https://americansongwriter.com/radiohead-fake-plastic-trees/
How did Radiohead go from that “Creep” band to the group often hailed as the saviors of rock and roll? If you’re looking for one key song, it just might be “Fake Plastic Trees,” a majestic, yearning ballad found on their second LP, 1995’s The Bends. The song, which was chosen for the first US single, proved that this band were far more than one-hit wonders.
It took a torturous recording session to bring the song to life. As lead singer Thom Yorke told Blender magazine in 2003, “Fake Plastic Trees” was a combination of a “joke that wasn’t really a joke, a very lonely, drunken evening, and, well, a breakdown of sorts.” The recording was at a standstill until Yorke, inspired by seeing Jeff Buckley perform, laid down a stunningly powerful vocal.
“Fake Plastic Trees” is, on its surface, a song about the difficulty of forging an authentic human connection in a world of artifice. In the first two verses, the narrator tells the story of a couple living in stultifying domesticity, the woman surrounded by nothing that is real, the man so frustrated he just “crumbles and burns.”
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Radiohead has become known for the fearless spirit of experimentation, so it’s sometimes easy to forget their ability to craft memorable songs. “Fake Plastic Trees” is a prime example of that talent, a song depicting the dehumanizing effects of modernity even as it tells a very human story of unrequited love.
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