"If you think that you're strong enough;
if you think you belong enough."
if you think you belong enough."
"You do it to yourself, you do
And that's what really hurts
Is that you do it to yourself, just you
You and no one else."
— "Just"
The Bends is the second album by English Alternative Rock band Radiohead. The album was released in 1995 through Parlophone Records in the UK and Capitol Records in the US — and at a time when the band needed it most.
While the band's debut efforts, the 1992 EP Drill and 1993 album Pablo Honey, were decently regarded by critics, they were both met with a general shrug by the masses, who considered its grungy sound derivative of Nirvana at a time when damn near everyone was imitating the reluctant Seattle superstars. Most listeners didn't consider the tracklists of either release particularly memorable save for "Creep", the band's first hit, and indeed this consensus would become more widely adopted with time.
This album, meanwhile, saw a change in direction for the band, its blend of Britpop and Post-Grunge a backdrop for more layered sounds and more fleshed-out, cryptic, and emotionally candid lyrics that set the stage for the band's increasingly abstract and experimental follow-up material.
The Bends saw considerable commercial success, peaking at No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 22 on the Billboard 200 the following year, going on to become the 55th best-selling album of 1995 and the 43rd best-selling album of 1996 in the UK. The album was also certified quadruple-platinum in the UK, triple-platinum in Canada, platinum in the US, the EU, and New Zealand, and gold in Argentina, Belgium, and the Netherlands. This success would end up paving the way for the even greater heights achieved by OK Computer just two years later.
The Bends was supported by five singles: "My Iron Lung" (officially billed as an EP, but functionally a single), "High and Dry"/"Planet Telex" (released as a double-A-side), "Fake Plastic Trees", "Just", and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)".
Tracklist:
- "Planet Telex" (4:19)
- "The Bends" (4:06)
- "High and Dry" (4:17)
- "Fake Plastic Trees" (4:50)
- "Bones" (3:09)
- "(Nice Dream)" (3:53)
- "Just" (3:54)
- "My Iron Lung" (4:36)
- "Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was" (3:28)
- "Black Star" (4:07)
- "Sulk" (3:42)
- "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" (4:12)
Immerse your soul in tropes.
- Alliterative Title: "Street Spirit".
- Alternate Music Video: "High and Dry" received two different music videos: one for the UK market, and another for the US. The UK video is a Deliberately Monochrome Performance Video, simply depicting the band miming the song in the middle of the desert. The US video meanwhile is more elaborate, being a series of intertwining stories revolving around a vault heist set in a roadside diner.
- Big "NO!": Though the audio for it isn't heard, the female thief visibly mimes one at the end of the US video for "High and Dry" upon finding a time bomb in her takeout.
- Bond One-Liner: The final line in "High and Dry" ("don't leave me dry") is depicted as this in the US video, where it's sung by the restaurant owner after he kills the thieves with a bomb in their takeout container.
- Brown Note: The music video for "Just" begins with a man lying down in the middle of the street and refusing to budge. As people gather, they ask him (all the dialogue being in subtitles, as they are drowned out by the music) why he's lying there, and after refusing over and over again, he finally caves in. The camera zooms in on his mouth as he's speaking, but with the subtitles suddenly removed, the audience has no idea what he's saying (it doesn't help that this is shot from a variety of angles to make this more difficult to comprehend). The final scene of the video is of all the people around him lying on the ground in the same posture, his words presumably having had the exact same effect on them as on him.
- According to some lip-readers, the close-up has him repeating "God help me, I'll tell you," and it's implied that he's actually saying it during the shot of Radiohead looking out the window.
- *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": The narrator of "Bones" expresses his fear of this as he approaches old age.
- Creator Backlash: Done in-universe with "My Iron Lung", which Radiohead wrote as a response to the success of "Creep" and their resentment of it. Among other things, the song openly calls itself and its predecessor "a total waste of time."
