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Something for the rag and bone man
Over my dead body
Something big is gonna happen
Over my dead body
Someone's son or someone's daughter
Over my dead body
This is how I end up sucked in
Over my dead body
I'm gonna go to sleep
Let this wash all over me
We don't really want a monster taking over
Tiptoe around, tie him down
We don't want the loonies taking over
Tiptoe around, tie them down
May pretty horses
Come to you
As you sleep
I'm gonna go to sleep
And let this wash all over me
Over my dead body
Something big is gonna happen
Over my dead body
Someone's son or someone's daughter
Over my dead body
This is how I end up sucked in
Over my dead body
I'm gonna go to sleep
Let this wash all over me
We don't really want a monster taking over
Tiptoe around, tie him down
We don't want the loonies taking over
Tiptoe around, tie them down
May pretty horses
Come to you
As you sleep
I'm gonna go to sleep
And let this wash all over me
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This song is about feeling powerless. Note all the quotes in the song. It is someone repeating mantras of sanity over and over "we don't really want a monster taking over" "over my dead body" and yet that's exactly what happened. This stuff was written back in the buildup to war, when there where marches in the streets and people shouting, all of which didn't do a damn thing. Thom Yorke (who was very much involved in that shouting) is writing about how powerless it made him and all of us feel to know that there was not a damn thing you could do to stop it, even though he knew how crazy it was. The urge to go to sleep is not just the goverments' desire to make you forget, but also your own, to avoid the guilt of letting this happen. I think the "tiptoe around, tie him down" thing is about the realization that the sort of peacenik thinking that we had become accustomed to, the leaders actually paying attention to the populace, isn't going to work with these people. Radiohead have actually said in interviews that this album isn't about the war or Bush and Blair but about how powerless they felt in the whole mess, so I think this is justified.
@jady Thank you for highlighting the historical significance of this release. It\'s valuable to recognize that this album was released during the build up to the Iraq War, which had the largest worldwide pre-war protests in history. I\'ll add an additional interpretation of the phrase "go to sleep" as it may reference what the giant needs to do if Lillputians are to tie him down. Although I don\'t think Yorke\'s lyrics are intended to be taken a number of ways, I\'m quite fond of this phenomenon. For instance, he says Sail to the Moon was written as a message of hope for his child, but I always hear the lyrics as tragically desperate.
@jady Thank you for highlighting the historical significance of this release. It\'s valuable to recognize that this album was recorded during the build up to the Iraq War, which had the largest worldwide pre-war protests in history. I\'ll add an additional interpretation of the phrase "go to sleep" as it may reference what the giant needs to do if Lillputians are to tie him down. Although I don\'t think Yorke\'s lyrics are intended to be taken a number of ways, I\'m quite fond of this phenomenon. For instance, he says Sail to the Moon was written as a message of hope for his child, but I always hear the lyrics as tragically desperate.