Radiohead – "The Bends" (1995)

I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy

I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen

I bet you’ve been wondering when the new members of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME are going to be announced.

Wonder no more, boys and girls!  The next eleven 2 or 3 lines posts will feature our 2020 hall of famers.  (I see you shiver with an-ti-ci- . . . PAY-tion!)

*     *     *     *     *

Why do I induct eleven records into the my wildly popular hit singles hall of fame each year?

When I announced the first hall of fame class in 2018, the plan was for it to have ten members.  But after I had announced those ten members, I remembered a record that absolutely, positively had to be included.  

Leaving Richard Harris’s “MacArthur Park” out of the initial group of HOF’ers would have cut off my credibility as a pop music guru at the knees.  So I gave myself a mulligan.  All of the first ten inductees clearly deserved their status, so I couldn’t replace one of them with “MacArthur Park.”  That meant I had to follow a sort of baker dozen’s approach – buy ten, get one free.

*     *     *     *     *

Going with eleven songs instead of ten turned out to be a brilliant move.  So I did it again in 2019, picking “Fire” – that unforgettable stick of dynamite by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown – as inductee number eleven.

Fear not . . . this year’s group of hit singles that are going into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME will also include eleven records, not ten.  (As my grandmother used to say, “It if ain’t broke, leave the damn thing alone!”)

But before I announce the first member of the class of 2020, let’s take a moment to remember the first group of inductees:

Animals – “House of the Rising Sun” (1965)

Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965)

Who – “I Can See for Miles” (19660

Association – “Along Comes Mary” (1966)

Beach Boys – “Good Vibrations” (1966)

Byrds – “Eight Miles High” (1966)

Steppenwolf – “Born to Be Wild” (1968)

Grass Roots – “Midnight Confession” (1968)

Marvin Gaye – “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (1968)

Richard Harris – “MacArthur Park” (1968)

Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Fortunate Son” (1969)

*     *     *     *     *

Take another gander at that list.  You’d best believe that every song on it is a winner, winner, chicken dinner!

But the second group of inductees – which were announced in 2019 – is just as good:

Four Seasons – “Rag Doll” (1964)

Beatles – “Eight Days a Week” (1965)

Rolling Stones – “Satisfaction” (1965)

Animals – “It’s My Life” (1965)

? and the Mysterians – “96 Tears” (1966)

Supremes – “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1966)

Turtles – “Happy Together” (1967)

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (1967)

Doors – “Light My Fire” (1967)

Deep Purple – “Hush” (1968)

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown – “Fire” (1968)

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I originally defined the 2 or 3 lines “GOLDEN DECADE” as spanning the years 1964 to 1973.  But I’ve decided to tweak that definition slightly.  (My blog, my rules.)

From this day forward, the “GOLDEN DECADE” is officially declared to have commenced in mid-1964 and ended in mid-1974.  

Why?  Because those years represent the decade when the best pop music the world has ever known was released.  

It also covers the time period that spans my years in junior high school, high school, and college.  (I entered the 7th grade – not to mention puberty – in August 1964, and graduated from college in May 1974.)

(By the way . . . everyone thinks that the best music ever recorded was the music that was popular when he or she was a  teenager. I’ve got news for you: the best music ever recorded was the music that was popular when I was a teenager.  That’s a fact, Jack!)

All 22 of the records that have been inducted into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME to date were released in the sixties – before I graduated from high school.  But this year’s class is going to include some songs from my college years.

*     *     *     *     *

Radiohead’s frontman and chief songwriter, Thom Yorke – who was born in October 1968 – has been quoted as saying, “No, I don’t wish it was the fucking sixties.”  So I guess he didn’t mean it when he wrote the lyrics quoted at the beginning of this post.

Click here to listen to “The Bends.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Radiohead – "Electioneering" (1997)

Say the right things

When electioneering

As noted in a previous 2 or 3 lines, the state of Maryland recently gave the old heave-ho to a statue of Roger B. Taney, a Maryland native who was the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court for 28 years.  That statue was installed on the grounds of the Maryland State House in 1872. 

