Subterranean Homesick Alien

The breath of the morning
I keep forgetting.
The smell of the warm summer air.

I live in a town
where you can't smell a thing,
you watch your feet
for cracks in the pavement.

Up above
aliens hover
making home movies
for the folks back home,

of all these weird creatures
who lock up their spirits,
drill holes in themselves
and live for their secrets.

They're all uptight, uptight,
uptight, uptight,
uptight, uptight.

I wish that they'd sweep down in a country lane,
late at night when I'm driving.
Take me on board their beautiful ship,
show me the world as I'd love to see it.

I'd tell all my friends but they'd never believe me,
They'd think that I'd finally lost it completely.
I'd show them the stars and the meaning of life.
They'd shut me away.
But I'd be alright, alright,
I'd be alright,
I'm alright.

I'm just uptight, uptight,
uptight, uptight,
uptight, uptight,
uptight, uptight,
uptight.

-"Subterranean Homesick Alien" by Radiohead

I love the band Radiohead. If you've been around me much, you probably know that. I think they are the best band around right now. They make some of the most creative, intelligent, thought-provoking, challenging, and, ultimately, engaging music that I have ever heard.

The lyrics I just posted are from the song "Subterranean Homesick Alien" off of their third, and widely regarded as their best album, OK Computer, released in 1997.

Thom Yorke, the lead singer and general mastermind behind the band, sometimes gets a bad rap for being somewhat pessimistic. Sometimes he does appear that way. I don't hear Radiohead's songs like that, however. When I hear them, I hear songs about loss, despair, hurt, need--all of these things, yes. But through them something else emerges--hope. Coming through ever-so-slightly like little rays of sunlight though tiny holes in a huge black canvas, hope permeates Radiohead's message.

The song above.

The opening two stanzas (Are they stanzas? I don't know... but it works for me...) talk about the main character's 'town'. Obviously referencing the world in general. The town has drained him and has left him dead to the simple pleasures of life ("i keep forgetting the smell of the warm summer air") and people have grown afraid of everything. False religions and superstitions have overtaken the town as people are afraid to even step on the streets' cracks (for fear of breaking their mothers' backs?).

Everyone is not in this state, however. "Up above, aliens hover, making home movies for the folks back home." These creatures, obviously unaffected by our world's fallen nature, see our sad and desolate state just for what it is--sad and desolate. They see fallen man for what he is, a "sad creature" who has "locked up his spirit," "drilled holes in himself," and has begun to "live for his secrets." They are so uptight.

The main character acknowledges that these aliens are not as desperate as us. He wants them to "abduct" him, to show him the world as they do--unbound. Unfettered. Free. Redeemed.

He realizes that if they did, no one would believe him. He would "show them the stars and the meaning of life" but they would say that he'd "lost it completely" and would "shut him away". He would be viewed as crazy. Insane. But, in the end, he would be alright.

I love this song. Lyrically and musically, this thing is just solid. Obviously, man has fallen. C.S. Lewis, in one of his books (I forgot which one I read it in) mentions that if there are, in fact, other intelligent creatures out there, that we have no right to assume that they, too, have fallen away from the Father. Now that is an amazing and challenging thought.

Fortunately, we don't need aliens to show us what we're missing. Christ came and did that for us.

But, man, what a thought.