Sit Down. Stand Up.
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| Hail to the Thief | ||
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| Studio album by Radiohead | ||
| Released | June 9, 2003 | |
| Recorded | September 2002 - February 2003 at Ocean Way, Hollywood, California | |
| Genre | Art Rock, Alternative Rock | |
| Length | 56:31 | |
| Label | EMI, Parlophone, Capitol | |
| Producer(s) | Nigel Godrich, Radiohead | |
| Professional reviews | ||
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| Radiohead chronology | ||
| I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (2001) |
6th Hail to the Thief (2003) |
COM LAG (2plus2isfive) (2004) |
"Sit Down. Stand Up." is a song by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, appearing as the second track on their 2003 album Hail to the Thief. Its alternate title is "Snakes and Ladders" (all songs on that album were given official alternate titles in parentheses).
It starts off with a slow techno 4/8 beat and synthesized sounds. A circular piano melody soon enters, and the song begins to build with singer Thom Yorke intoning the lyrics, repeating the title phrase and other lines, like "walk into the jaws of hell" and "we can wipe you out anytime". Past the halfway point, it abruptly transitions to a huge climax with the repeated lyrics "the rain drops". In the background a very fast marimba-sounding beat can be heard playing in 10/8. The song was produced by Nigel Godrich with Radiohead. The band has said that all electronic effects heard in this song, as well as most others on the album, were performed live in the studio, not added later.
Thom Yorke has said the song came about after he watched a television report on genocide in the 1990s. The line "we can wipe you out anytime" was also used in previous Radiohead album artwork in reference to NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
There is speculation among fans that the song was originally called "Innocents [sic] Civilian," because of a page on the band's website which contained that phrase as well as lyrics of what later became "Sit Down. Stand Up." The band's website has changed, but the page has been archived externally. "Innocents Civilian" was referenced in guitarist Ed O'Brien's diary of the 1999-2000 Kid A and Amnesiac recording sessions as a track the band had been working on. That song was also the subject of a hoax by O'Brien in which he claimed it was the best song the band had recorded but that its master tapes had suspiciously gone missing, later admitting he did it to fool the media following his online diary, and saying that the song was actually too poor to see release.[1] It is unknown whether this song became "Sit Down. Stand Up."
[edit] Miscellanea
- The title may be a reference to Bob Marley and the Wailers' "Get Up, Stand Up".
- This song's lyrics of "the rain drops, the rain drops..." have been seen to parallel those in Radiohead's "Paranoid Android": "rain down, rain down..." They have also been seen as connected with the "April showers" referenced in "2+2=5," the song immediately preceding "Sit Down" on Hail to the Thief, as well as to the "flood" of "Sail to the Moon," the song immediately following it.
[edit] External links
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