A contractor hired by the state arrived in the dead of night, used a crane to lift the statue on to a flatbed truck, and drove it away.  (The cost of the operation has been estimated at $100,000.)

Removing the Taney statue

That statue was removed because the governor of Maryland recently stuck his finger up to see which way the political winds were blowing.  It turns out they were blowing against Roger Taney.

I happen to like the current governor of Maryland – in fact, I like him a lot.  I’ll vote for him in the next election despite the fact that his decision to get rid of the Taney statue was 100% the result of political considerations.

*     *     *     *     *

A recent NPR/PBS poll found that Americans oppose the removal of statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee,  and other Confederates by a better than 2-to-1 margin.  Despite that, statues of Confederate leaders are quickly becoming an endangered species.

Some people believe that Confederate monuments were built to make a statement about white supremacy.

In a recent column in the Washington Post, history professor Karen Cox says that theory is supported by when the statues were erected:

[T]he vast majority of monuments date to between 1895 and World War I.  They were part of a campaign to paint the Southern cause in the Civil War as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and their installation came against a backdrop of Jim Crow violence and oppression of African Americans.

The Robert E. Lee statue
in Charlottesville, VA

Cox is especially suspicious of statues located near courthouses:

During the era of Jim Crow, Confederate monuments could be placed most anywhere.  Some were in cemeteries or parks, but far more were erected on the grounds of local and state courthouses.  These monuments, then, not only represented reverence for soldiers who fought in a war to defend slavery.  They also made a very pointed statement about the rule of white supremacy: All who enter the courthouse are subject to the laws of white men.

*     *     *     *     *

While most of the recent controversy relates to statues of Confederate leaders, some believe that statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other slaveholders are a slap in the face of African-Americans. 

Professor Grace Elizabeth Hale is one of those who believes a line should be drawn separating monuments to Confederates and monuments to pre-Civil War American icons who were slaveholders:

I would argue we’re not celebrating George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slaveholders.  But I think the reason that they are commemorated or memorialized is because of their role in founding the nation. . . . [W]e need to look at that in all its complexity — in how people could support freedom and also own slaves . . . But that is not the same thing as celebrating Confederate generals; people who [fought] for the preservation of slavery.

Law professor Ilya Somin agrees:

One crucial distinction it misses is that few if any monuments to Washington, Jefferson and other slaveowning Founders were erected for the specific purpose of honoring their slaveholding.  By contrast, the vast majority of monuments to Confederate leaders were erected to honor their service to the Confederacy, whose main reason for existing was to protect and extend slavery.

[T]he Founders deserve commemoration because their complicity in slavery was outweighed by other, more positive achievements, such as establishing the Constitution. By contrast, leading a war in defense of slavery was by far the most important historical legacy of Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other Confederate leaders.

*     *     *     *     *

There’s one obvious difference between Taney and Confederates like Davis and Lee. 

Taney never foreswore allegiance to the United States, much less fought in the Confederate Army.   He remained a loyal citizen of the United States after the Civil War broke out, and headed up the third branch of the U.S. government – the judicial branch – until his death in 1864.

Taney’s statue was hidden away not because he was a Confederate, but because he was the author of the famous (or infamous) 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that slaves (or descendants of slaves) could not bring a lawsuit in federal court because they were not citizens of the United States. 

*     *     *     *     *

It’s hard to reconcile Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott with his words and deeds as a young man.

In 1819, Taney defended an abolitionist minister who was arrested for disturbing the peace after preaching a fiery anti-slavery sermon.  He told the jury that slavery was “a blot on our national character,” and argued that “every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be . . . wiped away.”

Roger Taney in 1831

Taney put his money where his mouth was when it came to emancipation.  He never bought a slave, and he manumitted the slaves that he had inherited from his father when he was a young man.

From a 2010 article by historian Timothy S. Huebner:

[In 1818] Taney affixed his signature in the court record book, paid the requisite transaction fees, and manumitted seven slaves. . . . Moreover, in 1820, together with his younger brother Octavius, Taney liberated two additional slaves who had been owned by their father.  Over the next four years, Taney manumitted two more slaves – bringing the total number of slaves he freed to eleven.  We must not underestimate these deliberate acts on behalf of freedom.  While historians have lauded George Washington, for example, for liberating his slaves at his death, Taney did so at a relatively young age. . . . Unlike some Maryland emancipators, Taney never purchased other slaves to replace the ones he freed.

