Karma Police Lyrics - Radiohead

Song Facts:

• Genre: Alternative Rock


• Featured on: Invincible (TV Series) Soundtrack


• Lyricist: Radiohead

Annotations and Meaning:

"Karma Police" by Radiohead is a great mockery of moral uprightness and the standards of society, dressed in the enigmatic beauty of alternative rock. The standout track from an album that has been the subject of high praise, one of the standout tracks of the band's canon, dealing with the concept of "karma police" and how it relates to metaphorical forces of judgment and retribution in human behavior within social frameworks.
These lyrics beg the 'karma police' to arrest this man for his odd, stumbling behavior, 'like a detuned radio,' and a 'buzzing fridge,' both evoking much baggage and uneasy feelings of otherness. It speaks of a conflict between individual and societal expectations, where standing out of the line provokes contempt and strict calls for correction.

The appeal to arrest a girl with a "Hitler hairdo" further heightens the theme of societal policing, whereby it is not arresting the physical but rather arresting actions that are out of the norm. The line "And we have crashed her party" is a metaphorical referent to the way judgmental forces crash into private personal spaces and disrupt peace and autonomy.

The chorus, "This is what you'll get when you mess with us," is a chilling warning of what one will get in return for messing with the collective 'us,' which often stands for the social molds and expectations. This is in resonance with the retributive dimension of karma, where actions are believed to reach directly into fate or the manner that one will be treated by other human beings.

Rolling back inwards, the protagonist does admit his own limitations of contribution and in fact admits the inevitability of complicity in the system with "But we're still on the payroll." This line is one of resignation, so hard to bring oneself to break free of the very structures it would criticize.

This culminated with the words "For a minute there / I lost myself" entering an existential quandary or dislocation, perhaps from all of those interior and exterior battles described before this segment. So powerful is the expression of the refrain as it speaks to a confusion or loss of identity before overwhelming moral judgments and societal pressure.