fitter happier more productive
comfortable not drinking too much
regular exercise at the gym 3 days a
week getting on better with your
associate employee contemporaries at
ease eating well I honestly never
thought I'd be making a musical analysis
video of a song like this fitter happier
off of OK Computer by radio head I'm
pretty sure I skipped this track almost
every time I listen to the album and
because of that I didn't even know that
there was music underneath the
monotonous robotic voice telling me what
I needed to do to improve my life but
now I have something else to listen to
and I wanted to read a few quotes from
the guys the others were downstairs
rocking and I crept upstairs and did
this in 10 minutes I was feeling
incredible hysteria and panic and it was
so liberating to give the lyrics to This
neutral sounding computer I had about 3
months where I couldn't write anything
but I constantly had lists then I
realized that it was the only way I was
going to say what I needed to say but me
I listen to the piano bit Tom basically
had this checklist like a '90s checklist
if you like and he had written it out
there's a bit of him playing piano which
was in the rehearsal room he was very
drunk one night which you can tell by
the sloppy playing on it and he just
played at this melody and stuff he was
very anxious that it wasn't him saying
the lyrics this voice is neutral by the
computer saying it it doesn't become a
bit of pretentious artwin it's something
neutral in the way that the computer
stumbles over words and doesn't get the
pronunciation or the inflections right
so I'm going to focus on the piano and
the strings now and at first I was
really trying to figure this out
thinking I can't get this timing right
it's so strange I'm like well it's radio
head um and aside from it being played
maybe a little bit Loosely it's actually
in six and what that means is You Can
Count Six Beats
before the idea repeats so I would say
this is in 64 if you want to get
technical the kind of Haunting almost a
little creepy very depressing sounding
piano Melody uh very minor so we'll get
into that with the kind of neutral
computer voice is is a strange
combination so anyway I'm curious to
hear what you think about this song um
if it's if you love it think it's
brilliant or if it was a skipper for you
if you think I'm reading too much into
it probably am all right so let's check
out the piano so the first kind of
figure is this sort of stuck
sounding almost frian which is a very
dark sounding scale kind of melodic
figure it
[Music]
goes okay that's the main
one so has this really tight half step
which makes things feel creepy and
haunting and dramatic
itic then you have this big reach up
when you get to the B flat it kind of
feels like a sense of resolution a
little
bit if I played this enough I would
decide that it was in B flat minor and I
put a B flat underneath it to kind of
establish the key
Center then it
goes
down to this F that all fits in
perfectly but if you listen closely the
base uh the left hand doesn't come in
right away when it does it hits a
c so it
[Music]
[Laughter]
[Music]
goes
sorry
and there's this so there just this
weird persistent C which is just not
what I was expecting and it creates
dissonance um and it makes this whole
melodic figure sound a lot more Sinister
than it does in the context of just
being in
minor so this is creating some kind of I
think emotional tension you know and
then there's like this really loud
like well I'll just play and then
there's like a key
change then it kind of keeps some of the
same notes like the top notes say the
same but the bottom notes
change and the Baseline um starts to
paint a different picture so the bottom
notes instead of doing c and d flat now
become D and E
[Music]
flat it's interesting hearing them back
to back
right
that second one almost sounds like the
Happy version of this
[Music]
one but it's not actually happy because
underneath it is a g the G makes this
melody actually sound more minor it's
all about
relationships minor minor
[Music]
third
again
now instead of going all the way up to
the C it goes down to B flat and then
goes down to its adjacent lower note so
second time it's
D when that happens it implies a chord
change and the base goes down to F sharp
oh I just realized that my software is
calling it a a g Flack well that's
awkward and that's wrong anytime you see
a g flat here you're going to replace it
with an
FP most people probably don't care about
that kind of thing this is called
enharmonics and it's about properly
spelling chords but if you are someone
who cares about that I do apologize for
offending your senses I'm going to play
it up on octave I think you'll be able
to hear a little bit better
[Music]
so
this implies a chord
progression uh it could be G minor
to D major 7 or it could be G minor to
an fshp diminished
um which sounds a lot more fragile
doesn't have any strength behind it uh
so that kind of that withering feeling I
kind of like that interpretation best so
so
um cuz then the next part it sort of
follows the
pattern so we had
this and
then very classical kind of repetition
of the motif through chords and then it
sort of wraps up the phrase like
[Music]
um so there's little like also very
classical or sometimes it goes
[Music]
um there's a lot of
uh yeah it does kind of sound like that
chord doesn't it uh F sharp dominant
seventh
[Music]
chord at one point we go back to the be
beginning of chord with this
one and the way they get back into it is
very very uh dark sounding I think so we
have
[Music]
um there we
go and the song kind of ends there so it
does migrate back even drunk Tom knew
what he was doing the strings come in
and they also Shore up those chords that
I was talking about so you can kind of
hear the um G minor and then maybe this
chord or this chord you'll notice that
this doesn't really have a song
structure right it's more of a theme
that gets sort of repeated and uh sort
of
meanders what is my cat doing the last
thing I'll say is that this core
progression implies the harmonic minor
scale which radio head is definitely
known to gravitate towards very
naturally and many many many other bands
from many many many
genres uh but other radio head songs
that use this scale would
be um I will at spinning spinning plates
uh jigsaw falling into
place uh exit music for a film the verse
and it's because it really is good it
really works it has this very satisfying
Cadence which is when
you got a couple chords and they sort of
complete an idea and you feel like you
get to a place of completion and rest
and you're like yeah that was satisfying
so for example this sound
um that's the Cadence of harmonic minor
this chord being major it's the fifth
chord in the scale and then it resolves
the tension resolves back to the home
chord
you can like hear almost every classical
song that's in a minor key um resonating
in your ears right now right harmonic
minor can embody a lot of different I
think feelings and Vibes but one thing
it does very well is it does sound often
kind of powerful and also maybe a little
just a little bit evil just a little bit
maybe not evil I don't want to use that
word so loosely I know it has different
meanings for different people um I guess
like The Imperial March from Star Wars
is is in harmonic Min
[Music]
the right and uh in that case it really
does sound uh quite evil this doesn't
sound evil but it does have a little bit
of that like uh creepy and dramatic
sound to it just to put this into
context and then we'll wrap up is if
this were just written in regular minor
this song would sound like this or this
part of
[Music]
[Laughter]
it now it just sounds really
[Music]
sad right harmonic
minor
[Music]
just add that little twist and that
concludes my analysis of fitter happier
now I'm going to go take some of that
advice right now and get some sleep I
hope you will too don't forget to
hydrate special thanks to my patrons for
supporting me if you want to become a a
supporter Patron be a part of listening
parties and educational content and just
fun what have yous I hope you will
consider checking it out what's the next
track I actually forgot I feel like it's
a really really good one is it lucky oh
it's a leering now this one's a little
controversial
because well you'll just have to wait
you jump forwards and
something backwards and somewhere we
will meet needs more cowbell until next
time ow