Lyrics for Fake Plastic Trees as interpreted by piesupreme

Fake Plastic Trees Lyrics
Her green plastic watering-can
For her fake Chinese rubber plant
In the fake plastic earth that she bought
From a rubber man in a town full of rubber plans
To get rid of itself, it wears her out

She lives with a broken man
A cracked polystyrene man
Who just crumbles and burns
He used to do surgery for girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins and it wears him out

She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love

But I can't help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run
And it wears me out

If I could be who you wanted all the time

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SongMeanings
01-05-2002

Rated +1 
I don't get this video. It's a great song nonetheless. Thom's voice is superb here.

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3 Replies
MercurySmile
01-08-2002

Rated +2 
There's something so piercing about this song and its utter sense of hopelessness, yet it ultimately makes it so comforting

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Classique
01-08-2002

Rated +1 
i think it's just about how the world is so fake these days, and yea it's hopeless. for example, the man who does cosmetic surgery, but they still turn out ugly anyway.
it's about how everyone tries to be fake to get ahead in life.

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Shapeshifter
01-08-2002

Rated 0 
This makes me cry! It's about a girl who's completely fake cause she's having to be someone she's not: "If I could be who you wanted all the time..." Awww :( She can't be herself because she feels the world won't accept her that way, so really she has no idnetity. :(

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thisboy
01-28-2002

Rated 0 
I agree with everyone else's comments...This song is so desperate..."She looks like the real thing, she tastes like the real thing" I love Radiohead for incorporating modern technology in their music creation (synth, crazy digital production effects) but at the same time they reject modern life and all its trappings.

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ugly-girl
02-08-2002

Rated +1 
I think it's about wanting something you can't have, but even that thing you desire so much isn't what you need. "She tastes like the real thing." in a world full of fakeness, he wants desperatly to believe that this one is "the real thing." He's willing to be fake himself. Have you ever seen the shel silverstein poem about the woodpecker and the rubber tree? it just keeps pecking anyway. it's absolute desperation.

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1 Reply
necessity
03-01-2002

Rated 0 
i think where it says "she looks like the real thing/she tastes like the real thing" it's saying that if you look like you fit a part, you can deceive a lot of people into thinking you actually play the part. this is the most amazing radiohead, it's so...i'm not sure...there's something about it that just has a magnetism and leaves a mark on everyone

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Achilles_Libertine
03-22-2002

Rated 0 
I think it's saying your wearings yourself out to impress someone to notice you, and it just never works and then your trying to get away from it. Thom's vocal's are really moving in this, especially in the "I can't help the feeling" part. It really does make me wanna cry

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straydog89
04-13-2002

Rated 0 
This song is utterly and unbelieveably sad and depressing, yet i cant stop listening to it. The last verse, the last line alone should bring a tear to the eye of anyone with a soul.

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emopunkskaface
04-14-2002

Rated 0 
this song makes me cry. i don;t know why it just does. oh well. its a great song

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stonor
04-15-2002

Rated 0 
I'm really blown away by your interpretations. before I logged on here I was imagening his love being fake as the world. and him seing true beauty in her which he didn't feel like deserving.

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slothman
04-16-2002

Rated 0 
How about the idea that theres a guy involved with a girl and he's just not capable of being anything other than what he is. ie a sensitive, real, soulfull person. Don't we all, on a day to day basis, encounter people who are just completely superficial?


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faded
04-26-2002

Rated 0 
Someone being trapped in a fake place because she can't get out and it's killing her. She wants to do something exciting with her life but she can't because she's stuck where she is, and she's in despair.

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ikkle_pikkle
05-03-2002

Rated 0 
interestingly enough...the band were in l.a when thom wrote the lyrics to this track...

...i wonder where he got his inspriation from...hehehe

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eadva1
05-07-2002

Rated 0 
its about a blow up doll, and this guy who's wanting her to be real.
"She Looks like the real thing.
She tastes like the real thing,
my fake plastic love. "



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MnOvrboard182
05-08-2002

Rated 0 
a blow up doll?? i doubt it...this song is way too serious to be about loving a blow up doll, he might be making reference to the fact that people have become LIKE a blow up doll but not specifically..it's by far their best song though, i couldn't stop listening to it the first time i heard it

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imthecootie
05-08-2002

Rated 0 
okay.. "My fake plastic love" how kickass is that? Alright, we all have fake plastic love, HE ADMITTED IT FIRST!!! I heart you Thom...I am fake too.

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vandalized
05-10-2002

Rated 0 
We're all fake.

FAKE PLASTIC TREES.

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sean7711
05-23-2002

Rated 0 
we are all fake in some way or another, but sometimes its ok to be fake i guess. i mean we dont hafta to be totally alienated from society all the time, but we dont hafta conform all the time

my 2 cents...

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LiveUrLife
05-23-2002

Rated 0 
Great song, i agree we are all fake one time or another sociery has kinda made us that way because we try to impress one another and sometimes in order to impress people we have to thrown on a fake personalilty, most of the time not realizing we're doing it, thats basically what i get out of this song


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plasticwonder
05-24-2002

Rated 0 
it wears me out... hah hope none of you peeps came here looking for coca cola


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SatanSplitoris
06-14-2002

Rated -1 
He's saying they've made the Earth sp wso worldly it wears the (w)hole Earth out, him. Circumcision though not say makign it plastic, cutting skin is thought plastic surgeriish, and form there they have faked everything.. so fore the sake of Radiohead's very name.. he had to do hi sname justice with this song ,ya and so now http://hometown.aol.com/jupiterlordjovei/ I would pay that dude or for his science if I was you first, W/$ isn't it so sirty how they thought foreskin dirty, think sex so dirty and condoms, and their clean is so atomic - and ignorant, they think dirty so doctor money, crazy 666 math anyoen fall into devil's seperated freedoms of near nothingnesses, could almost seem nahtziism is a more pact force.. yet nahtzis had so see a term 'minor', unvaluable person, small massless unworkworthy, waste of shortsight

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erasethesun
06-16-2002

Rated 0 
this is my favorite song... whenever i cant sleep, i put on this song and im out like a light. his voice is just so soothing, ya know? i think this song is about how everything in the world is so corrupt and... fake? even the trees... and its like not even love can be real anymore..

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roger wilco
06-17-2002

Rated 0 
i think Thom is analytically describing relationships under false circumstances, ending with the relationship he would currently be in.

in the last verse he describes his "fake plastic love". then adds "If i could be who you wanted all the time.."

it seems to me he cannot meet her expectations, and in trying to meet them he has essentially sacrificed his sense of self. enough is enough.

hopefully, the sex was good, tho!

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dr.jacob
06-20-2002

Rated 0 
ok. im going with the doll theory. anything about a blow up doll brightens my day. and when my day is brightened, the whole world is too. (sarcasm)

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