(By contrast, George Washington was a slaveowner for 56 years, and owned 317 slaves at the time of his death.  Washington’s will provided that his slaves should be freed, but only after he and his wife Martha died.)  

Huebner’s view is that Taney’s change of heart on the slavery question reflects what happened in the country as a whole in the decades that preceded the Civil War:

Roger Taney's odyssey from antislavery lawyer to proslavery justice mirrored larger currents in American political and constitutional development. . . . The rise of the immediatist abolitionist movement, with its emphasis on moral purity and revolutionary change, significantly altered the nature of the political debate over slavery.  During the early 19th century, an amalgam of antislavery societies existed throughout the upper South and border states, and national political leaders vigorously and openly discussed ways to restrict the growth of [slavery].  Abolitionists' uncompromising rhetoric forced antislavery opinion from the mainstream to the margins, as more moderate antislavery advocates – particularly in slaveholding states – felt forced to defend themselves against charges of extremism.  This development silenced some of slavery's opponents and nudged others toward a more proslavery stance, thus circumscribing the national political debate on the subject.  By the 1840s and 1850s the Democratic party had shifted the discussion away from the question of whether slavery conformed to the nation's founding principles and redefined the issue as one of protecting the property rights of southern slaveholders. . . . Taney's changing views show that he was both a product and a proponent of this shifting discourse about slavery.

*     *     *     *     *

The intention of those who erected the Taney statue on the Maryland State House's grounds was not to make a white-supremacy statement, but rather to express pride in the man who was at the time – and who remains to this day – the highest-ranking government official ever from Maryland. 

(The only other Marylander who held high national office was Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.  The less said about him the better.)

Professor Somin argues that Confederate leaders like Davis and Lee, who left no legacy other than their defense of slavery, should be distinguished from figures like Washington and Jefferson, who had many significant achievements that outweighed the facts that they were slaveowners.

If the same standard is applied to Taney’s, he falls on the Washington-Jefferson side of the line.  In his many years as Chief Justice, Taney earned a reputation as a careful judge who understood legal nuance and stuck closely to the letter of the law.   

Taney and Dred Scott

Even Dred Scott’s lawyer found much to admire about Taney:

[Taney] was indeed a great magistrate, and a man of singular purity of life and character.  That there should have been one mistake in a judicial career so long, so exalted, and so useful is only proof of the imperfection of our nature.  The reputation of Chief Justice Taney can afford to have anything known that he ever did and still leave a great fund of honor and praise to illustrate his name.  If he had never done anything else that was high, heroic, and important, his noble vindication of the writ of habeas corpus . . . will command the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty, so long as our institutions shall endure.

But the Dred Scott decision – which was only one of the hundreds that Taney had a role in deciding while he was Chief Justice – did irreparable harm to his reputation.

*     *     *     *     *

Let’s face it.  No one really cares what a bunch of history professors think about which statues should stay and which should go.  The statues that are being taken down are being taken down for purely political reasons.

Consider the case of the Roger Taney statue.  Some urged Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to get rid of the statue back in 2015, after a white supremacist killed nine people at a black church in Charleston, SC.  But Hogan said that taking down the statue would be “political correctness run amok.”

What a difference a few days make.  Shortly after the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, Hogan said removing the Taney statue “was the right thing to do.” 

What caused Hogan’s change of heart?  Would you believe the upcoming 2018 election?

Hogan’s victory in the 2014 Maryland gubernatorial election was a huge upset because Hogan is a Republican, and Maryland is as blue a state as there is.  (Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Maryland by a better than 2-to-1 margin.)

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan

Hogan bailed on the Roger Taney statue because he was afraid that if he didn’t, the Democrats would try to tar him with the brush of white supremacy when he runs for re-election in 2018.  Going over to the other side on this issue also allows Hogan to further distance himself from President Trump.  (Hogan didn’t endorse Trump – in fact, he stated publicly that he didn’t vote for him – but the Democrats will try to link Trump to Hogan, who is a Republican.) 

