Composition and Lyrics
"Karma Police" is in a 4/4 time signature and played in standard tuning. The first half of the song is in the key of A Dorian, and the second half (starting with the line "For a minute there") is in B minor. Acoustic guitar and piano are the most prominent instruments in the song, and the chord progression these instruments follow owes an audible debt to The Beatles song "Sexy Sadie". The structure of the song is unconventional in that it has nothing resembling a typical chorus. Instead, the song progresses from the intro into a mid-tempo section which alternates between two verses. The first verse begins with the line "Karma police", and the other begins with the line "This is what you'll get". During the second section the drums drop out and an analog synthesizer imitating a choir is featured. After this section cycles through twice, the song switches into a second section which is based around the line "For a minute there, I lost myself". During this section of the song, Yorke's voice is put through an echo effect and a sliding melodic figure serves as a counterpoint to Yorke's vocals. In the outro, Ed O'Brien plays a few notes on his guitar, which are distorted by overloading an AMS rackmount digital delay unit and turning the delay rate knob down.
Radiohead members used to tell one another that they would call "the karma police" on them if they did something bad. The joke was incorporated into the lyrics and title of the song. Yorke explained that the song was about stress and "having people looking at you in that certain way, I can't handle it anymore". Thom Yorke explained the idea of the lyrics to The Independent in 2006, saying, "It's for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!" Yorke and Jonny Greenwood emphasised in interviews that the song had a humorous bent; Yorke said, " not entirely serious, I hope people will realize that." The song includes the line "He buzzes like a fridge/He's like a detuned radio", a reference to the distracting, metaphorical background noise Yorke calls "fridge buzz". Yorke has said that the idea of fridge buzz is one of the primary themes of OK Computer; "Karma Police" also shares themes of insanity and dissatisfaction with capitalism.
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