"I can feel death, can see its beady eyes / All these things into position / All these things we'll one day swallow whole"
Written as a collage of images and vignettes to encapsulate a sense of despair, Yorke says, "'Street Spirit' is our purest song, but I didn't write it. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers. It's biological catalysts. Its core is a complete mystery to me. I wouldn't ever try to write something that hopeless." Yorke goes on to describe the song as, "about staring the f***ing devil right in the eyes ... and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he'll get the last laugh." Basically, in the end, "Street Spirit" is about being unable to contain all the hopelessness one senses at trying to envision the totality of death, and the ultimate uselessness of existence. No chance for redemption at the end of life, no fraudulent escape routes, nothing to stop being swallowed into nothingness.
Yorke goes on to say that when he performs the song, he doesn't know, amongst all the cheering faces, that anyone really understands its meaning. He compares the fervent cheers of the crowd to a dog wagging its tail right before being put down. According to Rolling Stone, though, fans voted "Street Spirit" #6 out of all of Radiohead's songs. So, even if people don't precisely get what the song means, it seems they certainly feel it.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB%2Bk2xrb3BfqbWmeceim52dnmK6pq3NoqWgZZ%2BberOtw6KmoZ2RmcBuv9OrnJ6sXai9qr7IrWY%3D