Radiohead - 15 Step

Whenever Thom Yorke shrill pierced my ears in high school I threw the headphones across the room. 

Later, a disaffected college friend gave me The Bends. 

Before The Bends my music universe was the Greenday and Limp Bizkit tracks I traded my Drake’s apple pies for a listen, the Led Zeppelin my '70s drummer track coach insisted was best, and The White Stripes. 

Each of these rocks had a unique flavor, but most of their experiments were references to the past, or to other genres, or, as with Zeppelin, didn’t register as such, since Zeppelin stood alone and immovable as Stonehenge, had always been what it was. 

The Bends was still rock, but now there was something more. 

I couldn’t stop listening to “Just”. The build up of the chorus guitar, and especially, the extended build in last chorus (from 2:45 to 3:10), brought me back again and again. 

It’s four repetitions going up the scale, each time lifting an octave, suggesting approach to a climax. Then, the guitar maxes out with a sustained pitch. The song feels like it’s about to end, but picks up and stumbles on, a desperate lead guitar over exhausted descending chords. 

The end guitar didn’t learn the chorus guitar’s lesson. The end guitar just repeated it and shifted it upwards again and again and turned it into something as shrill and negative as Thom Yorke’s voice. It did it to itself. 

I also enjoyed the janky “My Iron Lung” and later had a lot of fun playing it on guitar. The transition two minutes in from stultified electric ballad to cagey depressed punk is fun as hell to play. Even a guitarist who can’t subtly emote can provide contrast between the two sides of this transition just by feeling the music, by going from gentle to hard on the frets and the pick. 

These hard to digest but satisfying touches kept me with Radiohead until I completely, or as completely as anyone can, adapted to Thom Yorke. When my listening attention was somewhere in the middle I could still hear him, but when listening casually or intensely I could not. 

Around this time Radiohead offered In Rainbows for free download, or not free, but whatever you decided to pay, which meant, free (please support Monophone on Patreon).  As with most new albums, the first listen disappointed. I still don’t get “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” and “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”. They have an improvisational feel, as if the band came to the mic with nothing but misplaced confidence and these songs were the result. 

But I love “15 Step”. My favorite part is the middle, but there are so many other interesting things about this song. 

First, it’s written in 5/4 time. This means it's built on a repetition of 5 beats. So much of what we listen to is based on 2 or 3 beats or multiples thereof. For you computer people, I think the reason why it’s 2 and 3 has something to do with the RAM of the brain, with what the brain can hold in instant use memory. The next prime number after 2 and 3 is 5 - and that pushes the limits of our RAM. 

For you chocolate inclined: 5 beats is too big to be swallowed. In 2 and 3 based music and multiples thereof, we’re eating snack sized and regular sized Twix, they go down quickly and well enough. But 5 beat music is like king sized Twix: that’s pushing it. You have to ask yourself, at what point is it a Twix bar, at what point is it an indeterminate mass of chocolate and caramel? It seems like the tipping point is 5 beats. 

The brain is not used to the 5 beat structure, so Radiohead eases us into it. 

The beginning of the song is a sonic mess - static, crunchy, disjunct beats - for the most part, formless. A metaphor for what 5/4 sounds like to our brains. 

But one sound distinguishes itself. Every once in a while, you’ll hear BUMF - the bass drum. It marks the beginning of each 5 beat structure. So when we hear it, we know one measure has passed and another just began. You can use that BUMF to discern the 5 beat structure, even though the crunchy digital drums and the off kilter clapping try to disguise it.

The result is twofold: in the cacophony, the music gives you one definitive BUMF to orient yourself. You hold on to and recognize that BUMF because its the only thing that is clearly distinguishable. 

At the same time, the cacophony here provides a contrast for the slightly less cacophonous, but still 5/4 beat to come. 

This is crucial. Imagine the song without the cacophonous beginning, if it started at 24 seconds. You would be dropped into an unsettling 5/4 world. However, by having an even more bizarre 24 seconds first, dropping into 5/4 world at 24 seconds becomes a comfort. Now when you drop into it, you are already oriented by the BUMF, that is, you know where the measures begin and end. 

Not the thing itself, but what proceeds it, makes the thing less strange. The talking rabbit probably discomfited Alice more than Queen of Hearts, because before Alice saw the Queen of Hearts, she had seen a talking rabbit. 

The melody starts at :41. I love it because there is something circular, flowing and smooth about it. Like water in some state between liquid and solid. 

What gives it this quality is how the high and low notes of the guitar play against each other. On the downbeat, at the beginning of each measure, is a bass note, then a series of higher notes. The higher notes are trending down towards the next bass note. When that bass note sounds, it’s both the end of the higher notes, and the bass note for the next set of higher notes. This is possible because the bass note is the last note of the higher notes, but shifted down an octave, so it’s also low enough to be the bass for the next phrase. 

So that note occupies two states. In the same way, we are so used to 2 beat and 4 beat measures, that the fifth beat confuses the brain, makes uncertain whether the note is in the current measure or the next measure - the last beat of each measure occupies two states rhythmically, just as that bass notes occupies two states for the melody. This makes the transition between these phrases smooth, almost otherworldly. 

The second verse is the most remarkable part, but the first verse must be explored because it sets up the second. 

To me everything is prelude until :53. Then there’s 12 measures that make the first part of verse 1. Here the music composition is simple. Guitar with a little bass and a little melody and drums. Actually, the drums are complex, the beat and the overlay of handclaps. But that complexity has lost its strangeness, since we’ve been listening to it for almost a minute by now. 