One high-ranking Maryland politician who wanted to keep the Taney statue was State Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller, who is a Democrat. 

Miller acknowledged the harm caused by the Dred Scott decision.  But he noted that Taney served with distinction as Chief Justice and in other public offices, including state attorney general and U.S. attorney general.  And he pointed out that Taney freed his slaves and remained loyal to the Union.

In other words, Miller made the same points about Taney that I made above.  (GMTA!)

It’s a bit of a shock for 2 or 3 lines to find itself agreeing with Mike Miller and disagreeing with Larry Hogan.  But that’s where I find myself when it comes to Roger Taney.

It’s bad enough that Hogan is wrong about the Taney statue.  It’s worse that he flip-flopped on the issue overnight purely because it was politically expedient to do so.

But nobody’s perfect.  I’ll still vote for the guy. 

*     *     *     *     *

“Electioneering” was released in 1997 on Radiohead’s third studio album, OK Computer.

As Tim Footman noted in his book on OK Computer, it was one of the most critically acclaimed albums ever:

Not since 1967, with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had so many major critics agreed immediately, not only on an album's merits, but on its long-term significance, and its ability to encapsulate a particular point in history.

Of course, it’s clear today that Sgt. Pepper is a hugely overrated record.

Here’s “Electioneering”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Radiohead – "Electioneering" (1997)

I will stop, I will stop at nothing . . .

I trust I can rely on your vote

It’s less than a year until the 2016 election.  So far the campaign has been more fun than a barrel of monkeys – wouldn’t you agree?  

I will likely go to the polls on November 8.  But if voting made me eligible to get a free drink at a local bar, I would definitely go vote that day.

According to the Washington Post, a local “voter-mobilization entrepreneur” named L. Henry Pratt arranged for voters at seven precincts in Arlington, VA to get wristbands good for reduced-price drinks last month when Virginia voters went to the polls.  (Virginia is one of only five states that holds elections in odd-numbered years, not even-numbered years.)

L. Henry Pratt

The precincts targeted by Pratt’s nonprofit organization had high concentrations of younger voters and low turnout rates.  Pratt’s hope  was to “encourage young voters to celebrate democracy.”

“By creating a celebratory atmosphere around the act of voting, [our organization] looks to draw more apathetic young voters out on Election Day,” a press release from the group stated.  “What could be more motivating than a night on the town?”

The group’s logic seems impeccable, but the vote-and-get-drunk-for-less campaign was a flop.  Only about 65 or 70 bracelets were taken by young voters, according to Pratt.  

“What we learned is that people are not up for celebrating democracy on a Tuesday night of a work week,” Pratt opined.  (That certainly wouldn’t have slowed me down, but kids today are hard to figure out.)

Many businesses have offered Election Day promotions recently.  In 2012, the Tim Hortons fast-food chain offered a free donut to anyone wearing an “I Voted” sticker who bought a cup of coffee.

But that promotion violated federal law.  You see, it’s illegal to offer any kind of reward for voting in an election in which federal offices are up for grabs.  (Tim Hortons is headquartered in Canada, so I guess you can’t blame then for not knowing that.)

You would think it would be a good thing for when businesses offered discounts or free items to people who voted, as long as they didn’t only reward people who voted a certain way.  So why are such promotions illegal?

Because the government is afraid that such giveaways could be targeted to increase turnout among voters who were known to prefer one party over the other, potentially tipping the balance in an election one way or the other.

In 2012, a company called Buyology studied how Republicans and Democrats differ when it comes to brand preferences.

For example, what is the favorite fast-food chain of each party?  Democrats favor Wendy’s, while Republicans prefer Subway.

Preferred by Republicans

Why is that?  Fortune magazine has a theory: 

At Wendy’s, menu options are prepackaged into meals, and customers typically order by number; Subway patrons, on the other hand, are practically forced to customize their meals as they walk their sandwiches down an assembly line.  “What Democrats are responding to is somebody smart making choices for them that makes their lives better and easier, and fundamentally what Republicans are responding to is the ability to make an individualized choice,” [the CEO of Buyology] says.

