Paranoid Android

That song sits at the exact center of what guitar music figured out in the 90s and then mostly gave up on. The shift from the pixelated synth opening into the actual riff is the technical equivalent of a door opening. It’s controlled, architectural, nothing wasted. Thom’s voice carries something wrecked in it even when the lyrics are oblique—you hear the nerves underneath. I put it on less often than I should because it’s so completely itself that there’s something almost confrontational about it. Most songs let you in. This one makes you come to it.