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Karma Police
"Karma Police" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 25 August 1997 as the second single from their third studio album, OK Computer (1997). It features acoustic guitar and piano, and lyrical themes of insanity and dissatisfaction with capitalism.
The music video, directed by Jonathan Glazer, has the singer, Thom Yorke, in the back of a car pursuing a man. It won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.
"Karma Police" reached number one in Iceland and number eight on the UK singles chart. In the US, it reached number 14 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was included on Radiohead: The Best Of (2008). Rolling Stone placed "Karma Police" at number 279 in its rankings of the 500 greatest songs of all time in 2021 and 2024.
"Karma Police" is in common time and played in standard tuning. The key is ambiguous and changes throughout. The verse section can be interpreted as either moving between A natural minor and A dorian, or between E natural minor and E phrygian. The chorus section is in G major and the coda section can be interpreted in either B minor or D major. Acoustic guitar and piano are the most prominent instruments. The piano riff resembles part of "Sexy Sadie" by the Beatles.
The song progresses from the intro into a mid-tempo section which alternates between a verse and a chorus. The verse begins with the line "Karma police", and the chorus begins with the line "This is what you'll get". After this section cycles through twice, the song switches into a second section which is based around the line "For a minute there, I lost myself". Thom Yorke's voice is put through a reverb effect and a sliding melodic figure serves as a counterpoint to his vocals. In the final minute, Ed O'Brien distorts his guitar by driving a delay effect to self-oscillation, then lowering the delay rate, creating a "melting" effect.
After Yorke told the producer, Nigel Godrich, that he was not happy with the ending, the pair reconstructed it with loops and samples, a technique they developed on later Radiohead albums. Godrich said: "It was the first time we did anything like that. Just us in the studio, and a forerunner of a lot of things to come, good and bad."
The title lyric originates from an inside joke; the members of Radiohead would threaten to call the "karma police" if someone did something bad. Yorke said the song was about stress and "having people looking at you in that certain [malicious] way". He said: "It's for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!"
The phrase 'karma police' predates the song and appears in print in issue #399 of the Marvel Comics series The Incredible Hulk (written by Peter David), released in September 1992 (cover date November 1992), in which the character Rick Jones says, "It's the karma police. What goes around comes around."
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Karma Police
"Karma Police" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 25 August 1997 as the second single from their third studio album, OK Computer (1997). It features acoustic guitar and piano, and lyrical themes of insanity and dissatisfaction with capitalism.
The music video, directed by Jonathan Glazer, has the singer, Thom Yorke, in the back of a car pursuing a man. It won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.
"Karma Police" reached number one in Iceland and number eight on the UK singles chart. In the US, it reached number 14 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was included on Radiohead: The Best Of (2008). Rolling Stone placed "Karma Police" at number 279 in its rankings of the 500 greatest songs of all time in 2021 and 2024.
"Karma Police" is in common time and played in standard tuning. The key is ambiguous and changes throughout. The verse section can be interpreted as either moving between A natural minor and A dorian, or between E natural minor and E phrygian. The chorus section is in G major and the coda section can be interpreted in either B minor or D major. Acoustic guitar and piano are the most prominent instruments. The piano riff resembles part of "Sexy Sadie" by the Beatles.
The song progresses from the intro into a mid-tempo section which alternates between a verse and a chorus. The verse begins with the line "Karma police", and the chorus begins with the line "This is what you'll get". After this section cycles through twice, the song switches into a second section which is based around the line "For a minute there, I lost myself". Thom Yorke's voice is put through a reverb effect and a sliding melodic figure serves as a counterpoint to his vocals. In the final minute, Ed O'Brien distorts his guitar by driving a delay effect to self-oscillation, then lowering the delay rate, creating a "melting" effect.
After Yorke told the producer, Nigel Godrich, that he was not happy with the ending, the pair reconstructed it with loops and samples, a technique they developed on later Radiohead albums. Godrich said: "It was the first time we did anything like that. Just us in the studio, and a forerunner of a lot of things to come, good and bad."
The title lyric originates from an inside joke; the members of Radiohead would threaten to call the "karma police" if someone did something bad. Yorke said the song was about stress and "having people looking at you in that certain [malicious] way". He said: "It's for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!"
The phrase 'karma police' predates the song and appears in print in issue #399 of the Marvel Comics series The Incredible Hulk (written by Peter David), released in September 1992 (cover date November 1992), in which the character Rick Jones says, "It's the karma police. What goes around comes around."