- Creator Provincialism: Slightly present in "My Iron Lung", the chorus of which mentions a Belisha beacon
. These structures, used to denote crosswalks and often seen in conjunction with more ubiquitous zebra crossings, are only really found in Britain and a small handful of countries influenced by them, with other nations such as the United States opting for zebra crossings alone. - Deliberately Monochrome: The video for "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" and the British video for "High and Dry".
- Deliberate VHS Quality: A unique example of this trope in that it entails a still image: the cover photo is a frame from a VHS camcorder recording of Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke going around and filming various objects, analog artifacts and all. The duo specifically captured the image by photographing a television screen while playing back the finished tape. The method is far more obtuse than just taking even a disposable film camera and photographing an object of choice (in this case, a CPR dummy), but it lends a unique kind of grittiness that a regular photograph wouldn't be able to provide.
- Deus Angst Machina: This is a really angsty album, dealing with everything from stagnant relationships to self-loathing to how futile life is.
- Downer Ending: "Street Spirit" is an immensely sad closer to a pretty brooding and moody album. This can be attributed to its somber sound and its lyrics that deal with how life is pointless, death is inevitable, and resistance is futile.
- Driven to Suicide: The "lead, fill the hole in me" line in "Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was". Melody Maker published an article around the time using the lyrics of the track as evidence that Thom Yorke was destined to go the way of Kurt Cobain (incidentally, the album began production while Cobain was still alive; his suicide led to the band removing references to gun violence in "Sulk" to avoid anyone from making a connection to Cobain that was never meant to be there in the first place).
- Either/Or Title: "(Nice Dream)" parodies this trope by parenthesizing the entire title without saying what it's an alternative to, essentially including the "or," but not the "either." "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", meanwhile, plays this straight.
- Everything Is an iPod in the Future: "Fake Plastic Trees" bemoans and laments this trope, implementing it into a relationship with a "fake girl" in a world where everything's made of petroleum products.
- Fading into the Next Song: The outro of "Planet Telex" segues seamlessly into the intro of "The Bends".
- Franchise Codifier: After the huge Early-Installment Weirdness of Drill and Pablo Honey, The Bends and especially "Fake Plastic Trees" were this for the band as a whole. The themes of decay, alienation, and pollution, the falsetto vocals, the orchestra-influenced instrumentation, the dour tone, and the accompanying Surreal Music Video would all become part of the band's Signature Style in the years to come. Likewise, the album was the first the band worked on with Nigel Godrich and Stanley Donwood, both major contributors to their musical and visual aesthetic.
- Gambit Pileup: The US video for "High and Dry" uses this as its driving plot device, revolving around a band of thieves and their unspecified enemies conspiring against one another at the same time in a diner, with the implication being that everyone in the video is in on someone's plot.
- Growing Up Sucks: The general theme of "Bones", with the narrator noting how he "used to fly like Peter Pan" in his youth, but is now left near-immobilized by arthritis in his old age.
- Hope Spot: "(Nice Dream)" is the only relative area of a lack of angst-fueled sadness on this album, but even then it's the narrator retreating into an oasis of happiness that's only accessible in their mind.
- In Medias Res:
- "Black Star" starts this way, fading in mid-guitar solo and opening with lyrics describing the middle of the narrator's day.
- The US video for "High and Dry" starts in the middle of a convoluted series of overlapping conspiracies, with the root cause of them all (a pair of thieves stealing money from an ambiguously notable old man) only being revealed partway through via flashbacks.
- In the Style of: "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" was written as a homage to R.E.M., of whom the members of Radiohead were fans. Radiohead would end up accompanying R.E.M. as a supporting act during the latter's 1995 tour for Monster, the production process for this album would directly inspire that of R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe's advice to Thom Yorke for coping with the stress of touring would influence both Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely" and R.E.M.'s "Disappear".
- Kirk's Rock: The UK video for "High And Dry" features the band performing in front of the Vazquez Rocks.
