Each day in November, I’m revisiting a song from the 90’s — a decade that was a sorta coming of age for me. In that span, I experienced high school, college and my time as a young single guy in New York City. It was a decade of ups and downs, and the music never stopped playing during that span. It was always there with me. #30DaysOf90sSongs
Fans and critics often refer to Kid A as being the most important Radiohead record. I think I’ve even heard some Beach Boys-like references to it, like it’s the Pet Sounds of the 90s or something like that. That may be true, but OK Computer will forever be the album that resonates with me the most. It’s the record that eases my mind and perks up my ears every time. I thought the songs were somehow totally unexpected, yet totally what I yearned to hear in this almost miraculous kind of way. There’s not a single pedestrian track on the LP, but one song has always stood above the rest for me: “Let Down”.
The thing that it did, that most songs don’t do, is bridge this gap between raw human experience and the celestial. It feels like it’s soaring somewhere in the stratosphere musically, but hitting too close to home and staying firmly grounded lyrically. Its chord progressions are unpredictable, creating an atmosphere to wallow in. While it’s certainly not a shoegaze anthem, “Let Down” did create a world for us to get lost in — the only difference with the aforementioned genre being that the sounds were incredibly precise and clear rather bleeding endlessly into each other.
“Crushed like a bug in the ground. Let down and hanging around.”