Black Star

Oh my god. The emotion in this song... My favorite line ever, in any song, is "now that I don't think of you" .... oh man.

And "The troubled words of a troubled mind.."

To me, it seems to be about his girlfriend being depressed. I mean "still standing in your dressing gown" - haven't you ever been so depressed that you cannot get dressed, you cannot function? So depressed and you cannot even pinpoint why? That is the girl in this song. She is depressed and even she cannot tell why, so how is he to help?

But that last stanza... oh yes, I agree... The best ever... So true. I think everyone has had someone in their life that they should not think about, for one reason or another, but cannot help it. You just love them so much...

I've always interpreted it as the girl in the song having a mental disorder that the guy cant understand, and eventually couldnt deal with it anymore...."now that i dont think of you" Ever see the movie Mad Love? think of it in that vein...

possibly it is yorke talking about how his girlfriend is either an alcoholic or drug addict in the first verse, the second has it seemingly waiting at hospital trying to stay awake with her and then the final verse has her already dead and him trying to cope with the pain that he is going through and he is starting to lose it himself and he is throughout the chorus just trying to figure out why it is happening to him and he can't find a rational reason for it so he blames it on a black star.

this sums up a time in my life, my girlfriend went to a uni far away from me ''i get on the train and I just stand about now that i don't think of you. i keep falling over i keep passing out when i see a face like you. what am i coming to?''

makes me think of when i would go down to she her for a weekend and i knew it was not going to work with such distance!

''its 58hrs since that i last slept with you.'' - (sigh)

To all Radiohead fans,

Next time you listen to that song, please notice how the lyrics

''i keep falling over i keep passing out when i see a face like you''

are so full of emotion, that when they are heard and noticed, Thoms voice makes everything else fade away...

I mean I LOVE Radiohead but this The Bends cd is the one I like the least, but I still listen to this song only for when he sings those two sentences. I consider them to be like a ....a small orgasm!! LOL Thats what music does to me.

Let me start off by saying that this song is among my top 3 of all time, if not my favorite song of all time. Radiohead has crafted a heartwrenching masterpiece of a song with almost-B-side "Black Star", and after over 100 listens in the past month [and many more before that], the song still carries an immense emotional weight with me.

"Black Star" appears to be a song about a failing relationship [by the end, the relationship has failed completely].

"...I get home from work, and you're still standing in your dressing gown, Well, what am I to do? I know all the things around your head and what they do to you. What are we coming to? What are we gonna do?..."

• The first verse reflects Thom Yorke's realization that the first signs of the failing relationship are taking place. He plaintively asks "What are we coming to?", symbolizing a last attempt at reparation.

"Blame it on the black star, Blame it on the falling sky. Blame it on the satellite that beams me home."

The chorus shows Yorke's [and likely the woman as well]'s view on the situation, almost as if they want to avoid the situation at all costs, even though it's become inevitable.

"...The troubled words of a troubled mind, I try to understand what is eating you. I try to stay awake, but it's been 58 hours since that I last slept with you. What are we coming to? I just don't know anymore..."

Yorke again comes through with a real emotion-twister of a verse. He is being torn apart at the seams because of this separation, and since the second to last line verifies that the relationship is not quite over yet, Yorke slams the point home with the hopelessly sung "I just don't know anymore".

The chorus is once again sung, leading into one of my top moments of all-time [concerning music] - the second to last verse is by far one of the strongest and most identifiable verses I have come across in ages, and the sadness in Yorke's voice when this second to last verse is sung really just levels me emotionally.

"...I get on the train and I just stand about, now that I don't think of you. I keep falling over, I keep passing out, When I see a face like you. What am I coming to? I'm gonna melt down."

Yorke bitingly shows the feeling of emptiness that comes with the end of a relationship [that was once good and had gone bad], and the change from "What are we coming to?" to "What am I coming to?" shows that once again, the song's narrator is single, alone. The last line in the song's lyrics [before the chorus and last "verse" that isn't on this site], "I'm gonna melt down..." sums up almost everything in the song...

...but it doesn't end there. After one powerful last chorus, the song goes into jam mode, with the final two lines, Yorke's sad yellings of "This is killing me", aptly ending the song on a beautiful, haunting note.

With that, I give you the absolutely fantastic "Black Star" by Radiohead.

coming from my point of view and my own personal experiences, for anyone who's been in any type of relationship that in the end just doesn't work out, knows that it sucks. so much time, so much emotion, so much of your everything is devouted to something that can be something so powerful, but when it turns out that either your not the person you thought you were or your girlfriend isn't who you thought she was, it fuckin suck....so after all that time, i think this song is a bout a troubled relationship, where the girl had problems in which her bf couldn't relate to or help her out with, and eventually, ultimatelty, by just the way things roll out, he has to leave her.

now the last stanza hurts. me. this person in the song.
he is blank, after breaking up, or losing feelings, he is void traveling through space emotionless. then there;s that jolt or that born again feeling you get when you see a girl who looks anywhere close to the girl youve been close to for so long. its like you see her face everywhere. these feelings come back.

in the end of the end, what does it come to, what light begins to shine on you, that black star, that negative light, the one that shines at the end of every failed relationship. or bad relationship.

Yah it seems he is trying to help his girlfriend or wife with something like others have mentioned. She is feeling depressed and maybe does know why and does not want to say or just misses him or something else. She's depressed and he is missing her. He or she or they blame it on other things not themselves or the state of their lifestyles and relationship(s). Thom's voice seems to be very clear and such compared to other albums. Really different compared to the follow albums.

I usually roll my eyes when someone says one of Radiohead's songs is about depression, because so many people attribute that theme to every song of theirs that they interpret. And that's just far too simple. Just because their songs do frequently have a dark/ominous tone, and are about depressing THINGS doesn't mean that they are literally ABOUT depression generally. However, in this case, sine most of the songs on this album deal with one of two things (relationship dynamics or the artificiality of a life of fame), this song does seem to be about how depression can affect and effectively destroy a relationship. Narrator tries to understand his lover's troubled mind, what's eating her, he knows about the things she has in her mind which trouble her, but there's nothing he can really do about it. So eventually he can't live like that anymore; can't live a life where his lover's depression is pulling them both down. So by the end she's just a painful memory that he tries not to think about, feeling a little tinge of panic/shock when he is reminded of her.

This song was actually written about me and my girlfriend. The periods of ennui that consume the relationship. I don't know, this song gives me a feeling of comfort and empathy.