Whenever I want to understand what this (or any other) song means, I try to imagine what it would mean if it were about another subject... socio-political for example. I always think of something I heard Thom Yorke say during an interview when his album The Eraser came out in 2006. I think he was discussing the lyrics for "And It Rained All Night". He said some of the song was inspired by a night in New York City where it was raining a lot. He said the infrastructure in that city is inadequate to stop massive flooding if that were to happen. I think this song can also be interpreted as being about any social or political infrastructure that will inevitably collapse if anything beyond the ordinary happens. Same thing with marriages where there is no interest on one or both sides, and something unexpected (falling in love with someone else, for example) happens.
But the music really speaks more about love than anything else.
Whenever I want to understand what this (or any other) song means, I try to imagine what it would mean if it were about another subject... socio-political for example. I always think of something I heard Thom Yorke say during an interview when his album The Eraser came out in 2006. I think he was discussing the lyrics for "And It Rained All Night". He said some of the song was inspired by a night in New York City where it was raining a lot. He said the infrastructure in that city is inadequate to stop massive flooding if that were to happen. I think this song can also be interpreted as being about any social or political infrastructure that will inevitably collapse if anything beyond the ordinary happens. Same thing with marriages where there is no interest on one or both sides, and something unexpected (falling in love with someone else, for example) happens.
But the music really speaks more about love than anything else.