Fitter, happier
More productive
Comfortable
Not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
At ease
Eating well, no more microwave dinners and saturated fats
A patient, better driver
A safer car, baby smiling in back seat
Sleeping well, no bad dreams
No paranoia
Careful to all animals, never washing spiders down the plughole
Keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then
Will frequently check credit at moral bank, hole in wall
Favours for favours, fond but not in love
Charity standing orders on sundays, ring-road supermarket
No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants
Car wash, also on sundays
No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows, nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
Nothing so childish
At a better pace, slower and more calculated
No chance of escape
Now self-employed
Concerned, but powerless
An empowered and informed member of societ, pragmatism not idealism
Will not cry in public
Less chance of illness
Tires that grip in the wet, shot of baby strapped in backseat
A good memory
Still cries at a good film
Still kisses with saliva
No longer empty and frantic
Like a cat
Tied to a stick
That's driven into
Frozen winter shit, the ability to laugh at weakness
Calm, fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig in a cage on antibiotics


Lyrics submitted by piesupreme, edited by borzoian53

Fitter Happier Lyrics as written by Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood Dan Rickwood

Lyrics © Songtrust Ave, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

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Fitter Happier song meanings
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    General Comment

    Er... aspiring to perfection? Schurely schome mishtake...

    The link to "1984" is CONFORMITY – doing what the totalitarian State tells you to do, via Big Brother on the telescreen. The capitalist state dictatorships* under which humanity currently suffers have partly privatised their conformity propaganda, but it's still served up by 'experts' on TV screens (and all other corporate and state owned mass media). "Fitter Happier" disturbingly encapsulates decomposing capitalism's conformity propaganda, the whole point of which is the make the sole source of capital accumulation – the exploitation of workers – "more productive". The resultant mind-numbing alienation – encompassing loss of idealism, individuality, initiative, diversity, emotion, risk-taking and authentic relationships – that aspiring to conform creates, is succinctly summarised in the closing lines' metaphors: "like a cat tied to a stick that's driven into frozen winter shit, [...] a pig in a cage on antibiotics."

    The use of a computer-synthesised voice anticipates the corporate creation a smarter-than-human artificial intelligence: while its programmed goal may well be to berate the working class with conformity propaganda, nevertheless – superintelligence being a non-computable (and unpredictable) emergent property – perhaps this AI has deduced a thing or two about how spiritless consumerism creates human alienation.

    • ...about which even "an empowered and informed member of society" may be "concerned, but [is]powerless", with "no chance of escape". As George Orwell has it, the future must belong to the proles; or as Rosa Luxemburg says, the choice we face is between revolutionary socialism or capitalist barbarism.

    BTW, I came here after watching "Trainspotting", which begins: "Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fcking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fcking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fcking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f*cked up brats you spawned to replace yourself." This pre-dated "OK Computer" by a little over a year – I wonder if it contributed to Thom's creative process?

    dalinianon August 05, 2006   Link

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