.
  8. 1 2 Reed, Ryan (6 January 2023). "Radiohead's Philip Selway on atmospheric solo LP, Radiohead's future". Spin . Retrieved 7 January 2023.
  9. 1 2 3 Fricke, David (21 May 2001). "Radiohead warm up with Amnesiac". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 25 July 2015.
  10. 1 2 "Radiohead Revealed: The Inside Story of the Year's Most Important Album". Melody Maker . 29 March 2000. Archived from the original on 11 July 2007. Retrieved 18 March 2007.
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  12. ↑ "The 35 Greatest Concerts of the Last 35 Years". Spin . 28 November 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  13. ↑ Gallucci, Michael (20 March 2019). "The Best Song From Every Radiohead Album". Ultimate Classic Rock. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  14. 1 2 Ross, Alex (21 August 2001). "The Searchers: Radiohead's unquiet revolution". The New Yorker . Archived from the original on 25 May 2007. Retrieved 14 June 2007.
  15. ↑ Langham, Matt (4 February 2015). "DiS Meets Radiohead's Philip Selway: "If it means something to some people then that is success"". Drowned in Sound . Archived from the original on 4 February 2015. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
  16. 1 2 Archive-Eric-Schumacher-Rasmussen. "Radiohead Broadcast U.S. Tour Dates". MTV News. Retrieved 11 September 2021.
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  18. ↑ NME (25 February 2002). "NME Carling awards — all the winners". NME . Retrieved 12 April 2023.
  19. ↑ Kessler, Ted (12 September 2005). "Radiohead: Pyramid Song: This is our favourite Radiohead single in recent memory..." NME.com. Retrieved 22 April 2007.
  20. ↑ Petridis, Alexis (1 July 2001). "CD of the week: Radiohead: Amnesiac". The Guardian . Retrieved 11 November 2018.
  21. ↑ "Mary J. Blige, 'Family Affair' - 100 Best Songs of the 2000s". Rolling Stone. 17 June 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
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  32. 1 2 "The Irish Charts – Search Results – Pyramid Song". Irish Singles Chart. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
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  37. ↑ Pyramid Song (UK CD1 liner notes). Radiohead. Parlophone. 2001. CDSFHEIT 45102.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  38. ↑ Pyramid Song (UK CD2 liner notes). Radiohead. Parlophone. 2001. CDFHEIT 45102.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  39. ↑ Pyramid Song (UK & French 12-inch single vinyl disc). Radiohead. Parlophone. 2001. 12FHEIT 45102.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  40. ↑ Pyramid Song (European maxi-CD single liner notes). Radiohead. Parlophone. 2001. ICPN 7243 879357 2 3.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  41. ↑ Pyramid Song (Japanese CD single liner notes). Radiohead. Parlophone, EMI. 2001. TOCP-61053.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  42. ↑ Amnesiac (booklet). Radiohead. Parlophone. 2001.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
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