Hearing Damage Lyrics

Lyric discussion by deryk 

Cover art for Hearing Damage lyrics by Thom Yorke

The lyrics remind me of holosonic technology. Here's an excerpt from an article:

"What has long been rumored within the conspiracy and ufology communities went public a few years ago (though a variant of the technology was discussed for use even earlier during the Waco siege) and is quickly infiltrating the market of ideas and real world applications. Holosonic sound technologies project a high pitched directional beam of ultrasound audio to an exact location, usually where the target audience’s head will be. The victim will hear a voice, music, advertisement, or whatever the beams controller would like, inside their head. No-one around them would be able to hear it, unless they could drag someone to that exact spot and hope the beam was still trained on the same location."

I think Thom had this in mind when he wrote the lyrics.

Considering that hearing voices in your head is one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia, this is a terrifying bit of technology since the target would feel as though he/she were going insane.

I totally agree this song is about that. If you research it, there is a lot of technology that is able to project a directional beam of ultra sound audio - into some ones head. If you dont believe me then check out these two articles - http://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491/

http://www.wired.com/2007/06/darpas_sonic_pr/