Let Down

Album

OK Computer

Label

Parlophone

Genre

Dance-pop

Composer(s)

Philip James Selway;Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood;Edward John O'brien;Thomas Edward Yorke;Colin Charles Greenwood

Entered Chart

Aug 30, 2025

Peak Date

Aug 30, 2025

Released

6 September 1997

Lead singer Thom Yorke: "I was pissed in a club, and I suddenly had the funniest thought I'd had for ages - what if all the people who were drinking were hanging from the bottles... if the bottles were hung from the ceiling with string, and the floor caved in, and the only thing that kept everyone up was the bottles? It's also about an enormous fear of being trapped." Radiohead recorded OK Computer at the mansion of actress Jane Seymour. This track was recorded at 3 a.m. when the band found inspiration. The blip noise at the end of the track was created with a ZX Spectrum, which is an old computer the band members used in their youth. This is a difficult song to reproduce live, so Radiohead rarely plays it on stage. >> Jonny Greenwood (from Humo magazine July 22, 1997): "Andy Warhol once said that he could enjoy his own boredom. 'Let down' is about that. It's the transit-zone feeling. You're in a space, you are collecting all these impressions, but it all seems so vacant. You don't have control over the earth anymore. You feel very distant from all these thousands of people that are also walking there." Despite its prevailing melancholic tone, the euphoric final verse of "Let Down" hints at hope and transcendence. In 2025, TikTok users rediscovered the song, particularly Thom Yorke's trembling delivery of "One day, I am gonna grow wings." It went viral, often used to provide a potent sense of catharsis and release. It became the fourth Radiohead song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, following "Creep" (#34 in 1993), "High And Dry" (#78 in 1996) and "Nude" (#37 in 2008). For Thom Yorke, the song's surge of popularity on TikTok in 2025 is surreal, especially as he tried to keep the track off OK Computer. "I find that especially bizarre," Yorke told The Sunday Times Culture magazine. "Because I fought tooth and nail for it not to be on the record." It was guitarist Ed O'Brien who persuaded his bandmates to include "Let Down" on the album. He even threatened to leave the band if they excluded it. But even O'Brien was perplexed by its sudden TikTok fame. His solution? Consult the experts: his own children. "I was astonished," O'Brien said. "So I told my kids, who are 18 and 21, and they said: 'What do you expect? Teenagers are depressed. It's depressing music!'"

Transport, motorways and tramlines
Starting and then stopping
Taking off and landing
The emptiest of feelings
Disappointed people
Clinging onto bottles
And when it comes it's so, so disappointing

Let down and hanging around
Crushed like a bug in the ground
Let down and hanging around

Shell smashed, juices flowing
Wings twitch, legs are going
Don't get sentimental
It always ends up drivel

One day I am gonna grow wings
A chemical reaction
Hysterical and useless
Hysterical and

Let down and hanging around
Crushed like a bug in the ground
Let down and hanging around

Let down again
Let down again
Let down again

You know, you know where you are with
You know where you are with
Floor collapsing
Floating, bouncing back

And one day
I am gonna grow wings
A chemical reaction
(You know where you are)
Hysterical and useless
(You know where you are)
Hysterical and
(You know where you are)

Let down and hanging around
Crushed like a bug in the ground
Let down and hanging around