- Mood Whiplash: Occurs within "My Iron Lung" between the quietly grim verses and distorted choruses.
- Mundane Made Awesome: "Fake Plastic Trees", possibly the most angsty song about artificial trees— which are only mentioned incidentally.
- New Sound Album: Compared to the straight grunge of the Drill EP and Pablo Honey, The Bends sees the introduction of a more atmospheric Alternative Rock sound that melds together elements of Post-Grunge and Britpop, allowing the album to sound in-tune with the zeitgeist while avoiding the derivative nature of the band's previous work. The band even started exploring electronic effects on songs like the opener "Planet Telex" and "Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was", which would become far more prominent on later releases.
- Non-Appearing Title: "Planet Telex"
- Obligatory Bondage Song: A case could be made for the first verse of "Sulk".
- One-Word Title: "Bones", "Just" and "Sulk".
- Performance Video:
- The UK video for "High and Dry" features the band performing in the desert, with fake rain coming in partway through.
- Fitting its nature as a self-deprecating pseudo-sequel to "Creep", the music video for "My Iron Lung" similarly depicts the band performing in concert.
- Piss-Take Rap: "The Bends" has a post-chorus section that has Thom doing a bit of this. It was intended as a joke, but it was written too well for anyone to notice. Thom would later make a more serious attempt at rap on "A Wolf at the Door" nearly a decade later.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: "Sulk" was originally written as a response to the Hungerford Massacre, a mass shooting that occurred in England just two years after Radiohead's formation as On a Friday. However, because Kurt Cobain committed suicide by shotgun during The Bends' production, the lyrics were rewritten to remove any overt references to the massacre, particularly with the closing line's first half being changed from "just shoot your gun" to "just like your dad," so that audiences didn't mistake the song as being about Cobain.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: "Just" takes the form of an extended one towards an unknown subject, lambasting their toxicity, leeching, and shallow pleas for sympathy while rebuking their constant playing of the Never My Fault card.
- Rhyming Title: "High and Dry".
- Self-Deprecation: "My Iron Lung" is typically thought to be the band expressing their Creator Backlash towards "Creep" both in-universe and in real-life, with lines such as "this is our new song, just like the last one: a total waste of time" reflecting the band's disdain towards the song's popularity eclipsing everything else about them.
- Shout-Out:
- "Bones" namedrops Peter Pan.
- The ascending main riff in "Just" pays homage to that of "Shot By Both Sides" by Magazine; John Leckie, who produced this album, had previously produced the Magazine song's parent album, 1978's Real Life.
- A shot early in the video for "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" mimics the infamous photo of Evelyn McHale's 1947 suicide, tying in with the music video's intro of Thom throwing himself off the back of a caravan.
- Stop and Go: There's a pause in the midst of the guitar solo in "Just".
- Surreal Music Video: "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Street Spirit". The former depicts a series of odd goings-on in a creepily sterile-looking supermarket, while the latter, directed by Jonathan Glazer, showcases the band acting out a series of abstract death-related vignettes in the desert.
- Surprisingly Gentle Song: The album is mostly heavy Alternative Rock bangers, but also has the ballads "High and Dry," "Fake Plastic Trees," "Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was," and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)."
- Title Track: The second track off of this album.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: "Sulk" ascends from G to A for its guitar solo and final chorus.
- Unnaturally Blue Lighting: The supermarket in the "Fake Plastic Trees" is washed in very cold fluorescent lighting that adds a noticeably blue tint to much of the scenery and patrons, creating an eerie atmosphere that bounces off the surreal imagery and bleak lyrics.
- Word Salad Lyrics: Shades of it are present throughout the album, owing to it taking a more abstract direction overall compared to Radiohead's previous efforts, but it's most present in the chorus for "My Iron Lung":"The headshrinkers
They want everything
My uncle Bill
My Belisha beacon"
"Immerse your soul in love."
