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Morning bell
Morning bell
(not another ???)
Release me
Release me
You can keep the furniture
Bump on the head
Haul 'em down the chimney
Release me
Release me
Please
Release me
Release me
Where'd you park the car
Where'd you park the car
Clothes are all always on the furniture
Now I might as well
I might as well
Sleezy jack
The fire drill
Round and round and round and round and round and round and round
And round
Cut the kids in half
Cut the kids in half
Cut the kids in half
(murmuring)
Morning bell
(not another ???)
Release me
Release me
You can keep the furniture
Bump on the head
Haul 'em down the chimney
Release me
Release me
Please
Release me
Release me
Where'd you park the car
Where'd you park the car
Clothes are all always on the furniture
Now I might as well
I might as well
Sleezy jack
The fire drill
Round and round and round and round and round and round and round
And round
Cut the kids in half
Cut the kids in half
Cut the kids in half
(murmuring)
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At this time, the words "RELEASE ME" that were coming from headphones, meant "KILL ME". Morning bell was a clear reference to wake up dead at the morning.
I would have thought 'Morning Bell' would be church bells on a Sunday. 'Light another candle' would be in line with this as this is what many attendees do in a church (Although they're often charged for the privilege e.g. the Louvre in Paris)
The General feeling of the song however, may not be a divorce itself, but rather the DESIRE to get divorced and the thought process related to feeling trapped in a relationship. This idea could be backed by 'no-one wants to be a slave' and the frustration of going 'around and around'. As pointed out by others 'Where'd you park the car' and 'clothes over the furniture' again show this characters frustrations with his family.
Religion may appear again though, since coming down the chimney implies Santa, which implies Christmas, which in turn (If anyone remembers) used to be a religious celebration.
So Maybe the main character of the song is a person (perhaps older in years) who, for religious reasons feels they can't get divorced and is now begging (either a religious leader or God) to release him ('release me'). And the 'Cut the kids in half' is possibly the only metaphorical solution they can think of. (Maybe not metaphorical according to some theories here.)
By the end, our man may well have lost his mind completely by the well known phrase 'The lights are on but nobody's home' which of course refers to someone who is wandered, a.k.a "a sandwich short of a picnic".
Probably wrong. Whatever.
but the CD is called "Kid A" which suggests a child without a name, without identity. a clone. potentially there's also a Kid B, a Kid C, a Kid D...etc. etc.
(if this suggests, also--the endlessly similar-sounding stagenames, in certain musical genres--well, Thom Yorke is more than capable of multi-layering his themes)
does it matter whether we cut the kids in half? hell you can just manufacture another one. person-as-commodity.
does it refer to the process itself? cloning specifically, biotech in general. lab technicians performing tasks which cause cells to duplicate, divide and grow.
"walking, walking, walking..." we feel like automatons.
are we? this is what our relationships, our jobs, our society require of us. (ultimately) you have to follow orders, to survive. learn how to carry out simple instructions, without asking too many uncomfortable questions.
if trends are taken to their (il)logical extremes then we are no longer families: mothers and fathers who give birth to kids, love them and help them grow. we are owned by large corporations. we do what they require; otherwise, when we check on that "money" which ought to appear on a screen--when we go to the ATM the store or the bank's web site--maybe nothing will be there. what then. what'll we do.
so yeah, put on your clean-room suit and manipulate the proteins which act as messengers to cellular structures, and what comes out is...do you really want to know?
no. i don't want to. just tell me what to do. nobody wants to be a slave. walking walking walking walking. do i have a choice?
what do the processes of socialization and education do to kids? teaching them how they're supposed to act, eat, want, talk, believe...what to notice; what to ignore...when to give up hope. we're always saying we care about children: more than anything. but how do we treat them? and after a few years of this--when they've learned to "behave" the same way as ourselves--do their minds, their souls, their selves remain whole? in one piece? maybe we ARE cutting them apart & we can't even see it.
(When you think about it that interpretation would actually make sense in the context of a marriage breakup, as Camelot = home of fictional King Arthur/Queen Guinevere, see also JFK/Jackie Kennedy)
However, IF Thom really wrote this song about Amnesia (as claimed by Whiskyclone above) then that would kind of explain its appearance on both the Kid A AND "Amnesiac" albums. I've also read that interview with Thom where he says he wrote Morning Bell very quickly, but the rough recording got wiped accidentally and he feared it was lost forever until, months later, the lyrics suddenly "came back to him" on a plane as he was in that drowsy state between sleep and full consciousness.
I ALSO read another interview where Thom claimed this song (and Scatterbrain also I believe) were written about an old house he lived in which was haunted... something about how he went out for a walk one night (or early morning) and as he looked back at the lighted house, he thought he saw a shadow of someone standing in one of the windows upstairs (?)
All things considered, I think this explanation BEST fits the lyrics. IMO the song is narrated by the ghost/spirit of someone who used to live in the house. When he was still alive, he may have done something violent that he regrets deeply - like murder his wife and kids - or possibly it was HE who met a sticky end. In any case, his spirit has been "trapped" in the house since his untimely demise, although his loved ones (or the house's new occupants) cannot hear or see him.
Thus, he yearns to be set free from his earth-bound limbo. The lines "light another candle / release me" may refer either to a seance, or some kind of religious ritual that will allow his spirit to be set free or seen/heard by others. I know that in some Christian churches, people will light a candle while they pray that souls of departed loved ones get to Heaven.
Going out on a limb for a second - "cut the kids in half" might be expressing the dead father's paradoxical desire to have his beloved children with him in death/afterlife, while hoping they remain alive and well on earth.
Yorke's vocal performance is particularly beautiful here. but overall this song is disturbing. it sounds like someone who's going mad. with music which becomes more menacing as it goes along.
he singles out "Street Spirit" as a song so bleak he'd never deliberately write it, saying things like, "I didn't write that. me and the band were merely the human catalysts for something beyond ourselves. that wasn't me." and hates performing it--not only because it's literally painful, to feel the way that song makes him feel--but because the audience all seem so happy and entertained by this horrible thing.
but people are often baffled, confused or fooled by a disconnect between music and lyrics: i.e. when a pretty song is about an ugly subject, usually. if you listen to "Street Spirit" without knowing what it means, it can be soaring and lovely.
or for another example you have "No Surprises" which has such a sweet melody it could be used for Muzak, yet begins with its protagonist telling numbly of "a job that slowly kills you," and finishes with a barely-audible choir singing, "get me out of here" over and over.
can someone fix the mistake please?