Pyramid Song
Encyclopedia
"Pyramid Song" is a song by the English
rock band Radiohead
. It was the first single
from their 2001 album Amnesiac
and the first Radiohead single released in over three years, after none were taken from their previous album Kid A
.
"Pyramid Song" was issued in most parts of the world, except the United States
(where "I Might Be Wrong
" was the first, radio-only single). The UK public responded well, and the song peaked at #5; it was also named NME
s single of the week. The song made #21 on the Dutch Top 40. The band performed the song on Top of the Pops
in May 2001. A favourite among fans despite a lack of wide-scale radio play, it continues to be performed at Radiohead's live concerts. The band themselves consider it a high point of their career. According to guitarist Ed O'Brien
, upon hearing an early version of the recording, singer Thom Yorke
declared it "the best thing we've committed to tape, ever." The song ranked #94 on Rolling Stone's 100 best songs of the decade. In October 2011, NME
placed it at number 131 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".
. The song builds to a climax with the introduction of Phil Selway
's jazz-influenced compound rhythm and the siren-like wails of the Ondes Martenot
, an early electronic instrument also played by Jonny. Colin Greenwood
plays upright bass rather than his usual electric; O'Brien adds subtle electric guitar to live versions, playing with lots of delay. The cryptic lyrics and atmosphere of the song are usually considered to be about dying. The song ends with the line "We all went to heaven in a little row boat/ There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt", suggesting this. According to Colin Greenwood, the lyrics of the song were inspired the image of "people being ferried across the river of death"; the song contains references to Dante's imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Yorke said "Pyramid Song" was heavily influenced by the Charles Mingus
song "Freedom," and originally he had even included similar hand-claps. The song was produced by Nigel Godrich
together with Radiohead.
At various times "Pyramid Song" has also been known as "Egyptian Song" and "Nothing to Fear," from a lyric in its chorus. It received its live début in 1999 at the Tibetan Freedom Concert
in Amsterdam
, at which it was performed solo by Yorke on piano. Subsequently the full-band version became a part of Radiohead's anticipated concert tours in 2000, both before and after the release of Kid A. "Pyramid Song" was one of several new songs played live but not included on that album, leading some to criticize the band for leaving off their most melodic new material.
Originally slated for a series of EPs
or singles, "Pyramid Song" and the other unreleased songs (such as "You and Whose Army?" and "Knives Out
") eventually came together as the follow-up Amnesiac, along with other material that had been recorded during the marathon Kid A sessions. "Pyramid Song" was in fact recorded during this time, although not included on Kid A
; for example, its string parts were performed by the Orchestra of St. John's during the same day as those used in Kid A 's "How to Disappear Completely" (as well as Amnesiac 's "Dollars & Cents"). When "Pyramid Song" is performed live, Yorke usually sings along with O'Brien backing with electric guitar the parts assigned to the strings in the studio version.
In recent live performances Jonny has contributed guitar, played with a bow
. The end of "Pyramid Song" is sampled by the band in "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," the following track on Amnesiac.
's Divine Comedy with references to the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, though Yorke has mentioned the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol), the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Hermann Hesse
's Siddhartha as other inspirations. The first two lines bear a resemblance to the beginning of the first verse of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
." The line "and we all went to heaven in a little row boat" is nearly identical to a lyric found in Tom Waits
' 1985 song "Clap Hands", which itself is taken from a 1965 hit by Shirley Ellis, "The Clapping Song
".
, features a combination of computer 3D and hand-drawn animation and was based on a dream that lead singer Thom Yorke
once had. Following on from the more abstract Kid A promotional blips, it was the first video not to feature the band (the animated "Paranoid Android
" clip had briefly included a caricature of each member around a table in a pub).
It tells the story of what may be the only person in his city to survive the massive flooding that has occurred. Alone on the top of what used to be a sky-scraper but is now barely above the surface of the water, he dons a diving suit with an oxygen tether as his only lifeline and dives into the sea where the ruins of the city stand.
The character locates and swims into his house, sits in a chair in what appears to be his living room and then, resigned to his lonely fate, he appears to disconnect the lifeline and it floats back up to the surface.
After this, the camera takes us back above the water, where we see a golden light rise from under the surface and into the sky. We see that light, which appears to represent his soul, join other souls circling each other in the sky. The video ends with each soul blinking out or racing off-screen. Just prior to the end of the video, two souls settle against the clouds and seem to appear as the eyes of a face that has been watching down upon the sea just below.
The video has won several awards, including NME Carling's best video of the year.
's Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s.
