street spirit (fade out)

By alien8franky@hotmail.com

Everyone knows about Street Spirit[fade out], but I wonder if much people ever listened to it carefully, letting it infiltrate in their mind. I did and I dont know if I should have. The lyrics dont really mean anything more then what they make you feel, they form a single entity with the music. This song isnt about a thought or feeling, it IS a feeling in itself. Its the feeling you get when you know you lost what your life is about or when you realize how much humanity is meaningless and harmful to all around it. But I cant say what precisely is this feeling, its like admitting we cant win against our selfdestruction, might it be individual sadness and despair or global apocalypse. This song remembers me nights I spent crying and looking at the stars wishing I was someone else, wishing I couldnt see how we really are.

By Torquema

A Fan's favorite song full of true émotions. The Ultimate Fight of all human being : the way we want to live vs the way of life. If you listen carefully the song it's obvious that the life have her own path and no one can change this. Street Spirit teach us that the death is not the greatest fear for all of us. The greatest fear is to know that we have control of nothing and whatever you do, Life have always the last word. A very instropective song about the demons we all have inside and we have to deal whit. This Inner war who make people act and fight in their own way; There is no way out in Street Spirit, only the sade truth of life....
By Eoin

This song has been my all time favourite for nearly four years now... It captures the concept of the entire Bends album and throws it back at you as if recapping the whole album: "Life is shit, we're all doomed but within humanity lies a certain hope". The lyrics are thoroughly down beat: "i can feel death, can see it's beady eye"; "rows of houses all bearing down on me"; etc. etc. but the melody behind and Thom's vocal "Fade Out" are absolutely beautiful and uplifting depicting the glimmer of hope that things can get better... The only song that can truly always cheer me up. One thing every Radiohead fan should try is standing in the lashing rain when you've been hurt by life and listening to this song. Then you know what it's all about. I probably sound crazy but try it.
By Kilgore

The song is about nothingness. Or should I say, the inevitable nothingness of a person's soul after it is stripped clean by an unidentified "evil". This evil can be external (war, hatred, technology, sickness, death of body) or internal (fear, paranoia, addiction, death of spirit). "All these things will one day swallow whole." The word "whole" implies the certainty and skillful efficiency of the destruction.

However, a cycling of the intensity of one's inner and outer demons is suggested. The struggle against them is unrelenting. And yet, there are occasional fleeting moments of clarity and light which, in time, will most certainly one day "fade out... again," but forever leave a haunting shadow of the way things once were.

The final line of the song, which provides a counter-point, accounts for the only thing in the way of self-defense that we do have. "Immerse your soul in love." Although even the pursuit of love is largely meaningless, it would appear as if it's the only alternative we have... ever.

This song breaks my heart because I can make no logical argument against its truth. It speaks of things most of up spend our whole lives trying to avoid. It speaks of a hole in each of us that so many people have tried, in vain, to fill... with empty religion, drugs, politics, humour, sex, etcetera etcetera etcetera...

...All these things in all positions will one day take control. Indeed.

That's it. End of story. I don't know, maybe the song's really about a sunny day and big, fluffy white clouds. Maybe I have too much time on my hands. Oh, well.

By Mireille

Falling asleep. From somethig. Very slowly. This song had very strong vializations effects for me. I can see the rows of houses. And I can see death. Maybe, falling asleep to never wake up, because the machine never communicated. The beauty of this song also makes me think of the beauties in our world, in our streets but maybe in our dreams or in heaven. Fade out in peace.
By Andy Jay

Thom said on an interview once. that one day he got off a bus and he was walking down a long road hence "rows of houses all bearing down on me" and saw some cracked bird eggs with dead chicks in it hence "cracked eggs dead birds scream as they fight for life"
By Herb

this song makes me think of an anxiety or paranoid feeling...
i imagine feeling lost....
searching for something...
but you don't know what your searching for running out of time...
being opposed by unstopable forces

eternal restlessness
By Violet

Personally I´m too sensitive to listen to this song without crying. The feeling,the air in this song is so special,not melancholic but still it makes you feel. It´s about sorrow all kinds ow sorrows, someone has died or life just sucks for reasons whatever they may be. It´s about the world baring down on you, everything is misty with misery, you can "..feel dead, can see its beady eyes..." and finally "all these things we´ll one day swallow whole. It´s impossible to explain this song you´ll just have to feel it yourself.
By Butterat

"I didn't write this song, this song wrote itself." "This is our purest song, and i didn't write it." "We were just catalysts for the song to manifest itself." "This song chose us." "God i wish it hadn't chosen us to be it's catalysts." " I didn't write this song."--Thom Yorke
By Phil

Listening to this song is like having an orgasm in your soul.

Life is bearing down on all of us. Just learn to cheris the cathartic moments when one can fade out from the harshness of it all...

By 2 Can Sam

I also think that the song is about living your live how you want VS. how people say you should. I also agree that the song is trying to say that death is the least of all our worries. He says "I can feel death can feel it's beady eyes all these things into fruition all these things we'll one day swallow whole and fade out again." Is he saying that we will die regretting the things we never did and that we should do them even though its not what is expected of us from society or is he saying that one day we'll grow enough spiritually that one day we'll swallow death whole and go on? I guess you have to believe in that kind of thing but it makes me feel that by finding peace with whatever it is you believe in you can exist with whatever entity you believe in in the afterlife and you will have conquered death that way. I don't know, I've been up all day and all night and I'll be up all night tonight too.
By Pallbearer

This song is so beautiful, it makes me cry. The sheer immense of emotions that it unleashes upon me cannot be described in words. The lyrics are beautiful, the sound even more beautiful. Its my favourite of all songs. It describes everything as dark and cold, but give us hope in the end.

The song is about how everything is so sad, and the world is falling apart. Everyone thinks everything is meaningless. Death is everywhere, in everyone. Earth is hell, Earth is futile. We all see death, in the news, around us, inside us (we age) etc. We all fall into oblivion because of our melancholy. Its not just that ; war, racism and hate has split humanity into many pieces. To stop our downfall, to stop all evil things, we need to : "Be a world child". We need to : "form a circle". Or else : "...we'll all go under". The only thing that can hold things together, that can heal us all and save us from destruction, be that emotional or physical (e.g. in the shape of war) destruction, is love. The world is cold, but we can all light it up, and save it, and ourselves, with love. "Immerse your soul in love".
By Edd

This is one of my favourite songs of all time and one I always play if something wrong is happening in my life. For me it means nothing in life is good except love: "immerse yourself in love", although love is questionable aswell. If I was in the song I would be pictured as someone going into the big wide world without a clue, getting lost, and being nobody. I turn the corner and there is the girl of my dreams, but as the final arpeggio climaxes, the "love" has run away, and my life fades out.

This song is the greatest way to finish an album ever, even surpassing The Tourist.