i have it all here in red blue green.

I was listening to the new Radiohead and overanalyzing the lyrics like I usually do to songs. The album seems to be digging up the darkness behind love songs. How typically Radiohead to find the light and blot it out in the most painfully beautiful way possible. The following analysis is the product of a 2am listening sesh. I am fairly incoherent right now. Please take that into consideration.

How come I end up where I started?
How come I end up where I went wrong?
Won't take my eyes off the ball again.
First you reel me out and then you cut the string.
You used to be alright
What happened? ...
-15 Step

She stands stark naked and she beckons you to bed.
Don't go. You'll only want to come back again.
So don't get any big ideas.
They're not gonna happen.
You'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking.
And now that you found it, it's gone.
And now that you feel it, you don't.
-Nude

I only stick with you
Because there are no others.
- All I Need (debatably, this could be an ironic statement about soulmates)

But all that really matters is that the album ends with Videotape, in which Thom Yorke declares: "You are my centre when I spin away." He turns it all around, right when we think that idealism is done for. The truth is, I think all of the darkness that he hints at in relationships is there even when someone is your center; these songs are not contradictory but rather continue in the same vein of exploring the polarized dynamics of love. But when you look back at everything through a metaphorical videotape of memories, all of the hurt isn't what matters. It's what anchors you in love that matters, what keeps you with someone despite the arguments and all of the bullshit that one has to learn in order to function normally in a relationship these days. And the Faust references in the album play into this, selling your soul for knowledge only to find out that there is nothing to learn but how wrong you were.

Marlowe's devil states:
"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?"

In the end, Thom Yorke decides that "No matter what happens now, I won't be afraid because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen." Everlasting bliss. An avoidance of the hell that Mephistophales describes, the hell that "reach[es] up to grab" him. Perhaps in death alone or perhaps in taking comfort that you have someone to share your center after all the goodbyes have been said. Or maybe in just admitting that what is perfect is the unknown.