Thirty years ago Radiohead released their sophomore album, The Bends. The project is filled with melodic performances by the singer Thom Yorke. The band often captures the enigmatic angst caused by the world, and the song Fake Plastic Trees is a perfect example of this.

Fake Plastic Trees focuses on the inauthenticity of modern life.The song opens with: 

Her green plastic watering can

For her fake Chinese rubber plant

In the fake plastic earth

This opening verse introduces the idea of replacing reality with cheap knockoffs. The protagonist waters a Chinese rubber plant with a plastic watering can. Obviously a rubber plant doesn’t need watering, but the protagonist would rather pretend that it does so as not to destroy the illusion. Yorke continues: 

That she bought from a rubber man

In a town full of rubber plans

To get rid of itself

The motif ‘plastic’ is present in this verse as well. The last line ‘To get rid of itself’ reveals the motive of the protagonist. She uses plastic to rid herself, to neglect who her authentic self. This is reinforced by the chorus: 

It wears her out (x4) 

Her constant neglect of her own self takes a toll and wears her out. One stanza later, Yorke takes on a first-person perspective: 

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

It wears me out

Yorke describes how ‘she’ seems like the real thing, and is his ‘fake plastic love’, yet the delusion is interrupted by his irking feeling that if he ran away from this mirage and realised who he is, he could ‘blow through the ceiling’ i.e achieve great heights. His decision to go forward through this fantasy wears him down further.

These passages reflect the central theme of the song: contemporary consumerist culture leads to a feeling of exhaustion. Boxing oneself inside this materialistic world exhausts us. Who we authentically are contradicts the mirage culture places us in. The singer decides it’s easier to stay in the fantasy world. Thom Yorke bellows and wails beautiful melodies but they are always cut short by soft quiet verses. This represents how we can strive for self-actualization, but are stopped by our yearning for the comfortable. 

Fake Plastic Trees tackles the idea of materialism, authenticity and self-actualization. The band’s catalogue is filled with songs that intersect politics, social ideas, psychology, mental health and existential themes. 

Image Credit: Creative Commons