(Nice Dream) Lyrics

Thom himself was once asked how the band was able to decide when to stamp an album finished, and i'll have to paraphrase him here, but he said something to the effect of: You come back to a song over and over, and you get it just how you want it, and then one by one you finish an album, and the whole week before the release you cant sleep and your thinking about this or that, but once it's finally been released to the public, it no longer belongs to you, and you never think about those songs again, and thats how they will be forever. So basically he says all the anxiety of wanting to change something is gone the second it becomes public, well no shit he CANT change it now, but its more than that, he gives up ownership, its not his song anymore, he raised it to 6 weeks old now we have to give it a home.

Hannah K 7/3/11 - Since I have taken the time to appreciate your comments I feel justified in taking them to mean that we all should eat more fresh fruit and juggle kitchen knives while at the movies. What a strange thing for you to say!

Hannah K 7/3/11 You took the words right out of my mouth. The majority of art..... poetry, music, painting, photography, etc is subjective. Once it is made public it becomes objective. It MOVES the viewer, the reader, the listener emotionally and they interpret it in their own way, once again becoming subjective. Trying to climb inside the creator's head and interpret what he/she is trying to say is next to impossible, unless, of course you have a close, intimate knowledge of the creator. Either way, it is still an assumption. It's just amazing that there are talented people out there creating who move us and inspire us and help us to express ourselves through their art.

Once a work is released it no longer belongs to the artist but rather to those that take time to appreciate it.

You shouldn't ask what the artist meant when writing but what it means to yourself when listening.

A truly great piece of work means a million different things to a million different people and only one thing to one person.

Take comfort from the self realisation that works such as this bring.

Beauty lies within us all.

X

it is a metaphor for society. you are provided what you need to be productive, and if you believe the first part, it sounds like a nice dream - for a vegetable. But does it hold true for the vegetable or you?
the second verse is about the faith in a higher power that the person looks to to be saved and instead receives irrational fear ( the sea would electrocute us all? right.)

it's a nice dream life, if you think you belong enough, and if you're strong enough to live a lie.

they talk a lot about society, less petty personal pop crap - they're trying to save the world! you should help.

the thing everyone must understand with Radiohead is that Thom is never aiming to explain a certain external entity with his words. He's rather trying to capture a range of feelings...pure, untainted feelings. So it's kinda pointless trying to link his lyrics to a certain subject like drugs, or depression because he goes much deeper and much more universal than that. You know its like trying to figure out when Van Gogh painted the Starry Night, what was he trying to say...nothing really...artists like Thom, Lennon, Gogh go deep down to the essential elements that affect the human psyche...they analyze themselves and over analyze themselves and we can all see the results in form of words and song. Through listening to a lot of Radiohead, I've found Thom to be obsessed with himself...not necessarily in a narcissistic manner but rather because he finds what goes on inside him much more intriguing than what goes on outside...so as to what this Nice Dream must be, I think it symbolizes his retreat to self as a defense mechanism against all the wrong things that happen on the outside...Thom Yorke is a very insecure man and it is his insecurities that fuel him to utilize his brain to such great measures.

Id say the songs is refering to alot of people who have a depressing life with many problems and they turn to their dreams for happyness and escape.
In a dream everything can be perfect and 'Nice'

"I call up my friend the good angel
But she's out with her ansaphone"

He's asking for hope within his dream
"The sea would electrocute us all"
But the only way is to die to escape whats going on.

"Now come home, now come home)"
He is waking up and it was a nice dream having escaped reality for a while.

i think it´s all about drugs problems. In the first verse "they" refers to drugs so drugs loved him like he was a brother, drugs protect and listen to him.

I don´t know... all this non-belonging stuff makes me think of a drug problem because when you become a drug adict everything just seems so unreal, as if you were living a nice dream.

I don't pretend to know what the song it's about, i only know that it's beautiful (it's Radiohead) , this song doesn't depress me , it just makes me aware of my own feeling about life. Yes , we all are living some sort of dream at some time or another :) my question is ... does anyone ever heard Thom Yorke explain this song's meaning?? I'll do my research .. but if anyone knows about this , I would appreciate it. Thank You:)

to me, the song is about a feeling of insecurity about how close you actually are to other people. the first verse seems to be the narrator thinking he actually has friends that care for him, while the second verse shifts to the notion that they actually do not care for him (the electrocuting sea seems like a phony excuse for not being able to be there for a friend). the background vocals about being strong enough and belonging enough imply IMO that the perception of friendships is very subjective, and the friends may be more loyal if you demonstrate through confidence that you are worthy of being close to them

To me, like many others, the thing that pops up at first for me is about a guy that hates his life. He's sitting in a corner rembering things that have happened to him in life, only he then realizes that he is just making it up, thus 'nice dream'.

This song is a cry from someone who misses the love and warmth and security and happiness he once found briefly at his mother's breast. He perceives that the world around him is cold, unloving, frightening and uncaring, and that the hope of finding the things he needs most is no more than a dream. I see him as a small boy in a young man's body, who thinks that everything should be given to him, and not having a clue how to find it for himself. That's all.

next to 'Motion picture soundtrack' - which is my favorite song, probably of all time - this is the most beautiful and meaningful song made by this amazing band. Express exactly the awfull reality of the world that we live in without mirrors or false shields and how it's so difficult to survive in this world full of nothing, where, almost all the time, indeed we have this terrible feeling that we belong to nowhere.

To me this song is about a guy who hates this world so much, but inside his mind he's trying to create a new world, innocent, pure, full of light, idealized, but immediatly after, facing again and again the misery of this society he realized that is nothing else than a nice dream. In reality is just a miserable lie for him.
He doesn't have real friends.
The good angel is also a nice dream. Experiencing all her life all kinds of answerphones, all the time fall in the arms of all kinds of guys, she can't be an angel. Her innocence, her purity, her heavenly light is just another nice dream for him, it kills him inside, and for this reason he believes that she would never be able to help or save him. In reality he thinks that she's just a simple woman always looking for stupid adventures and not a real love. The lyrics "she says that she'd love to come help but the sea would electrocute us all" says everything about her friendship for him. Her behavior with her answerphones, replacing them like some dresses all the time, the way that she understands the meaning of love makes him to be very disapointed, hurts him deep inside.
He could never find himself in this kind of society.. he's heart is full of blisters, crushed like a bug in the ground because of her.. he don't belong here, he feels that he belongs to nowhere... he is not strong enough at all.. he dreams at another world.. a better world with a true home for his wandering soul. In this world he feels that it's impossible for him to find a real home and it distroys his inside incresingly more.

This is one of the songs that I can relate with so much, that makes me feel so horribly lonely, makes me feel so horribly empty because of the emptiness of this world, in a sistem where I could never find myself.. a unidimensional society with unidimensional feelings, that above everything else has no ideea what real love means.
Sadly about this real love with a true home I became increasingly aware that it's just an eternal nice dream for myself.

As all the songs of radiohead it have a significant that you can understand like a sarcastic or ironic, but the real its that your mind keeps it lineal, your body, your inconcient wont feel the ironisism. Inside your mind keeps rolling the most repetitive phrases or the lines that are made "specials", "if you think you are strong enough (nice dream)" Its hard to recognize, I was a fan of Radiohead and I love them very much, analize every part of them, and I realize that the band was making something bad inside of me. Since I left to hear them, my life changed for good. Anyway I gave thanks to Radiohead to help me in a inside journey, I think they really help me, but in a time you will have to release them.
"Release me, light another candle" (His advertice)
Good luck in this journey to everyone! :)