Do you ever wonder what it would sound like if Radiohead had written Pink Floyd’s seminal album, The Dark Side of the Moon? Of course you do. You’re not an idiot!
Fortunately, I have curated a playlist to answer all your questions.
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckZjg5K9mlo5PUVA02jpijIc7DgUcHRw&feature=share
For head-to-head listening, start this playlist and when you hear “No paranoia,” start up the Pink Floyd album and listen simultaneously. If you listen to it this way, they line up pretty well initially, but side 2 gets messed up because of song lengths. So you miss out of how great “Where Bluebirds Fly” and “Any Colour You Like” work so well together.
I tried to keep the themes of DSOTM intact, as well as general song structure in terms of instrumentals/piano vs guitar heavy vs electronic. I tried to dip into every Radiohead album (save the first) and only double-dipped once. I was sorry not to get a Douglas Adams connection in, though.
Dark Side of the Moon is about the alienation and existential dread of modern life, and of growing up. The loss of idealism and the loss of sanity. Roger Waters was turning 30 when the album was recorded in 1973, the rest of Pink Floyd was the same age or slightly younger. They were turning a corner from the youthful experimentation of psychedelia to more adult concerns.
“Speak to Me” opens the album with a heartbeat blossoming into tape loops and samples from other parts of the album. It introduces the spoken comments about madness that are sprinkled through the piece. For the Radiohead song, I chose “Fitter Happier,” from OK Computer, which uses a computer voice to read out lyrics that start out banal and end up unhinged. It’s considerably longer, but immediately states the thesis that the Pink Floyd song only hints at.
“Breathe” is a slow, lazy, casual strumming song. At first the lyrics seem to match this relaxed attitude, but they turn dark and disillusioned. “Everything in Its Right Place” from Kid A has a similar feel to me, of calmness calcifying into oppression. Its lyrics are less straightforward, but “woke up sucking a lemon” seems uncomfortable and misaligned with everything being all right.
“On the Run” is an instrumental making heavy use of synthesizer and sound effects (things Radiohead would also renovate their sound with). The comment here is “Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me!” followed by a large crash. The Radiohead track is “I Am Citizen Insane” from Com Lag. It’s an instrumental with a driving beat, synths and effects, and the song title fits the theme of the album (compare to Floyd’s “Brain Damage”).
“Time” begins with a cacophany of chiming clock, followed by a long introduction of drums and chimes. (If you listen to the playlist and the album simultaneously, “I Am Citizen Insane” continues through this part of “Time.”) The lyrics echo the sentiments of “Breathe,” that it is easy to take life for granted and suddenly find yourself in a rut you can’t easily get out of. In fact, it transitions into a reprise of the earlier song. The Radiohead song, “Present Tense” from A Moon Shaped Pool, is connected through the themes of time (“self-defense against the present”) and despair (“my world comes crashing down”). It’s also got a more traditional use of guitar than many of the Radiohead songs, and its echoing lyrics play well against the Pink Floyd song.
“The Great Gig in the Sky” is lyricless, but its comments and title are about dying, and the long emotional vocalizations make one thing of grief, shock, loss, and mourning. It’s a song based in piano and organ, and it’s matched with Radiohead’s “Sail to the Moon” from Hail to the Thief. The Radiohead song also prominently features piano and sweeping vocals. Its lyrical themes mention a series of hopeful but impossible things, and the tone resonates with regret.
“Money” begins with a rhythmic sound collage of cash registers and adding machines. The lyrics are about greed and getting rich and how nice that is and yet amoral at best. The thing that attracted me most to Radiohead’s “Dollars and Cents” (from Amnesiac) is Philip Selway’s drumming, particularly his use of cymbals. The way he hits the ride cymbal sounds to me just like the coins hitting the counter in “Money.” It was listening to this song and recalling the Pink Floyd song that inspired this playlist to begin with. The Radiohead lyrics are cynical commentary on politics, capitalism, and selling your soul just to exist in the modern world.
“Us and Them” is a piano piece with a dramatic saxophone solo that delves into the distance and violence between people, whether it be countries or individuals. The Radiohead song is “Videotape” from In Rainbows, a piano song with lyrics about death, the devil, and technology. Both these songs do a bit of double duty with the other Rick Wright song “The Great Gig in the Sky” and its partner above.
“Any Colour You Like” is an instrumental. I encourage you to find the live versions of this song from before and after Pink Floyd recorded the album–it’s a fascinating musical evolution! The synth line feels like a waterfall, and there are some scat-style vocals. It pairs absolutely perfectly with Radiohead’s “Where Bluebirds Fly” (an over-the-rainbow reference if there ever was one!) from Com Lag.
“Brain Damage” is about going insane, or at least feeling insane. Of course the original founder of the band, Syd Barrett, had to leave the band five years earlier due to his deteriorating mental health. It was obviously a frightening experience that stuck with them, a theme they would return to many times. The Radiohead choice here, “Give Up the Ghost” (from The King of Limbs) is also sung over a strummed guitar, and the lyrics are sad and disturbing and ultimately as defeatist as the Pink Floyd ones.
“Eclipse” is the culmination of Dark Side of the Moon, a great list song (Pink Floyd has a few) with a triumphal build saying that everything and everyone everywhere is in tune. BUT … “the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” Which means what? That none of it really matters? (The final comment on the albums states, “There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it’s all dark.”) It’s a wonderfully self-undermining climax that can be interepreted to mean whatever you like. Looking to Radiohead, I pulled a track from The Bends which sounds much more like a traditional straight-ahead rock song than anything else on this playlist. It makes a great resolution song, it’s about blaming all the bad things on the black star, the falling sky, the satellite (the bad things being mainly a breakup with a seemingly mentally unstable partner). It’s a rocker that presages the depressive, claustrophobic, paranoid output of later Radiohead.
I hope you found things to enjoy in this playlist. Thanks for attending my TED Talk. And for Christ’s sake, why did no one tell me to start listening to Radiohead 20 years ago?