Rabbit in Your Headlights
UNKLE featuring Thom Yorke, the first single from Psyence Fiction, released October 12, 1998.
Thom Yorke, from Psyence Fiction (UNKLE) (1998)
Yorke and Josh Davis, DJ Shadow, wrote it and Unkle produced; the single runs 6:18 and the album track 6:20. Yorke sang it in California in July 1997 while Radiohead were touring OK Computer. UNKLE had hoped for a Radiohead collaboration, but James Lavelle said Yorke wanted something very different. NME reported on July 19, 1997 that he would record with DJ Shadow when Radiohead played San Francisco, with Yorke saying there was absolutely no planning involved. It contains dialogue from the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder.
Stereogum called it a haunting deconstructed piano ballad with a smoky jazz horror show feel, and NME called it a mixture of Yorke's acidic lyrics and early vocal style with Davis's skilled use of a ton of samples. The video, directed by Jonathan Glazer in 1998, stars Denis Lavant as a man in a parka walking through a car tunnel and being struck by cars; Pitchfork ranked it 8th among its top 50 videos of the 1990s and Rolling Stone 28th among the greatest of all time in 2021. We found no Yorke comment on the lyric.
Sources
- Rabbit in Your Headlights, Wikipedia
- Psyence Fiction, Wikipedia
- Thom Yorke, Wikipedia