Watching The Music
By Lisa Hood-Anklewicz

Video: “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”
Artist: Radiohead
Album: The Bends
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Released: 1995

Available on 7 Television Commercials from EMI.


Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is a song that leaves the impression of a feeling more than a meaning.  The lyrics read as very bleak, but somehow hopeful, like life on its last breath, fighting for survival because it knows there is something more, something better out there.  However, the presentation of the music is quite subtle.  The quiet, almost indiscernible vocals seem to be a background to the slow melodic rocking of the guitar.  The song sounds like a dream or a lullaby, and the visuals chosen to reflect the piece are much the same.

The core inspiration for the “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” video was the concept of stream of consciousness.  When director Jonathan Glazer came on board for the project, he brought a number of references to early twentieth century surrealism with him.  The lyrics themselves seem to be written in a stream of consciousness, and it seems only appropriate that the video follow suit. 

Filmed in a desert locale, the video’s dream state was set in black and white, with a fairly basic, yet effective, collection of parked traveling caravans.  Many of the video’s images and events seem random and relatively unconnected and the visual references to surrealism pull this consciousness and dream state all together. 

In order to make the visual ideas work on film, Glazer made use of a Photosonic ultra slow motion camera, which has the ability to capture thousands of frames of film per second, the type of cameras which have the ability to catch the trajectory of a rocket or a bullet on film.  This simple piece of technology gives the video the crowing touch required to complete its dream state, as the camera allows for a number of shots to have multiple speeds occurring on screen together.

As the video begins, there is a brief moment before the music where the sounds of a brewing storm can be heard, which further darkens the mood.  We immediately see singer Thom Yorke glancing over his shoulder, and as the first chords of the song are struck, the camera pulls out to show Thom falling backwards off the top of a caravan towards the ground in slow motion, falling into the song and into the dream state.  When the camera cuts, Thom is laying on top of a car, as though he has crashed onto it from his fall, despite the fact that it was not in the previous shot of him falling.  The idea is that though it doesn’t make logical sense to the conscious mind, to a dreaming mind it can go unquestioned.

It is interesting that the video begins with a fall, since falling is a common dream that many people have, and a type of dream that has been analyzed in many ways.  Most relate a dream fall to a sense of something wrong, or fear, and this is very relevant to the lyrical context of “Street Spirit (Fade Out).”  “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”. 

As it seems that Thom is falling into the song and video, incidentally enough, at the end of the video, the final shot is of Thom jumping back into the air and hovering above the ground.  Visually, the imagery ties the video’s beginning and end together, however, interpretively, the jump at the end is almost as though Thom is trying to escape the dream.

Thom appears through most of the video, often in close up, singing the song.  But there is a dark and creepy effect to these shots.  More often than not, one close-up shot of Thom is overlaid with another close-up shot of Thom.  Each has been filmed with a swaying light effect, which keeps the light focus ever changing from one side of his face to the other.  When two such shots overlay each other, it comes across as though the light is actually moving over a mutated image of Thom, with two halves of his face from two different shots merging in a single image.

The dream and surrealist elements that sit at the core of the video appear in two ways.  One is the random introduction of visual ideas and elements, and the other is the use of the Photosonic slow motion technology, which manipulates the entire video.  As it is with many dreams, random elements often appear without purpose or explanation.  In “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” these elements appear in the form of giant mosquitoes, a young boy, a dog, a horse, three dancing women and a middle-aged man.

The dancing women make the most appearances outside of the band.  Sometimes they are all together and sometimes there is just one alone.  In each case, they are making numerous jumps and leaps through the air across the screen.  These jumps are always subjected to the slow motion effect that is rampant throughout the video; however, it is the timing of their appearance that is interesting.  The women tend to appear during the “fade out” lyric portions of the song.  They never interact with the band, but rather this timing seems to have them interacting with the song.  Their all-black dress and the grace of their movements match the tone of the song and the mood of the video.  Their movements also add to the lullaby quality that the guitar has in the song.

The band themselves tend to have very little interaction with the random dream elements of the video.  There is one shot looking down on Thom as he watches one of the giant mosquitoes approach him and another when one of the mosquitoes flies out from under his shirt.  Thom and the young boy also appear in a scene together, but do not seem to interact.  Thom simply runs past the boy in one direction, and as he passes, the boy runs in the opposite direction, neither acknowledging each other.

The most interesting random element interaction is when Thom encounters the middle-aged man.  We are introduced to the man in a close up profile shot, with blood pouring down his face.  Shortly after, we see the man with a bucket of what can only be presumed to be blood on the left side of the screen and Thom standing on the right.  At first they are both in “real time” and then the man attacks Thom by throwing the contents of the bucket at Thom.  At this point, the man, the bucket and its contents are all subjected to slow motion, while Thom, still in real time, is able to step out of harms way.

These multilayered, multi-speed shots occur throughout the video, keeping with the random feeling and adding to the dark tone and mood that is set.  The shots of the full band are often of this type.  Thom is usually in the foreground, and the rest of the band is gathered together around a single caravan.  Either Thom will stay in real time and the rest of the band will fall into slow motion or vise versa.  One incident has Thom in real time, singing, and a band member jumping from the caravan door in slow motion.  Another has Thom in slow motion, singing as though in a wind tunnel, while the rest of the band is unaffected by either.

Truly one of Radiohead’s most graceful songs, they came through with a proper video to compliment it. Glazer’s use of layering and multi-speed techniques provides an elegance and beauty to what could otherwise be interpreted as a nightmarish video.  “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is often mentioned as a fan favorite among Radiohead’s videos, and there is no doubt as to why.