Released: 2007
Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes / Arpeggi’ is a song that delves into the depths of human emotion and existential dread. It’s a lyrical journey that explores the desire to escape from reality, and the inevitable pull of the unknown.
In the opening lines, ‘In the deepest ocean, The bottom of the sea, Your eyes, They turn me’, the ‘deepest ocean’ and ‘bottom of the sea’ are metaphors for the depth of the speaker’s emotions. ‘Your eyes, They turn me’ implies that the speaker is deeply affected by someone, to the point of being turned or changed.
‘Why should I stay here? Why should I stay?’ Here, the speaker is questioning their existence in their current state or place. It suggests a feeling of discontent or restlessness.
‘I’d be crazy not to follow, Follow where you lead, Your eyes, They turn me, Turn me into phantoms’. This section indicates the speaker’s willingness to follow the person who affects them, even if it leads to becoming ‘phantoms’, or shadows of their former selves.
‘I follow to the edge, Of the earth, And fall off’. This line is a hyperbolic expression of the speaker’s willingness to follow the person to the ends of the earth, even if it means falling off or facing an unknown fate.
‘Yeah, everybody leaves, If they get the chance, And this… is my chance’. Here, the speaker is expressing a universal truth that everyone seeks escape if given the opportunity. The speaker sees their chance to escape and intends to take it.
‘I get eaten by the worms, And weird fishes, Picked over by the worms, And weird fishes’. These lines are metaphors for decay and death, suggesting that the speaker is willing to face even death for the chance to escape.
‘Yeah I, I’ll hit the bottom, Hit the bottom and escape, Escape, I, I hit the bottom, Hit the bottom and escape, Escape’. In these final lines, the speaker is determined to hit rock bottom, to reach the lowest point, in order to escape. It’s a powerful expression of the lengths the speaker is willing to go to break free from their current existence.
