They've had bigger hits. But at the time, it was the biggest song in my world.
Starts right off with all three primary instruments. High hat heavy drum set, light single note runs on the guitar, and a really purposeful bass line. Thom Yorke's voice comes in sounding like all of us thought we felt like back in 1992. The chorus really gets angry. That self directed anger, punctuated by the coughing/yelling/shooting guitar riffs still gets at me. According to the book, and Wikipedia, guitarist Greenwood didn't like the song, and was so angry at it/wanted to screw up the take that he just hit the guitar. It worked. The second guitar just plays the power chord version of the arpeggios that strung the verses along.
The "She's running out..." part post second chorus is technically more chorus in structure, but Yorke's singing makes it different. He's effectively crying here. This is the emotional high point of the song. The singer's story is all downhill from here. The piano part that starts in at the end was Greenwood again. This time he's tying the song up in a neat bow rather than setting us on edge. It was the perfect song for a 14 going on 15 year old. She's beautiful, I'm terrible. She's leaving because I've scared her off. I just want her to be happy, I'm just going to stay over hear in a corner and be weird. Perfectly encapsulates high school.
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