Jigsaw Falling into Place

open pick

They played an early version on the 2006 tour under the working title “Open Pick”, more than a year before anyone heard the record. It was one of the songs that came quickly once Godrich was back in the room, cut in the same productive run as “Bodysnatchers”. Drowned in Sound described the finished thing accurately enough: a “bass-propelled pop-rock head-bobber”.

before you're comatose

Yorke wrote it out of watching people drink in Oxford.

The lyrics are quite caustic, the idea of ‘before you're comatose’ or whatever, drinking yourself into oblivion and getting fucked-up to forget… [There] is partly this elation. But there's a much darker side.

thom yorke · nme, 8 december 2007

the helmets

Garth Jennings and Adam Buxton directed the video in two takes: the band playing in their own studio with cameras strapped to bicycle helmets, so the film is five views of each other. David Byrne, who happened to be visiting, watched an early cut and assumed the helmets would be edited out. Buxton kept them in on purpose.

For me, that was the point. It's funny… [Radiohead] completely got what was good about the idea. They committed to it and they performed it brilliantly. And Thom was mesmerising and each member of the band was just giving it.

adam buxton · gq, 3 september 2020

He also reckons it is the least popular video the band ever released, and rates it among his own best work.

the single

It was the first single from In Rainbows, released on 14 January 2008, and reached number 30. The B-sides were Yorke's solo From the Basement performances of “Videotape”, “Down Is the New Up” and “Last Flowers”.

Steve Reich built part of Radio Rewrite out of this song and “Everything in Its Right Place”, calling it “a beautiful song” with “elaborate harmonic movement”.