Let’s say Democrats worked a deal with Wendy’s giving people who voted free burgers and fries.  If the promotion was heavily advertised, it might increase turnout among people who might not otherwise bother voting.  Given that Democrats like Wendy’s better than Republicans, the majority of the people who turned out to vote in order to get a free meal would likely be Democrats.  

Favored by Democrats

At least that’s the reasoning behind the law prohibiting such giveaways.  It’s a bit of a stretch, n’est-ce pas?  

When Tim Hortons was informed of the law, it modified its promotion by offering a free donut to anyone who brought in a coupon on Election Day and bought a cup of coffee.  Whether that person had voted or hadn’t voted no longer mattered.

By the way, Buyology found out that the favorite sport of Democrats is NFL football, while Republicans prefer major league baseball.  

The late George Carlin

That would have surprised the late comedian George Carlin, who had this to say about the differences between football and baseball:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun.  With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home . . . and to be safe!  I hope I'll be safe at home!

Here's the entire George Carlin football-baseball routine:

I don’t mean to be partisan, but baseball is a MUCH better sport than football.  (Just sayin’ . . .)

“Electioneering” was released on Radiohead’s 1997 album, OK Computer.  (Radiohead’s music is really, really, really good.)

Here’s “Electioneering”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Jaydiohead -- "Dirt Off Your Android" (2009)

Got some dirt on my shoulder

Could you brush it off for me?

"Dirt Off Your Android" is featured on Max Tannone's Jaydiohead album, a 2009 collection of mashups combining music by Radiohead and music by Jay-Z.  As the title indicates, "Dirt Off Your Android" combines "Paranoid Android" (from the OK Computer album) with "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" (from Jay-Z's The Black Album)  Click here if you'd like to read what 2 or 3 lines had to say about "Paranoid Android" a few days ago.

Jaydiohead?

There are about a zillion covers and mashups of "Paranoid Android," by the way.  The Easy Star All-Stars did a reggae cover.  A classical pianist (Christopher O'Riley) and a string quartet (The Section) have also recorded the song.  Weezer did a cover that one reviewer compared to "hearing Tupac sing a Smashing Pumpkins song."

Without a doubt, the oddest cover version to date was the one done by the percussion section of the University of Massachusetts Minutemen Marching Band.  It's worth listening to:

It's hard to imagine two more dissimilar artists in terms of musical style, but most of the Jay-Z/Radiohead mashups on Jaydiohead work reasonably well.  (Jay-Z tweeted "There are 3 or 4 REAL gems on jaydiohead," and Gwyneth Paltrow included a Jaydiohead track on a 2009 list of her ten favorite party tracks.)

"Dirt Off Your Shoulder" got a lot of attention during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Barack Obama responded to attacks by primary opponent Hillary Clinton by pretending to brush dirt off his shoulder -- a clear reference to the Jay-Z song.  (When questioned about the gesture, an Obama campaign spokesman admitted that "[h]e has some Jay-Z on his iPod.")

Ian Kinsler brushes the
dirt off his shoulder 

Pretending to brush dirt off your shoulders is a don't-give-a-damn gesture -- if you get knocked down and end up with dirt all over your clothes, Jay-Z's advice is that you just pick yourself off and brush that dirt off like you don't really care. 

Obama adapted the gesture to the dirty business of politics.  He didn't literally have dirt on his shoulder, of course.  His message was that Clinton's strategy of attacking him was just typical Washington mud-slinging.  The appropriate response?  Just brush all that dirt off your shoulder and go about your business.

Here's video of Obama's gesture:

And here he is appearing to give good ol' Hillary the finger.  (He denied it, of course, but the audience reaction and his reaction to the audience reaction sure make it look like that's what he was doing.)

Here's "Dirt Off Your Android":

Click here to download the entire Jaydiohead album for free.    

Radiohead -- "Paranoid Android" (1997)

When I am king

You will be first against the wall

I'm not sure who will be first against the wall when I am king.  There are a number of excellent candidates.  

I may never be king, of course.  But just in case, I've been practicing: "Ready.  Aim.  FIRE!!!"

