All the ghost-like keyboard sounds and weird strings were completely gutted out of his mix, like he'd gone in with a razor blade and chopped it all up. Surprised that the slow-paced 'Fake Plastic Trees' was seen as a potential single to follow up 'Creep', Yorke realised the label had remixed the track without the band's approval: 'Last night I was called by the American record company insisting, well almost insisting, that we used a Bob Clearmountain mix of it. One source of frustration for the band at the time was their US record label, Capitol, which wanted a strong track for American radio to follow the success of their previous hit single, ' Creep'. Yorke performed three takes of the song and cried afterwards, according to guitarist Jonny Greenwood. It was so pompous and bombastic.' Frustrated at being at the studio for a prolonged period one day, Yorke 'threw a wobbly' in his own description, after which producer John Leckie sent the rest of the band away while Yorke recorded a guide track for featuring only guitar and vocals. Guitarist Ed O'Brien described early attempts to record 'Fake Plastic Trees' at London's RAK Studios as sounding 'like Guns N' Roses' ' November Rain'. I thought they were really funny, especially that bit about polystyrene.' Recording Instead, 'That was not forced at all, it was just recording whatever was going on in my head, really. He did not take his usual approach of either keeping note 'of whatever my head's singing at the particular moment' or forcing 'some nifty phrases' he devised onto the melody. He said the song arose from a melody he had 'no idea what to do with'.

Singer Thom Yorke said 'Fake Plastic Trees' was 'the product of a joke that wasn't really a joke, a very lonely, drunken evening and, well, a breakdown of sorts'.

Plastic love song