Fake Plastic Trees

Song meaning of Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead

Radiohead's Thom Yorke, described the song "the product of a joke that wasn't really a joke, a very lonely, drunken evening and, well, a breakdown of sorts", and came to him from a melody he had "no idea what to do with". He did not keep note "of whatever my head's singing at the particular moment" or applying "some nifty phrases" he devised onto the melody, and instead "just recorded whatever was going on in my head". He said: "I wrote those words and laughed. I thought they were really funny, especially that bit about polystyrene."

Lyrics of Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead

Her green plastic watering can

For her fake Chinese rubber plant

In the fake plastic earth

That she bought from a rubber man

In a town full of rubber plans

To get rid of itself

It wears her out, it wears her out

It wears her out, it wears her out

She lives with a broken man

A cracked polystyrene man

Who just crumbles and burns

He used to do surgery

For girls in the eighties

But gravity always wins

It wears him out, it wears him out

It wears him out, it wears

She looks like the real thing

She tastes like the real thing

My fake plastic love

But I can't help the feeling

I could blow through the ceiling

If I just turn and run

And it wears me out, it wears me out

It wears me out, it wears me out

If I could be who you wanted

If I could be who you wanted all the time

All the time

All the time