Release and Reception
Each time I'd hear it, I'd keep thinking about people doing intricate jobs in factories – working on industrial lathes – getting injured from the shock of being exposed to it.
—Thom Yorke
While Colin Greenwood said the song was "hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit shifter can have been expecting," Capitol supported the band's choice for the song as a lead single. Radiohead premiered "Paranoid Android" on the BBC Radio 1 programme The Evening Session in April 1997, nearly a month before its release as a single. Melody Maker revealed that a Radio 1 producer had to "have a bit of a lie down" after first hearing the song. It was released as a single on 26 May 1997, chosen by the band to prepare listeners for the musical direction of its parent album. Despite an initial lack of radio play, "Paranoid Android" charted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, giving Radiohead their highest singles chart position. As the song's popularity grew, Radio 1 played it up to 12 times a day. Yorke described the song's appearance on Radio 1 as one of his proudest moments of the OK Computer era. The track also spent two weeks on Australia's ARIA Singles Chart, where it charted at number 29.
"Paranoid Android" was favourably reviewed by critics. NME chose it as its "Single of the Week", and journalist Simon Williams described how the song "prawls out like a plump man on a small sofa, featuring all manner of crypto-flamenco shufflings, medieval wailings, furiously wrenched guitars and ravishingly over-ambitious ideas. Possesses one of the most unorthodox 'axe' solos known to mankind." The style of the song was compared to that of Queen by Rolling Stone's Mark Kemp, while other critics, including David Browne of Entertainment Weekly, Jon Lusk of the BBC and Simon Williams of NME wrote about its similarity to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". Williams described the song as being "not unlike 'Bohemian Rhapsody' being played backwards by a bunch of Vietnam vets high on Kings Cross-quality crack". Kemp praised the song's mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, which he believed were melded to produce "complex tempo changes, touches of dissonance, ancient choral music and a King Crimson-like melodic structure". Meanwhile Browne wrote of "celestial call-and-response vocal passages, dynamically varied sections, and Thom Yorke's high-voiced bleat". The A.V. Club called the song unforgettable and an "amazing epic single".
Several reviewers noted the record's ambition. Slant Magazine described the song's lyrics as a "multipart anti-yuppie anthem whose ambition is anything but ugly", and Andy Gill wrote in The Independent that "Paranoid Android" could be the most ambitious single since Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park". Craig McLean of The Sydney Morning Herald described "Paranoid Android" as "a titanic guitar opera in three movements and 6 minutes". PopMatters' Evan Sawdey called the song OK Computer's "sweeping, multi-tiered centerpiece", Peter and Jonathan Buckley wrote in The Rough Guide to Rock that it was the album's "breathtaking high point". Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine called "Paranoid Android" "complex, multi-segmented ... tight, melodic, and muscular", and said it displayed Radiohead at their most adventurous. Browne admitted that, partially because of "Paranoid Android", OK Computer was significantly more expansive than The Bends. Rolling Stone placed the song at number 256 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, and Pitchfork Media included the song at number 4 on their Top 200 Tracks of the 90s.
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Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
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