“Harrowdown Hill” by Thom Yorke

"Harrowdown Hill" was the first single from The Eraser, the solo album Thom Yorke made for XL in 2006 while Radiohead were on hiatus. The song had been around since the sessions for Hail to the Thief, Radiohead's 2003 album, but Yorke said it could never have worked as a Radiohead track.

It's about David Kelly, the British weapons expert who took his own life in 2003 after he told a journalist that his government's claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were false. Kelly was found in the woods at Harrowdown Hill, close to Yorke's old school in Oxfordshire, and the 1990 poll tax riots fed into the song as well. The Globe and Mail heard a love song carrying "menace" and a "grim political showdown", and it climbed to 23 on the British singles chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.