The song was ranked #94 on Rolling Stone
s "Top 100 Songs of the Decade"
UK CD2 (CDFHEIT 45102)
UK 12" (12FHEIT 45102)
Europe CD (7243 8 79357 2 3)
Japan CD (TOCP-61053)
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
rock band Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
. It was the first single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
from their 2001 album Amnesiac
Amnesiac
Amnesiac was generally well-received by critics. It was also ranked as one of the best albums of the year by several publications. The Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll ranked it number 6 on their top 10 albums of the year. Alternative Press declared it the #1 album of the year...
and the first Radiohead single released in over three years, after none were taken from their previous album Kid A
Kid A
Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in October 2000 by the Parlophone label. A commercial success worldwide, Kid A went platinum in its first week of release in the United Kingdom. Despite the lack of an official single or music video as publicity, Kid A...
.
"Pyramid Song" was issued in most parts of the world, except the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
(where "I Might Be Wrong
I Might Be Wrong (song)
"I Might Be Wrong" is a song by the English rock group Radiohead from their 2001 album, Amnesiac.-Musical structure:Although the album version is heavily produced by Nigel Godrich and Radiohead, with a more electronic texture, "I Might Be Wrong" is one of the more guitar-oriented songs on Amnesiac....
" was the first, radio-only single). The UK public responded well, and the song peaked at #5; it was also named NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
s single of the week. The song made #21 on the Dutch Top 40. The band performed the song on Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
in May 2001. A favourite among fans despite a lack of wide-scale radio play, it continues to be performed at Radiohead's live concerts. The band themselves consider it a high point of their career. According to guitarist Ed O'Brien
Ed O'Brien
Edward John O'Brien is an English musician, songwriter and guitarist for the rock band Radiohead. He is also responsible for harmony vocals during live concerts and on many tracks from the band's albums...
, upon hearing an early version of the recording, singer Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
declared it "the best thing we've committed to tape, ever." The song ranked #94 on Rolling Stone's 100 best songs of the decade. In October 2011, NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
placed it at number 131 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".
Music and song history
"Pyramid Song" is a piano-driven piece that features string orchestrations by band member Jonny GreenwoodJonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer, best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, but serves mainly as lead guitarist and keyboard player. In addition to guitar and keyboard, he plays viola, harmonica,...
. The song builds to a climax with the introduction of Phil Selway
Phil Selway
Philip James "Phil" "The Graf" Selway is an English musician and songwriter, best known as the drummer of English rock group Radiohead. He also drums and provides backing vocals, along with occasional guitar and lead vocals, for 7 Worlds Collide...
's jazz-influenced compound rhythm and the siren-like wails of the Ondes Martenot
Ondes Martenot
The ondes Martenot , also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales, is an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin...
, an early electronic instrument also played by Jonny. Colin Greenwood
Colin Greenwood
Colin Charles Greenwood , is an English musician and composer, best known as the bassist of the rock band Radiohead. Apart from bass, Colin plays keyboards, synthesizers and works on sampling on the electronic side of Radiohead...
plays upright bass rather than his usual electric; O'Brien adds subtle electric guitar to live versions, playing with lots of delay. The cryptic lyrics and atmosphere of the song are usually considered to be about dying. The song ends with the line "We all went to heaven in a little row boat/ There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt", suggesting this. According to Colin Greenwood, the lyrics of the song were inspired the image of "people being ferried across the river of death"; the song contains references to Dante's imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Yorke said "Pyramid Song" was heavily influenced by the Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
song "Freedom," and originally he had even included similar hand-claps. The song was produced by Nigel Godrich
Nigel Godrich
Nigel Godrich, , is a recording engineer, record producer and musician. He is best known for his work with the English rock band Radiohead and is sometimes referred to as the "sixth member" of the band...
together with Radiohead.
At various times "Pyramid Song" has also been known as "Egyptian Song" and "Nothing to Fear," from a lyric in its chorus. It received its live début in 1999 at the Tibetan Freedom Concert
Tibetan Freedom Concert
Tibetan Freedom Concert is the name given to a series of rock festivals held in North America, Europe and Asia between 1996 and 2001 to support the cause of Tibetan independence. The concerts were organized by the Beastie Boys and the Milarepa Fund...
in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, at which it was performed solo by Yorke on piano. Subsequently the full-band version became a part of Radiohead's anticipated concert tours in 2000, both before and after the release of Kid A. "Pyramid Song" was one of several new songs played live but not included on that album, leading some to criticize the band for leaving off their most melodic new material.
Originally slated for a series of EPs
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
or singles, "Pyramid Song" and the other unreleased songs (such as "You and Whose Army?" and "Knives Out
Knives Out
"Knives Out" is a song by English rock band Radiohead. The composition features electric and acoustic guitars, complemented by singer Thom Yorke's vocals. It appears on Radiohead's 2001 album Amnesiac, recorded during the same sessions as the previous album Kid A...
") eventually came together as the follow-up Amnesiac, along with other material that had been recorded during the marathon Kid A sessions. "Pyramid Song" was in fact recorded during this time, although not included on Kid A
Kid A
Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in October 2000 by the Parlophone label. A commercial success worldwide, Kid A went platinum in its first week of release in the United Kingdom. Despite the lack of an official single or music video as publicity, Kid A...
