A marvelous song by Radiohead, an English band, whose singer is the talented Thom Yorke.
I have written out two ways that i have viewed this song. My interpretations are just that, and not know information about why Thom Yorke wrote this song.
Example: "Karma police arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio"
I see this as a man that maybe Thom has met or just your average Joe, who talks like he knows what he's saying but his words are making absolutely no sense. It's like math, well at least to me. For me, math goes in one ear and out the other leaving me completely lost and extremely perturb. This man mindless babblings have gone on so long that they've become like the annoying drone of a refrigerator on a hot summer's day. "He's like a detuned radio", means again that the man’s words are lost in the static, the frustration builds and you want something to be done to silence the man. The Karma Police repay the irritation and frustration that the man has caused.
The rest of the song follows the same theme of your actions coming back on you, by way of the Karma Police. So be careful of your actions because you never know when they'll come back to haunt you and you be stuck regreting what you have done becuase you are now facing the music .
This song can also be viewed as a way of ridding ourselves of those things that we don't understand. This song opens with an order for the karma police to arrest a man. The karma police must be a group of people who make their arrests based on an evaluation of a person's actions, and thus the speaker must make a "charge" against the man he wants arrested. His charge is that "he talks in maths," that he is unintelligible, and of course we always want to rid ourselves of what we don't understand. The next charge is against a girl with a "Hitler hairdo." I am not quite sure what a Hitler hairdo is, but obviously the speaker finds it grounds for arrest by the karma police, presumably because he does not like it and the girl looks different from the norm, and so should be put away. I see the speaker as a sort of "Hitler" himself; a person who wants to shun or get rid of anything he doesn't understand or like. Thus he crashes the girls party, even though he presumably does not know her or have anything against her besides her hair. The final verse is the speaker's plea for help. He has tried but he cannot get rid of all the things that upset him. He has given all he can but there is still more to do, in his eyes. I see Thom as taking on the persona of the speaker for most of the song, because we all want to hide from what we don't comprehend at times, but at the end he snaps out of it, admitting "For a minute there, I lost myself." The song is a comment on the people who desire what the speaker desired, and a warning to the rest of us not to fall into the temptation to judge quickly, like the karma police and the speaker, before we understand.