Faith, you’re driving me away

You do it everyday

You don’t mean it

But it hurts like hell

My brain says I’m recieving pain

A lack of oxygen

From my life support

My iron lung

We’re too young to fall asleep

To cynical to speak

We are losing it

Can’t you tell?

We scratch our eternal itch

A twentieth century bitch

And we are grateful for

Our iron lung

The head shrinkers

They want everything

My uncle Bill

My Belisha beacon

The head shrinkers

They want everything

My uncle Bill

My Belisha beacon

Suck, suck your teenage thumb

Toilet trained and dumb

When the power runs out

We’ll just hum

This, this is our new song

Just like the last one

A total waste of time

My iron lung

The head shrinkers

They want everything

My uncle Bill

My Belisha beacon

The head shrinkers

They want everything

My uncle Bill

My Belisha beacon

And if you’re frightened

You can be frightened

You can be, it’s OK

And if you’re frightened

You can be frightened

You can be, it’s OK

The head shrinkers

They want everything

My uncle Bill

My Belisha beacon



SONG INFORMATION

Released: September 1994

Found on: The Bends & My Iron Lung single

Written the day Radiohead was forced to pull out of the Reading Festival in 1993 due to problems Thom was having with his vocal chords, this song comes off very bitter. But as it progresses, “My Iron Lung” seems to drive out Thom’s angers about how the band’s music was largely ignored – aside from “Creep.” Thom has admitted in interviews that he is very proud of this song’s lyrics; he felt he had perfectly captured the essence of what he was writing about.

“My Iron Lung” is notable for having been recorded live (the 1994 Astoria, London performance later released as a home video), with only the vocals later overdubbed. The song as it appears on the singles/EP is virtually identical to the version that appeared the next year on The Bends, with only some barely audible changes in mixing levels.

“My Iron Lung” was Radiohead’s reaction to “Creep”, their massive hit of 1993 which also became something of a millstone. Singer Thom Yorke described the iron lung as a metaphor for the way “Creep” had both sustained the band’s life and constrained them, as evidenced in his caustic self-reflexive lyrics (“this is our new song / just like the last one / a total waste of time / my iron lung”). The music is perhaps consciously a self-parody of “Creep”, and has also been frequently noted for its resemblance to the riff and loud-soft dynamics of “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana. Comparison with that band was both commercially helpful and acutely painful to Radiohead in 1994, given Kurt Cobain’s recent suicide and attempts by the UK rock press to portray Yorke as his successor; they refused to talk about Nirvana, with whom they shared many musical influences, in interviews.

Music producer Nigel Godrich first worked with Radiohead on this recording, going on to engineer The Bends and to produce their later work.

On December 18th 2007, the song was made available as downloadable content for the video game Rock Band.