There's a little child
Running round this house
And he never leaves
He will never leave
And the fog comes up from the sewers
And glows in the dark
Baby alligators in the sewers grow up fast
Grow up fast
Anything you want it can be done
How did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
Somethings will never wash away
Did you go bad?
Did you go bad?
A good interpretation of the lyrics ->
It's inspired by the supposed haunting of the studio in which Radiohead recorded Amnesiac, -
The lines
'There's a little child running round this house, and he never leaves, he will never leave'
refers to the ghost, and
'did you go bad'
questions why the boy's soul couldn't pass on, with the typical view on ghosts being that they were unhappy, angry or evil in life.
Baby alligators in the sewers (the original title)refers to the urban legend regarding the baby alligator pet-craze in America in the 1980's - when the baby alligators outgrew their tanks and became unmanagable, they were flushed down the toilet into the sewers where legend has it, they grew huge.
In the context of this song, Thom is saying that the little things you brush beneath the carpet or tuck away inside yourself to forget about will only grow bigger and more dangerous and weigh heavy on your soul.
From Wikipedia about the song ->
"Fog (Again)" is a short acoustic song (2:19), featuring Thom Yorke on vocals and piano. This version was recorded at an acoustic set, widely known as 'Le Reservoir', which Yorke and Jonny Greenwood did for the French-German TV station Arte. It was also featured in a third season episode of The O.C.. The original "Fog" appeared on 2001 single "Knives Out", in a 4/4 rather than 6/8 time signature, and as a mainly bass and percussion-driven song, in a style in keeping with their work of the Kid A/Amnesiac period.
The original version of the song, which runs 4:03 in length, features in the animated film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, along with other Radiohead songs, the B-side "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy" and "Skttrbrain (Four Tet RMX)". "Black Swan", from frontman Thom Yorke's album The Eraser, is also featured in the film, which was released in July 2006.[9]
