Fitter Happier

These lyrics shift from the irony of 'comfortable' to the unmasked horror 'a pig in a cage on antibiotics'. It is the voice of an intelligent human being trying and failing to convince themselves that the tenets of advanced capitalism hold any truth. Here's my breakdown:

Fitter, happier, more productive, comfortable, not drinking too much= On the surface these things are self-improving. Remember that we start at the ironic end of the narrative arc in these lyrics. Being healthy (in the context of the whole lyrics) only serves The Machine (since people who suddenly pop it are most inconvenient to economic productivity)

Regular exercise at the gym, 3 days a week= Treadmill, machine-like functioning of humans, the rat race. Thom's lyrics work by collapsing the boundary between reality and metaphor.

Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries at ease = There carefully selects 'associates employees contemporaries' instead of 'friends or family'. The relationships that Thom chooses to mention are arbitrary, uniquely modern and functions of the Marxist cash nexus. This helps emphasise the irony of 'At ease' - how can we feel easy with a constant onslaught of strangers that we need to socially negotiate?

Eating well, no more microwave dinners and saturated fats= A deep suspicion of informed broadsheet readers. Instant meals are (typically) eaten by the 'lower classes', but what Thom is questioning here is the supposed 'you are what you eat' idiom. The implication is you could eat healthily and still be dehumanised in The Machine.

A patient, better driver, a safer car, baby smiling in back seat=

• see Wisemeister's excellent analysis

Sleeping well, no bad dreams, no paranoia= Concept of an infinitely deferred ideal state of being. Thom often comes back to it - 'Nice Dream' being the prime example - but later embraces it as his lyrics increasingly draw on dreams - Pyramid Song, Sail to the Moon, Weird Fishes.

Careful to all animals, never washing spiders down the plughole = Seems genuinely caring and compassionate. But what about the coming mass extinction?

Keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then = keys back to the earlier line about associates and contemporaries. As JIm in Ricky Gervais' The Office says 'you spend more time with these people than you do with your real friends and family.'

Will frequently check credit at moral bank, hole in wall Great, great lyric. In a world obsessed with numbers, looking at life as a ledger. The implication is that some things cannot be measured so simplistically.

Favors for favors, fond but not in love Interesting conjunction of these lines, as 'favors for favors' belongs to the workplace - is Thom suggesting that this kind of self-serving attitude has infiltrated personal relationships?

Charity standing orders on Sundays ring road supermarket = token generosity approved by society. Otherwise, people are selfish habitual consumers.

No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants= see 'careful to all animals'

Car wash, also on Sundays, no longer afraid of the dark or mid-day shadows = I always think of my dickhead Dad washing and waxing his Jag on a Sunday afternoon. What a nob.

Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate, nothing so childish = the pressure to conform to the modern definition of maturity. A very problematic idea.

At a better pace, slower and more calculated, no chance of escape = Change from irony to direct address. Here the protagonist realises the difficulty of escape from the brainwashing whilst in a 'comfortable' state.

Now self-employed, concerned, but powerless = identifying the recent phenomenon of self-employment as a bid for freedom after some awakening in The Machine - but the self-employed find themselves powerless against market forces, multinational corporations and the banks.

An empowered and informed member of society, pragmatism not idealism = the dilution of personal politics. One of the Manic Street Preacher's favourite topics - see their 'Everything Live' video, where James Dean Bradfield shouts (ironically) 'pragmatism, not idealism' at the end of 'Motown Junk.'

Will not cry in public, less chance of illness, tires that grip in the wet These ideas centre around keeping your grip - the modern deluded idea that You are in control

Shot of baby strapped in back seat, a good memory, still cries at a good film = our humanity reduced to a cliche, a selling point in an advert, a moment of Brave New World emotion at the movies before getting back to The Machine

Still kisses with saliva, no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied to a stick = protagonist starts to lose the plot. He/she is waking up in the matrix, realising the awful truth that little moments of reassurance (kissing) can no longer mask what's underneath (fear of being drowned by malevolent forces)

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 = The protagonist sways between two realities, trying to recall the original 'comfortable' reality (fitter happier), but unable to stabilise as the grim reality has now been seen (modern humans are not much more than an drugged up experiment)