Fitter Happier
FITTER HAPPIER (1:57) Song info
more productive
comfortable
not drinking too much
regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
at ease
eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)
a patient better driver
a safer car (baby smiling in back seat)
sleeping well (no bad dreams)
no paranoia
careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)
keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in wall)
favours for favours
fond but not in love
charity standing orders
on sundays ring road supermarket
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)
car wash (also on sundays)
no longer afraid of the dark
or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
nothing so childish
at a better pace
slower and more calculated
no chance of escape
now self-employed
concerned (but powerless)
an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)
will not cry in public
less chance of illness
tires that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)
a good memory
still cries at a good film
still kisses with saliva
no longer empty and frantic
like a cat
tied to a stick
that's driven into
frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)
calm
fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics 
Available on: OK Computer.
Other Versions: none.

This is not a song. A computer [mac] speaks in a random manner. There are weird piano and violin noises going on in the background.  

Thom: "The computer was the most emotional voice I have ever heard, at the time."  

Colin: "It sounds like Stephen Hawking is guesting on the album. Maybe he should have been. I used to see him when I was at college, toddling around in his wheelchair."  

Thom: "The others were downstairs, 'rockin', and I crept upstairs and did this in ten minutes. I was feeling incredible hysteria and panic, and it was so liberating to give the lyrics to this neutral-sounding computer. I had about three months where I couldn't write anything, but I constantly had lists. Then I realised that it was the only way I was going to say what I needed to say. Sometimes, before you have a genuine feeling it is circumvented by the outside, your brain is apologising for things that haven't even happened yet. But me, I listen to the piano bit."  

Colin: We used a computervoice with the voicebox. It's weird how much emotion there is in that voice.  

Thom: That voicebox is the most emotional voice I've heard in ages... I'm not standing behind the lyrics any more. Sometimes your ideas get entangled with other ideas and then you have to apologize for the original idea because it doesn't make sense any more. That's what happened with 'Fitter Happier'. Now, I listen to the piano part.  

Ed: I love the lyrics. "fitter happier / more productive / comfortable / not drinking too much / regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)": We used that advice in a lot of magazines to promote the album. I think that some people really believe that message and think that we are some kind of health-freaks.  

Jonny: We use 'Fitter Happier' as an intro at concerts. Earlier we used pieces of minimalist composer Messaen. Discover that man, and you'll think that Philip Glass is way over-rated. 



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