Take for granted that, to understate the case fairly dramatically, I like the song a lot. Then, a part of me feels that “Paranoid Android” really should be my Favourite Song Ever: it’s suitably epic, and it’s been a suitably large part of my life — it came at just the right time, both for me specially and in the wider context of society as a whole, and now it stands as a massive landmark in every sense…for me (and probably for most everyone who loves the song), it looms very, very large whenever I look back.
It’s been a while since Radiohead’s music really immediately engaged me, but “Paranoid Android” is still a marvel — painting with the broadest of palettes but remarkably concise at the same time, it’s probably the single best individual argument for Radiohead’s genius and certainly one of the most striking reminders of what a gift to all of us Thom Yorke’s voice is…I feel that I can really only skirt the edges of explaining why the song is so great / why it’s so significant to me / why I love it so much — picking out particular aspects and elements which can never, individually or collectively, account for the whole — but I guess that’s how it goes with these things; songs like this always exceed any attempt to describe or contain them, and they don’t go away.
