Paranoid Android

The five members wrote it, and it is the lead single from OK Computer, which came out on May 21, 1997. Nigel Godrich produced with Radiohead at St Catherine's Court near Bath, a 15th-century mansion, and the album overall was made from July 1996 to March 6, 1997. Yorke sang and shouted gibberish into a Dictaphone for the ending; Jonny Greenwood wrote the third section and played the distorted guitar solo with a Mutronics Mutator tone. Yorke based the lyrics on an unsettling night at a Los Angeles bar, and took the title from Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which he called a joke.

The single came out on UK CD1 CDODATAS 01, CD2 CDNODATA 01 and 7-inch NODATA 01, with B-sides "Polyethylene (Parts 1 and 2)", "Pearly*", "A Reminder" and "Melatonin". It reached 3 in the UK, then the band's highest, 2 in Scotland and 4 in Ireland, and is Gold in the UK, Canada and New Zealand. The video was directed by the Swedish animator Magnus Carlsson, creator of Robin, with a band cameo at a bar; MTV showed an edit with bare breasts of mermaids removed. Covers include Brad Mehldau, Easy Star All-Stars, Sia, The Section and Weezer live. We found no setlist count.