Hello dreamers! This week we are going to be analyzing a dream in a song from one of my favorite bands, Radiohead. Thom Yorke is Radiohead’s vocalist, so he is who I will be naming in the analysis. The Bends is one of Radiohead’s earlier albums, and it’s worth listening to in full. I recommend listening to High and Dry and The Bends, songs on that album.
Onto the dream!
(Nice Dream) by Radiohead
They love me like I was a brother
They protect me, listen to me
They dug me my very own garden
Gave me sunshine, made me happy
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
I call up my friend, the good angel
But she’s out with her answerphone
She said that she’d love to come help, but
The sea would electrocute us all
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream (If you think that you’re strong enough)
Nice dream (If you think you belong enough)
Nice dream (If you think that you’re strong enough)
Nice dream (If you think you belong enough)
[guitar solo]
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
The Analysis
(Nice Dream) tells a story of a fantasy that the narrator is living in, one where they are loved and nurtured by the people around them. The narrator does not want to snap out of this fantasy, instead favoring the “nice dream” that lulls them into a sense of peace and security.
In the first verse, Thom Yorke sings about being loved, protected, and nurtured. The narrator compares themselves to a plant who is being given sunshine by the crowd of supportive loved ones. The loved ones tend to the narrator, adopting a caretaking role in the narrator’s plant life. This could reflect the narrator’s desire for their loved ones to take care of them—perhaps they have tumultuous emotions that need tending to or a worsening mental illness that they feel would be alleviated by care from others.
Then Thom Yorke sings, “nice dream,” indicating that their care and protection is only a fantasy that they have dreamed up. It is a fantasy that they want to live in. In fact, they do live in it, but they are beginning to acknowledge that it is dream, based on the repetition of the phrase “nice dream.”
In the second verse, Yorke sings, “I call up my friend, the good angel,” an indication that the narrator is still in an idealizing, fantasy state where they believe everything is better than it is. They proceed to be sent to voicemail, where their friend tells them she’d love to “help,” but “the sea would electrocute us all.” Their friend is not there for them like they want her to be, no matter how wholeheartedly they believed she (and their other loved ones) would be when they sang in the first verse.
The line, “the sea would electrocute us all” (if she helped) is interesting in that it subverts the narrator earlier comparison of themselves to a plant and makes the narrator painfully human, jarring them into reality. After all, plants cannot be electrocuted, but humans can.
The motif of the sea is a powerful one as well. The sea can consume and subsume, shift and morph, ebb and flow. The narrator is incapable of ebbing and flowing or morphing—they are trapped in their fantasy. If the friend were to help them, the sea would electrocute them both. In other words, the narrator would be shocked out of their fantasy and realize that the friend doesn’t really care for them, understand them, or have the capacity to nurture them in the way they want the way they have deluded themselves into believing she does.
Overall, (Nice Dream) is a song about someone’s cemented fantasy, which they would only be shocked out of by seeing their friend try to help them. Stay loose and dream lucid!