Video hit Radiohead

Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out)

Street Spirit (Fade Out) (commonly referred to as "Street Spirit") is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their second studio album The Bends, which was released in 1995.

Noted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Thom Yorke as "one of the band's saddest songs" and describing it as "the dark tunnel without the light at the end", "Street Spirit" was released as the band's ninth single and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, the highest chart position the band achieved until "Paranoid Android" from OK Computer, which reached number three in 1997.

Yorke has suggested that the song was inspired by the 1991 novel The Famished Road, written by Ben Okri, and that its music was inspired by R.E.M.

The track is built around a soft melody in A minor with an arpeggio (broken chord) guitar part. A previous, working title for the song was "Three Headed Street Spirit", as seen in interviews with Thom Yorke preceding the release of The Bends.

The single is also acclaimed for the quality of its B-sides; for example, "Talk Show Host" rose to prominence after it was remixed by Nellee Hooper for the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, since becoming a regular at Radiohead concerts.

In 2008, the song was featured on Radiohead: The Best Of, a compilation album.

Music video

The black-and-white music video for "Street Spirit" was filmed during two nights in a desert just outside Los Angeles.

It premiered in February 1996 and was directed by Jonathan Glazer, who said, "That was definitely a turning point in my own work. I knew when I finished that, because they found their own voices as an artist, at that point, I felt like I got close to whatever mine was, and I felt confident that I could do things that emoted, that had some kind of poetic as well as prosaic value. That for me was a key moment."

Glazer would later direct the video for "Karma Police".

The lyrics:

Rows of houses, all bearing down on me

I can feel their blue hands touching me

All these things into position

All these things we'll one day swallow whole

And fade out again and fade out

This machine will, will not communicate

These thoughts and the strain I am under

Be a world child, form a circle

Before we all go under

And fade out again and fade out again

Cracked eggs, dead birds

Scream as they fight for life

I can feel death, can see its beady eyes

All these things into position

All these things we'll one day swallow whole

And fade out again and fade out again

Immerse your soul in love

IMMERSE YOUR SOUL IN LOVE