Jigsaw Falling into Place

A night out at the dance club, and there comes the point where you make that so-called connection with someone else. And despite the alcohol, flashy lights, loud music and the smoky haze, you tell yourself there is indeed a connection and all these thoughts and temptations run through your mind. From the male's perspective, he's trying to inconspicuously make his way to his chosen female. Success: She's responding, and after she's decided that her male is acceptable, he keeps making his move. It's a struggle because "the whole place is on a mission," where the goal is pure sex, but he's getting closer at achieving his goal. He just has to pretend for the sake of his female. However, he encounters a bump on the road....His girl is drifting away, maybe to another man on a similar mission? Yes...

Then it hits him. They're all playing a game in that disco, and the chances of him winning are slim. Why can't he ever win? Losing is his constant nightmare that he just can't seem to wish away. As he's left on his own in the dark, crowded club, his early delusions of a connection have come full circle; the jigsaw pieces of his mind have fallen into place: He never had a chance.

I love this song it's one of my all time favorites of radiohead... i think it's pretty simple i like the short poetics description above mine... it's a simple story about meeting a girl and having an amazing night together even before the sex or before they leave together. when it does happen like that when you meet someone for the first time that you instantly have a connection with it truly feels like a puzzle piece falling into place... no matter where it leads or how badly it ends.. that one moment during the night when you're both in exactly the same place it's so perfect. but more often then not.. it's over before it began somehow life gets in the way and it all slips away. the loss of it becomes more of a nightmare than a dream and often you do want to wish it away but it feels so right somehow.

You gotta remember this is Radiohead. It's about the regrettable impossibility of actually forging a meaningful relationship at a "club". People are in and out of your life so fast, it's so hard to make a meaningful contact with someone else. You can't be yourself in a setting like that. Obviously the people in the song have just met each other. But this is what our "modern" society offers us. It's all in the lyrics.

my interpretation arranged stanza by stanza:

its saying he wants a relationship with this woman he met where he can talk to her and not just party and have sex he is kind of longing for that moment to return when she was happy to be in his company and not just drunk and screaming then he says wait we could have more, dont be just another one night stand, but he cant stop the the rhythm of life to be with her he wants her open up to him but she just leaves and gets on with her life he is looking back and saying maybe we could have had something there and regrets not trying to make anything happen

to be honest, I think this song is about the moment after. When you realize that all you have experienced isn't just a magical getaway and that it really does have an impact upon existance. "As the magic disappears. No longer wound up like a spring" is indicative of the come down from this emotional high. I really appreciate this song because the moment after the excitement dies is such a relevant topic in modern day lives, it seems that we live too much for today and don't realize that tomorrow exists until it finally does. Beautiful.

That's an interesting take on the album mcoxo 16. I can't help feeling that songs like 15 step, weird fishes and reckoner are more ethereal than a simple man/woman relationship. Then again, what is a relationship with another person other than a relationship with yourself?

As the magic disappears = As your bad mood disappears

Before you're lost between the noise = Before you're lost between the notes

What's the point of instruments = Words are blunt instruments

Words are a sawed off shotgun = Words are a sawn off shotgun

to me this song is about the idea of a meaningless fling, but it is interspersed with emotions of love and chemistry. the narrator is perhaps equating the quick affair with something more...In Rainbows is so full of longing. It's as though Thom and the band are perhaps looking back on their younger days where they found relationships hard to form and where the the promise of something more usually disintegrated as soon as the lights of the club came on.

Perhaps it is also about the intimacy and chemisty found in bars and clubs...that feeling of being uninhibited for a short time, and for a short time the Jigsaw does fall into place. In truth, you know that is is just a temporary feeling, conjured up in a nightclub environment and meant nothing.

I think this song's meaning is pretty straightforward. You meet a girl in a bar (take my hand, write my number down). She gets pissed. You take advantage for the sex. The place is set up for drunken encounters that end in sex (on a mission). You don't let her get away. You don't let her get lost in the music. You keep up the pretence of understanding the communication but the words really don't matter - they're a means to an end. The next day the enormity of what happened becomes clear. The embarrassment of the encounter, the expectations of the encounter - it's a nightmare. And the huge sense of shame - the light you can feel on your back. I've been there as I'm sure most have. Apparently it was the last song to be included on the album and only just made it. I can see why - all the other songs are about true communication. This one is a stand alone about deliberate falsity.

When does everything make sense? When does the jigsaw fall into place? When we find the person we think we belong with.

The scenario played out badly. They said the wrong things... 'c'mon and let it out!' There's still a chance... but she disappears.

And then in the end they look back at each other... this isn't just a meaningless encounter. They will meet again.