There is almost no development or variation in these 12 measures. The only element that alters is the lyrics. Finally, at 1:12 is a build up, layers are added, giving momentum.  Rocking cymbals. The bass kicks in. The lead guitar modulates up, suggesting it’s heading towards climax. Yorke holds each word he sings much longer than before (“onnnnnnee byyyyyyyyyy onnnnnnneeee…”)

This is a great build up, but it’s still basic. Modulating up the melody, bringing more bass, lengthening the vocal notes and crashing cymbals are standard pop methods for giving a structure more power. It’s satisfying, but unoriginal. 

What happens next is a deconstruction and then rebuilding of musical momentum. At 1:45 all aspects of the preceding music are present, but flattened out. The guitar melody is simplified, rocking back and forth between two chords instead of the four chord progression it had before. The vocals change from fully formed thoughts expressed in words to a moan, a one pitch moan that eerily builds up. The bass goes from a four chord harmony to one single repeated note. The drums go from a dynamic beat to almost random hits building into a drum roll. 

This is the same music we have been listening to, but it’s folded into itself, flattening from three dimensions to two. Still the drums and the rising vocal indicate buildup… and then at 1:57 we’re back, the music gets expanded to three dimensions again. 

You often experience an effect like this in pop rock songs, where the music is quiet for a while and then gets loud all of a sudden. Often it goes from loud electric to soft acoustic and then back to loud electric again. Radiohead here performs the calculus equivalent of that algebra. Instead of lowering and raising volume, this music lowers and raises its complexity. The brain recognizes this without knowing it does, and I think that’s why the transition at 1:57 feels so good. It’s both unexpected and expected, it leaves you a little breathless. 

But now, where do we go from here? You’re primed to think verse 2 is going to continue to raise the stakes by how the stakes have been raised in verse 1. Even more so, because cymbals are present at the beginning of verse 2, the cymbals which didn’t come in till late in verse 1. So it’s a fair assumption that, because verse 2 starts at a more musically complex place than verse 1, it will end at a more complex place. 

But at 2:03 the cymbals die off. If you have difficulty hearing the cymbals, just listen to when he sings “et cetera, et cetera”. It sounds like things have calmed down.

All that has changed is the cymbals stopped. But why? Why step down the musical complexity here? We’ve already been at this level of complexity, and we’re supposed to be going someplace further. 

Here I think, we see how the musical choices work with the lyrics. So far, Yorke has been whining about something that keeps happening to him: 

How come I end up where I started 

How come I end up where I belong

Won’t take my eyes off the ball again

You reel me out then you cut the string 

To me it sounds like some girl keeps winding him up and then betraying him over and over, and  he’s frustrated he never learns his lesson. That’s not necessarily what the lyrics mean, but the sense that something keeps happening to him again and again with bad results, and that he is frustrated,  is certainly in the lyrics. 

So while verse 1 develops in a standard way, verse 2 feels like it’s going to ramp up the tension with the cymbals, then it hits us with these unexpected, disjointed developments: silencing the cymbals at 2:03, hitting us with a little bass at 2:08, having children yell at 2:13, using a strange echo effect at 2:18. 

The conventional means of developing music exhibited in verse 1 are thrown out. Instead, jarring stops and strange fragments texture the music. 

Why? Did Radiohead just want to be edgy, different, say ”Fuck your expectations. Cut the cymbals and bring out the children’s choir”?

Perhaps, but I think they were also trying to compliment the lyrics here. The first verse is about a disgruntled guy, tired of being wronged. He’s even taking his oppressor to task: 

You used to be alright

What happened? 

Did the cat get your tongue? 

Did your string come undone?

Those last two questions are rhetorical, nagging and sarcastic. He’s having it out with the person who wronged him. 

In verse 2, he’s doing the same thing:

You used to be alright

What happened?

But here, instead of coming up with a accusatory question, he just says:

Etcetera, etcetera

It’s like he’s started to have it out with his oppressor, but tires and gives up even trying to come up with a good nag. The next line has the same character: 

Facts for whatever 

He’s not putting any thought into this confrontation any more. It has happened so many times before and now he is tired of it. 

It reminds me of Groundhog Day, movies of that type. The main character has been through this so many times before, he’s just rushing through his lines and half paying attention so he can get to the next part. 

The music I think, compliments this mind state. Whereas the verse 1 music builds into a nagging accusal, the verse 2 music is about to, but gives up at 2:03 (the same time the man in the lyrics gives up: “et cetera, et cetera”). Then, just like Bill Murray might, when reliving the same scene for the 20th time, he doesn't pay attention, just looks out the window.  So too does the music unexpectedly concern itself with a little bass at 2:08. At 2:13, it looks over at a TV with a children’s cartoon on and hears “YEAH!” At 2:18, the music is so used to the words it’s supposed to say, that it’s listening to how funny they sound, as represented by the echo of “15 steps”. 

The music is bored of this progression, of being angry at this person, of reacting and working up anger. This is the part where he’s supposed to get angry, so he gets angry, but his heart’s just not in the anger anymore. He’s experienced this too many times. 

The musical attention deficit we experience reinforces the experience of the lyrics.  

That’s why I love this song. So much musical meaning in two minutes. 

I didn't consciously think the above analysis until I sat down to write it. It was a wordless feeling of the musical quality, the music's gravity, that kept me in Radiohead's orbit until I acclimatized to Thom Yorke. 

Now when I listen to music and hear something off-putting, and start to raise my hand to the headphones to throw them across the room, I keep them on for a couple of seconds to feel for any pull.