Everything In Its Right Place is the opening song from Radiohead's fourth studio album Kid A.
History
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered psychological burnout, and songwriter Thom Yorke had a mental breakdown. He suffered from writer's block and said he had become disillusioned with rock music. He listened almost exclusively to the electronic music of Warp artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre, saying:
"It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music."
Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. Everything In Its Right Place was the first song he wrote on the piano, followed by Pyramid Song (released on Amnesiac in 2001). He said:
"I'm such a shit piano player. I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked".
Producer Nigel Godrich was unimpressed with Yorke's piano rendition of Everything in its Right Place. One night, he and Yorke transferred the song to synthesiser and Godrich processed the recording in Pro Tools. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood manipulated Yorke's vocals using a Kaoss Pad, creating a "glitching, stuttering collage". Greenwood said the song was a turning point in the making of Kid A:
"We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."
He said it was the first time Radiohead had been happy to leave a song "sparse", instead of "layering on top of what’s a very good song or a very good sound, and hiding it, camouflaging it in case it’s not good enough."
Lyrics
[Chorus] Everything Everything Everything Everything In its right place In its right place In its right place In its right place [Verse 1] Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon [Chorus] Everything Everything Everything In its right place In its right place In its right place Right place [Verse 2] There are two colours in my head There are two colours in my head What, what is that you tried to say? What, what was that you tried to say? Tried to say, tried to say Tried to say, tried to say [Outro] Everything Everything Everything