Paranoid Android - Packaging

Packaging

Stanley Donwood worked with Yorke to design the artwork for most of the "Paranoid Android" releases, although both the images and design were ultimately credited to "dumb computers". The cover illustration accompanying the single depicts a hand-drawn dome contains the phrase "God loves his children, yeah!", the last line of the song, written above on the uppermost plane. Images from the OK Computer artwork reappear, including a pig and two human figures shaking hands. Writer Tim Footman suggested that these images are borrowed from Pink Floyd, respectively corresponding to the Pink Floyd pigs and Wish You Were Here cover. The cover of the CD2 single is tinted differently from the CD1 single. The UK vinyl release did not include the dome artwork found on the CD singles, but feature images taken from the OK Computer release across the top banner area.

The two versions of the single have different messages on the reverse. Both the CD1 and Japanese releases state:

To kill a demon made of wet sawdust. This sort of demon is almost impossible to kill the only way to do it is to cover its face with wet bread and karate chop its head off otherwise you are in trouble and so is the neighbourhood. Wet sawdust demons like to terrorise. N.B. pressing its face into wet bread that is on the ground works best though you can get a result just by throwing the bread at its face.

Written on the back of the CD2 single is:

A cathedral of white in a suburban shanty town two up two down houses with just the asbestos and the skeletons left.

Each release of "Paranoid Android" included one or more B-sides. "Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)", included on the CD1, 7-inch vinyl, and Japanese releases of the single, were a multi-section piece formatted much like "Paranoid Android" itself. The first part of the song consists of Yorke's vocals over acoustic guitar; the second part contains distorted guitar and organ and uses complex time signature changes. "Pearly*", featured on the CD1 and Japanese releases of the single, was described by Yorke as a "dirty song for people who use sex for dirty things". "A Reminder", which appears on the CD2 release, features fuzzed guitar, thumping drums, and electric piano. According to Yorke, this song was inspired by "this idea of someone writing a song, sending it to someone, and saying: 'If I ever lose it, you just pick up the phone and play this song back to remind me.'" "Melatonin", also on the CD2 release, is a synthesiser-based song with lyrics similar to that of a lullaby, but with an undercurrent of menace in lines like "Death to all who stand in your way". The OK Computer track "Let Down" is also included on the Japanese single.