I seem to remember many years ago reading something on the internet about someone having a similar take of the album. Even so, I’ve always felt that Kid A was intended to be a journey through someones life.
As is true with the album, a new life will begin once there is Everything in Its Right Place. This song takes us through the toddler phase of life, with lines such as “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon” referring to teething on any object within reach. This continues to the child beginning to learn things, as is shown by the lyrics “There are two colours in my head / What is that you tried to say?” We continue on through the stages of growth, as we’re led to his childhood.
The appropriate title track, Kid A, is next as we get a glimpse into this kid’s life. Opening with what sounds to me like a child’s mobile, hanging above a crib and playing calm music. Lyrically, this song shows us childhood through what seems to be a nightmare: “We got heads on sticks / You got ventriloquists” and “Standing in the shadows at the end of my bed” give off an eerie vibe that can only be matched by a child’s imagination running wild in the late hours of the night. The kid falls asleep as the song fades out, and we are brought to a day at school.
The National Anthem is typically sung at the beginning of school days, so we are led to school with this child. Lyrically this song is a bit of a stretch for my analysis, but with some over-analysis, I interpret “Everyone is so near” to mean overcrowded classrooms and “It’s holding on” to illustrate what the child is learning, and what is sticking in his memory for future use. As we continue through school, the child begins to grow into a teenager, and everything begins to change, specifically his emotions and views on the world.
As may have been true with you, one of the only things teenagers care about is being different and throwing out the social norms. Some kids even just want to know How to Disappear Completely. In my eyes, this can be interpreted in two different ways: depression or drugs. From a depression point of view, the kid might be suicidal or just have been ostracized from his friends. Controversially, the kid may have turned to drugs to escape from reality and substitute it with “Strobe lights and blown speakers/ Fireworks and hurricanes.” Either way, the kid wants to escape.
We continue on to the instrumental, Treefingers, which symbolizes the transition from a child to an adult. The calm, peaceful music taking you out of the childishness of the public school system, and throwing your gently into the harsh chaos of adulthood. A change of pace brings about Optimistic, as things seem to be “better” in life. Better in this case can be interpreted in sincere or sarcastic manners, as the lyrics seem to hint that, although titled so, the song isn’t really that optimistic. Sure lines like “If you try the best you can / The best you can is good enough” make this song seem optimistic, taking a look at the rest of the song reveals its true pessimistic values: “The big fish eat the little ones / Not my problem give me some”
After being so “optimistic” about the future and life in general, a midlife crisis can leave anybody In Limbo. In my eyes, the lyrics “Another message I can't read”, “I’m lost at sea / Don’t bother me”, and “You're living in a fantasy world” cast the image that this person has had something tragic happen to them and is making them believe that not all is well in the world, and success is too hard an option to achieve.
Unless nuclear war is the best metaphor for growing old and retiring, Idioteque is the only song that doesn’t fit in perfectly with this analogy. The only possibility I can come up with is that war has broken out and this person we’re following either is directly in danger from the enemy, or has to go and fight for their country. Thinking metaphorically the song makes more sense; life is a battlefield, and you’ve got to fight everyone else for success in all aspects of it.
Continuing on, Morning Bell is the decline of life in this person, and they’re either being put in a retirement home, or have developed a form of dementia: Alzheimer's, for example. Lyrics like “Where'd you park the car?”, “Cut the kids in half”, and “The lights are on but nobody's home” add to the dementia argument, and the person is begging for the end to be coming soon. They ask “Release me”, and we hear the solemn tune of Motion Picture Soundtrack signal the end; a funeral, a final moment of silence in the song signaling the end of what was once something beautiful. The song closes with the cryptic ominous line “I will see you in the next life“.