; for example, its string parts were performed by the Orchestra of St. John's during the same day as those used in Kid A 's "How to Disappear Completely" (as well as Amnesiac 's "Dollars & Cents"). When "Pyramid Song" is performed live, Yorke usually sings along with O'Brien backing with electric guitar the parts assigned to the strings in the studio version.
In recent live performances Jonny has contributed guitar, played with a bow
Bow (music)
In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
. The end of "Pyramid Song" is sampled by the band in "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," the following track on Amnesiac.
Influences on lyrics
The lyrics of "Pyramid Song" references DanteDANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
's Divine Comedy with references to the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, though Yorke has mentioned the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol), the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's Siddhartha as other inspirations. The first two lines bear a resemblance to the beginning of the first verse of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is a historic African-American spiritual. The first recording was in 1909, by the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University....
." The line "and we all went to heaven in a little row boat" is nearly identical to a lyric found in Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
' 1985 song "Clap Hands", which itself is taken from a 1965 hit by Shirley Ellis, "The Clapping Song
The Clapping Song
"The Clapping Song" is an American song, written by Lincoln Chase, originally arranged by Charles Callello and recorded by Shirley Ellis in 1965. The song was released shortly after Ellis had released "The Name Game"...
".
Music video
The video for "Pyramid Song", directed by collective ShynolaShynola
Shynola is the collective name of a group of, then, four visual artistsbased in London who have collaborated on a variety of projects,most notably a number of acclaimed music videos for several pioneering artists....
, features a combination of computer 3D and hand-drawn animation and was based on a dream that lead singer Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
once had. Following on from the more abstract Kid A promotional blips, it was the first video not to feature the band (the animated "Paranoid Android
Paranoid Android
"Paranoid Android" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The lyrics of the darkly humorous song were written primarily by singer Thom Yorke, following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar...
" clip had briefly included a caricature of each member around a table in a pub).
It tells the story of what may be the only person in his city to survive the massive flooding that has occurred. Alone on the top of what used to be a sky-scraper but is now barely above the surface of the water, he dons a diving suit with an oxygen tether as his only lifeline and dives into the sea where the ruins of the city stand.
The character locates and swims into his house, sits in a chair in what appears to be his living room and then, resigned to his lonely fate, he appears to disconnect the lifeline and it floats back up to the surface.
After this, the camera takes us back above the water, where we see a golden light rise from under the surface and into the sky. We see that light, which appears to represent his soul, join other souls circling each other in the sky. The video ends with each soul blinking out or racing off-screen. Just prior to the end of the video, two souls settle against the clouds and seem to appear as the eyes of a face that has been watching down upon the sea just below.
The video has won several awards, including NME Carling's best video of the year.
Charts
| Chart (2001) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Canadian Singles Chart Canadian Singles Chart The Canadian Singles Chart is currently compiled by the U.S.-based music sales tracking company, Nielsen SoundScan . The chart is compiled every Wednesday, and is published by Jam! Canoe on Thursdays.... |
2 |
| Norwegian Singles Chart | 3 |
| UK Singles Chart UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
5 |
| Italian Singles Chart | 6 |
| Finland Singles Chart | 6 |
| Ireland Singles Chart | 10 |
| French Singles Chart | 19 |
| Dutch Singles Chart Mega Single Top 100 The Single Top 100 is a Dutch chart, based on official physical single sales and legal downloads and composed by MegaCharts. It is one of the three official charts, the other two being the Dutch Top 40 and the Mega Top 50. The difference is that these charts also include airplay data.The list is... |
23 |
| Australian Singles Chart | 25 |
| Swedish Singles Chart | 59 |
| German Singles Chart | 98 |
| Swiss Singles Chart | 99 |
Accolades
The song was ranked #59 in Pitchfork MediaPitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
's Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s.
The song was ranked #94 on Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
s "Top 100 Songs of the Decade"
Track listing
UK CD1 (CDSFHEIT 45102)- "Pyramid Song" – 4:51
- "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy" – 3:38
- "Trans-Atlantic Drawl" – 3:02
UK CD2 (CDFHEIT 45102)
- "Pyramid Song" – 4:51
- "Fast-Track" – 3:17
- "Kinetic" – 4:06
UK 12" (12FHEIT 45102)
- "Pyramid Song" – 4:51
- "Fast-Track" – 3:17
- "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy" – 3:38
Europe CD (7243 8 79357 2 3)
- "Pyramid Song" – 4:51
- "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy" – 3:38
- "Trans-Atlantic Drawl" – 3:02
- "Kinetic" – 4:06
Japan CD (TOCP-61053)
- "Pyramid Song" – 4:51
- "Fast-Track" – 3:19
- "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy" – 3:38
- "Trans-Atlantic Drawl" – 3:03
- "Kinetic" – 4:05