Number One

Radiohead – “Fake Plastic Trees”

"she looks like the rel thing
she tastes like the real thing
my fake plastic love"

Devastatingly brilliant on all fronts, thoughtful lyrics, haunting vocal and stunning musically. As hard (dam near impossible) as it is to compile this list, this is one of the first songs I put on it. It also reflects relationships that I have had and has left me in tears many times. It weaves beautifully from poetic ambiguity to the point. The music however simple it may appear to be is deep, hypnotic and subtly complex, it rises and falls like the sea during an autumn storm.


Her green plastic watering can
For her fake Chinese rubber plant
In fake plastic earth.
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plants
Just to get rid of itself.
And it wears her out, it wears her out
It wears her out, it wears her out.

She lives with a broken man
A cracked polystyrene man
Who just crumbles and burns.
He used to do surgery
For girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins.
And it wears him out, it wears him out
It wears him out, it wears him out.

She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love.

But I cant help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run
And it wears me out, it wears me out
It wears me out, it wears me out.

And if I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted,
All the time, all the time.

From Wikipedia


Single by Radioheadfrom the album The Bends
Released
March 15, 1995
Format
CD and 2 cassettes
Recorded
?
Genre
Alternative rock
Length
4:52
Label
ParlophoneEMI
Producer
John Leckie
"Fake Plastic Trees" is a song by Radiohead, from their second album The Bends. It was also the third single to be released from that album.
"Fake Plastic Trees" is often seen as a turning point in the band's early career, along with "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" from the same album. "Fake Plastic Trees" also placed a spot at #376 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time.
The song seems to have been written about the world of mass marketing and mass consumption.[1] According to singer Thom Yorke, it is about Canary Wharf in London.
The band had just been to see Jeff Buckley play a set in Highbury, and when they got back into the studio, Thom Yorke recorded the vocals in two takes and broke down in tears after doing so.
One source of frustration for the band at the time was their US record label, Capitol, who wanted a strong track for American radio. Surprised that the slow paced "Fake Plastic Trees" was seen as a potential single to follow up "Creep", Yorke ultimately realized the label had remixed the track without his approval: "Last night I was called by the American record company insisting, well almost insisting, that we used a Bob Clearmountain mix of it. I said 'No way'. All the ghost-like keyboards sounds and weird strings were completely gutted out of his mix, like he'd gone in with a razor blade and chopped it all up. It was horrible."In the United States, "Fake Plastic Trees" was ultimately released as the first single from The Bends, but in the original mix found on the album. It was edited only slightly for time