It barks at no one else but me
Like it's seen a ghost
I guess it's seen the sparks a-flowin
No one else would know
[Chorus]
Hey man, slow down, slow down
Idiot, slow down, slow down
[Verse 2]
Sometimes I get overcharged
That's when you see sparks
They ask me where the hell I'm going
At a thousand feet per second
[Chorus]
Hey man, slow down, slow down
Idiot, slow down, slow down
[Guitar Solo]
[Chorus]
Hey man, slow down, slow down
Idiot, slow down, slow down
About
“The Tourist” is the final track on OK Computer, punctuating the album with soaring guitar solos and ethereal vocals. The track is about enjoying life; when a tourist visits a place, he usually feels like he has to do a lot to take in the sights, making him move at a fast-pace, hence Thom telling him to “slow down.”
According to Q Magazine:
This was written by Jonny Greenwood in response to seeing a group of tourists dash through a town in France. It was intended to be a song about the “speed you live your life with.” Yorke later added lyrics that he’d written on holiday in Prague.
The song, and thus the album, ends with a triangle prominently chiming.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
From a Radiohead interview published in Rolling Stone in 2017 for the 20th anniversary of OK Computer:
Thom Yorke: That’s a classic situation where Jonny had written this incredibly slow, moving riff so I started singing about slowing down and we were traveling, endlessly traveling, endlessly. Everything was about speed. Everything was moving so fast. I had that sense of sitting in looking out a window and things moving past me so fast you could barely see them.
Nigel Godrich: The final thing you hear on the album is a triangle. It was played by Phil, I think.
- 1.Airbag
- 5.Let Down
- 6.Karma Police
- 10.No Surprises
- 11.Lucky
- 12.The Tourist