Album: OK Computer
Year: 1997
. . .
For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself.
I’ve only ever seen Radiohead in concert one time. But it was a pretty great time: at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on April 2, 1998. Oh, and the opening band was Spiritualized, which was as on point as you could possibly want, ranking up there for me with The Clash opening for The Who in 1982 or The Hold Steady opening for the Replacements in 2014. I guess these types of bills only happen every 16 years. Looking forward to what happens in 2030. If there is a 2030.
Yeah, for a minute there, I lost myself.
That said, for whatever reason, I recall the crowd being not as into it as you might have expected, the show being presented by local alt-rock station Live 105, and while I don’t recall people yelling “Creep” all night — though I have to assume they did — I do recall a lot of balloons popping throughout.
For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself.
In any event, “Karma Police” was then, is now, and shall ever be one of Radiohead’s most accessible songs — driven mostly by Yorke’s piano and Selway’s big beat — featuring a coda that is at once terrible and beautiful, but remains one of the high points of late 1990’s popular music. It starts out slow and grand, with both the vocals and lyrics kicking at the exact same time.
Yeah, for a minute there, I lost myself.
Karma police
Arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He’s like a detuned radio
For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself.
Hell, it even has a chorus, the drums disappearing, a synth acting as almost gospel backing vocals and Yorke threatening:
This is what you’ll get
This is what you’ll get
This is what you’ll get
When you mess with us
Yeah, for a minute there, I lost myself.
I’ve always loved how Yorke sings “mess” as “mass,” which is either just a trick of his singing voice or a jokey pun, as “this is what you get / when you mass with us” is a different kind of warning, but a warning nevertheless. In any event, apparently, the phrase “karma police” was an inside joke within the band that Yorke turned into a song that was kinda sorta about karma and kinda sorta anti-boss, but really about all of the different ways you can interpret “for a minute there, I lost myself.”
For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself.
Because, as pretty as the first half of “Karma Police” is, it’s the second half that makes it a radio staple and I’m guessing a lot of people’s all-time favorite Radiohead song. And when Thom Yorke sings “for a minute there, I lost myself,” is he just saying that he lost his train of thought, or did he lose his entire identity? And does it even matter when it sounds like an old John Lennon song? And not “Sexy Sadie,” which sure, it might share a couple of bits with, but more like one of Lennon’s piano-driven songs from Plastic Ono Band or Imagine.
Yeah, for a minute there, I lost myself.
That said, none of Lennon’s songs from his solo career — not even “Instant Karma” — have that one weird last hook. You know, the controlled guitar oscillation that Ed O’Brien somehow comes up with at the end. It’s an amazing amount of frisson to tack onto what is otherwise an achingly gorgeous song, and somehow — to paraphrase Pete Townshend — it makes “Karma Police” even more pure with its wildness.
For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself.
I’m not quite sure if “Karma Police” is my favorite Radiohead song — not while “Idioteque” still roams the universe (foreshadowing!) — but that last two minutes is as amazing as popular music gets. Oh, and awesome video, too.
Yeah, for a minute there, I lost myself.
“Karma Police” official video
“Karma Police” live in Glastonbury, 1997
“Karma Police” live in San Francisco, 1998
“Karma Police” live in Paris, 1998
“Karma Police” live in Glastonbury, 2003
“Karma Police” live in Chicago, 2016
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