Goya's "The Third of May 1808"
depicts a Napoleonic firing squad

I'm back at 2 or 3 lines world headquarters (we've got the upper two floors of the Wildly Popular Blog Building) after my extensively chronicled 12-day pleasure-business-pleasure trip to San Francisco, San Diego, and Granbury, Texas.  (If you haven't been following 2 or 3 lines recently, just scroll down and read the last couple of hundred posts -- then you'll be all caught up.)

Just before I took off on my trip, 2 or 3 lines reached a significant milestone -- "Shake Some Action" by the Flamin' Groovies became the 500th song we've featured.  Click here to read all about it.

You would think that 500 posts would give you plenty of room to fit in all the greats, most of the near-greats, and a fair number of the not-so-greats from the pop music world.

But you regular followers have no doubt noticed that there are some notable recording artists whose music has not yet been featured on 2 or 3 lines.

Radiohead (looking suitably angst-ridden)

One of the most notable of those missing groups is Radiohead, whose music was not only critically praised but also very popular (despite being somewhat user-unfriendly).  

*     *     *     *     *

In 2000, a British survey of some 200,000 record buyers ranked three Beatles albums (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's and The White Album) as the #1, #3, and #5 albums of all time.  Radiohead's The Bends and OK Computer were #2 and #4 on that list.  That's pretty impressive.  (At the time the survey was taken, the band had released only three albums.)  

Radiohead remained popular through the following decade despite a major change in musical direction.  Rolling Stone readers voted the group the second-best artist of the 2000's, and two Radiohead albums (Kid A and In Rainbows) held down the #3 and #5 spots on the magazine's top-albums-of-the-decade list.

So how did I manage to write 500-plus posts without featuring a Radiohead song?

Believe me, it wasn't because I don't like Radiohead.  I have seven of their eight studio albums resting comfortably among the 48.3 days' worth of music in my iTunes account, and I listen to those albums frequently.  

But choosing just one Radiohead song to feature is like choosing just one of your children to carry out of a burning building.  (That simile may be a little over the top . . . but you get my point.)

The OK Computer cover

I could have picked any one of a dozen Radiohead songs for this post, but I chose "Paranoid Android" off the group's 1997 album, OK Computer.  It's a very complex song, but not quite as experimental as some of the group's later music -- so it's not as difficult for the average person to appreciate.  

(Not that 2 or 3 lines readers are merely "average."  Many of them are well below average, of course.  After all, this isn't Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.)

*     *     *     *     *

"Paranoid Android" combines parts of three different songs written by three different members of the group.  The group was inspired by the Beatles' "Happiness is a Warm Gun," which also stitches together several disparate song fragments.

Freddie Mercury, who wrote
"Bohemian Rhapsody"

Several critics have compared "Paranoid Android" to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."  One of them (Simon Williams of New Musical Express) went so far as to say that the Radiohead song was "not unlike 'Bohemian Rhapsody' being played backwards by a bunch of Vietnam vets high on . . . crack."  

I think Simon Williams may have been on crack when he decided to compare the two songs.  "Paranoid Android" is really nothing like "Bohemian Rhapsody."  

I'm sorry to break the news to you Queen fans out there, but "Bohemian Rhapsody" is either (1) a huge joke played by Queen on its fans, or (2) one of the most God-awful songs in history.

(You can click here to view the famous (infamous?) "Bohemian Rhapsody" scene from Wayne's World, which is one of most God-awful movies in history.)

*     *     *     *     *

The animated music video for "Paranoid Android" is remarkably weird and seems to have absolutely no relationship to the song's lyrics -- which is not all that surprising, given that the creator of the video (Swedish animator Magnus Carlsson) did not have access to the lyrics until after the video was done.  

Despite the incomprehensible nature of the music video, MTV played it a lot.  As one MTV executive told an interviewer, "You can watch 'Paranoid Android' a hundred times and not figure it all out."  

I'm not sure what his point is.  After all, you can read something typed by a roomful of monkeys a hundred times and not figure it all out.  That's because it has no meaning to figure out.

Click here to view the music video for "Paranoid Android."

Click here to buy "Paranoid Android" from Amazon.