I Might Be Wrong

 

A few years ago, I saw that there was a fan album of Radiohead covers being made on the Radiohead subreddit.  At the time, I'd been working up a simple piano/vocal arrangement of I Might Be Wrong (off of Amnesiac).  The song was never really on my radar when it first came out, but came to grow on me over the years.  This was in 2023 - I'd spent the pandemic holed up in my tiny 1 bedroom apartment, spending most of my waking hours working on slot machines without much human interaction.  Despite the composing job, I'd actually found it very hard to play music for myself throughout the pandemic.  It had always been a source of comfort throughout my life - but those days, I just didn't have a lot of extra musical fuel leftover for myself.  

 

At the same time, the AI bandwagon was leaving the station, and I was being tasked with looking into AI audio solutions at my company. There wasn't a ton of progress being made on that front at the time, but I couldn't help following the thread to where it all might lead one day - what would be the hardest thing for a machine to replicate?  Eventually I had this vision of robot/AI Maria, doing dramatic torchsong renditions of Radiohead songs at some future cabaret bar.  Maybe Pangea after the humans were all gone.  Have the machines been scanning my Soundcloud all this time?  Who knows.  In any case, robot/AI Maria sings "I Might Be Wrong" - but as the song progresses, like a replicant in Blade Runner, they start to question the validity of their memories. 

 

"Let's go down to the waterfall - think about the good times, never look back."

 

I spent my childhood wandering up creeks and gullies searching for waterfalls - there were a few small ones my friend Anna and I would climb on the outskirts of town. We'd hide our bikes behind the guard rail, jump a little fence and explore the creek as it climbed uphill until we found the falls.  We spent an entire summer having little local adventures - walking along dams, climbing cliffs - one time we found a bag of quarters down the railroad tracks, which was very exciting (and mysterious!).  

 

That's what I think about when I sing that line.

 

I was incredibly slow getting around to recording and editing the track, and I think that year's cover album ended up falling through.  Although I did sign up for it, I never submitted anything, and I never saw the album released.  Over the past couple years, I'd come back to the song and add a few elements - I really wanted it to feel like a musically dynamic performer being absorbed by the rabid AIs beyond the Blackwall (mixing my references, I was also obsessed with Cyberpunk 2077 at the time).  I'm sure it's wandered pretty far from Thom Yorke's original vision, but hopefully an enjoyable interpretation nevertheless.