Representation of Radiohead - Burn the Witch

Radiohead are a classic of the alternative genre and follow each convention in different albums, such as grunge in Pablo Honey and Art Rock in The Bends. A Moon Shaped Pool is their latest LP and follow songwriters Thom Yorke's perspective on life and society in the modern era. Burn the Witch is the first single and song on the album and represents this. In this essay I will analyse both the music and the music video to show the beauty and terror of the song and the video and how, although drastically separate, how they both follow the same meaning.

First of all, an analysis of the music of Burn the Witch, the chords chosen and the instruments used, and to what effect these certain things have on the audience. Now to begin heavier, the key chosen for the songs. Looking at it, it would seem quite simple, F Sharp Major is used. However, the chords used do not follow F Sharp Major, and instead follows the chords of F Sharp Minor but all the chords are major. This technique is hard to explain but easy to explain the effects it creates. As a listener to the song, you have a sense of creepy happiness, out of place happiness. The instrumentation changes the feeling of the song, and emphasizes this weird choice of musical theory, as the full orchestra sounds more horror than the happy major sound of the chords. This, as an audience, enhances the effect of the songs choices. However, as a critic, I prefer the live version, as the light instrumentation creates a sense of subdued foreboding I haven't seen a band do ever. The lyrics of Burn the Witch perfectly fit the instrumentation, showing and creating parallels of a hidden happiness which seems odd and out of place. In my opinion, the song shows the alienation of British culture and the fear of standing up to injustice seen in our modern society. 

It is therefore interesting that the music video creates a clear link between the song and The Wicker Man, a film entailing the demise of a man who was alienated by a community of crazed fanatics. However, this music video isn't all connected by theme. A huge juxtaposition of the music video is the use of animation seen in the video and the content this music video explore, such as religion, alienation, surveillance and hatred, as the video shows graphic material from the Bible and satanism with a bright, childlike animation style. This form of animation actually refers to the Trumptonshire Trilogy, a childhood series at the time of Radiohead's singer Thom Yorke. This could be to market to a certain audience for Radiohead. However, I see it more as an oxymoronic style of animation the songs content and context that really shows Radioheads style of plain old bizarre. The colours used with the disturbing imagery also show a drastic juxtaposition in the video, with the bright colours and hue tinted filter on the video leaving a sense of oddness and leaves an uncomfortableness much like the music. This video, and its representation, appeals to the interesting demographic of Radiohead, which enjoy a weird and bizarre adventure that is psychedelic in nature, seen in other videos like Paranoid Android. The fact that you can tell it's Radiohead without having Radiohead in it says something about the music and the video that accompanies.

Overall, the music and the accompanying video represent the new type of music Radiohead are trying, depressing ambient art rock. This is done successfully throughout the whole song and leaves the audience with a sense of learning something that they lacked before.