Pop Song 403 of 500 'Pyramid Song' Radiohead 2001

Pop Song 403 of 500 'Pyramid Song' Radiohead 2001

Pyramid Song" was inspired by the song "Freedom" by the jazz musician Charles Mingus. The lyrics were inspired by an exhibition of ancient Egyptian underworld art Yorke attended while Radiohead were recording in Copenhagen, and ideas of cyclical time found in Buddhism and discussed by Stephen Hawking

NME named "Pyramid Song" their "single of the week", describing it as "malevolent, moving, epic". The Guardian named it "CD of the week", with the critic Alexis Petridis describing it as "a beautiful, intricately wrought mesh of complex time signatures, keening vocals, elegiac strings and subtly disturbing audio effects".

Rolling Stone placed "Pyramid Song" at number 94 on their list of the "100 Best Songs of the Decade", writing that it "might be [Yorke's] most blissful recorded moment". In October 2011, NME named it the 131st-best track of the preceding 15 years, calling it a "ghostly hymn of stunning beauty". Pitchfork named it the decade's 59th-best track, describing it as "an absolutely singular track in a catalog with no shortage of standouts". In 2020, the Guardian named it the fourth-best Radiohead song, writing: "Lyrics alluding to Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, piano seemingly exhumed from ancient civilisation and a newly spiritual Yorke, swimming with 'black-eyed angels' and a shoal of exes towards some nebulous afterlife. Torture for some; otherwise, cult-making.

I jumped in the river and what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
And all the things I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
I jumped into the river
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
And all the things I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt