No Exit: An Evaluation of Paradoxical Tensions in Radiohead’s “Exit Music (for a Film)”

Abstract

ABSTRACT With Radiohead’s seminal third album OK Computer (1997), the band included a track “Exit Music (for a Film)” that had been written on assignment for the Baz Luhrmann film William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). The song is an elegiac ode to the doomed lovers at the heart of the play. In the song’s construction and design, paradoxical tensions emerge. These paradoxes include trying to understand the draw of art that repels, the postmodern influence to balance genuine emotion with self-reflexive artifice, and the band’s overall mission to consistently challenge expectations and evolve. While business disciplines have been leveraging paradox theory to categorize and work through organizational tensions, the framework has not been applied much to artistic texts. This article utilizes the paradox theory framework to articulate and categorize the underlying tensions in Radiohead’s “Exit Music (for a Film).”