I am apparently reliving 1990’s rock music lately. So, I was never a huge fan of Radiohead in the past…I liked their arena rockers like Just, as well as Creep and hit songs like High And Dry and Iron Lung but I never really got into them a lot despite the best efforts of some friends back in those days.
Well, I guess I wasn’t ready for them and am now late to the party! I bought a “Best Of” CD and started listening to what were (to me) more obscure tracks. I really made myself listen through the songs even if the opening part of the song didn’t thrill me.
Well holy shit. There are some lush, atmospheric and beautifully crafted pop rock songs on that disc. Believe it or not, I had never heard Paranoid Android before. What a great song. And oh my, the jangly, reverb drenched goodness of Optimistic is super tasty. I love that song. The big fish eat the little ones!
Finally, a song that took me quite awhile to get into, but is my current favorite, is There There (the boney king of nowhere). Again, super tasty guitar playing, lush, stacked and harmonized vocals…these are stupendous studio recordings with just the right blend of great singing by Yorke, great lyrics, super tight playing and awesome song construction.
Why did I miss out on that wave? What are your favorite Radiohead songs?
I was going to mention “Paranoid Android” myself. I’ve never been super huge into them. Don’t get me wrong–I think they’re great, just haven’t really devoted enough energy to really absorb their work… except for OK Computer. Just listen to the whole damned album. That came out my senior year in college, and one of my roommates just played the shit out of it, but it stuck with me. I love that album as a complete whole, from start to end. Radiohead, at least from OK Computer onward, really seems to me to be a band that needs to be listened to in entire albums.
Curiously, YouTube doesn’t seem to have a studio version of the song The Bends…so here’s a Vimeo link if you’ve never heard it, it fucking rocks. ROCKS! https://vimeo.com/199354716
Radiohead are my blind spot. I mean, given all the other stuff I really like I should be super into them - arty angst, not afraid of electronic bleepy stuff, can rock out. And yet, and yet, my two favourite things they’ve done are a New Order and a Smiths cover that they basically messed around with in someones home studio and posted on Youtube.
I like Fake Plastic Trees though - I was somewhere towards the back here:
I was a fairly big fan around the turn of the century but lost interest after 2003. Here are the songs that I still like, with the ones I consider the strongest in bold
Creep
Just
Street Spirit Karma Police Paranoid Android
Fitter Happier
No Surprises Knives out
Everything in its Right Place
Yeah, I may be the only person in the world who actually likes Fitter Happier.
I love Radiohead. Hands down my favorite song of theirs is, hands down National Anthem.
I am also fond of a Drunkin Punch up At a Wedding, 2+2=5, No Surprises, Karma Police, Everything in its Right Place, pretty much all of Kid A, almost all of The Bends.
Radiohead hit me at EXACTLY the right time. I remember vividly going to a party when I was 18 and Kid A just came out. I was already a casual fan of OK computer and people at the party were excited to listen to the new Radiohead album for the first time. It blew my mind. I had never heard anything quite like it. The fusion of rock and ambiant and electronic music hit me in a sweet spot and I became a fan for life.
Sadly, my wife hates them with the fire of a thousand suns, so I respectfully only listen to Radiohead in the car anymore.
I went and looked up the compilation you got. It has nothing from In Rainbows on it, probably too new at the time of release. In Rainbows is a great album. Of you like There There that’s off Hail to the Thief. These are two really good albums that get a lot less love than some of the older stuff. I highly recommend checking them both out.
If you want more of their “rock” sound The Bends is great front to back. It’s their more fun album. Ok Computer is one of the best albums of the 90s of not the best easily top 5. Kid A and Amnesiac people have a hard time with sometimes, though they aren’t really that experimental sounding anymore and if you like the lush atmospherics they have that in spades but there aren’t many from those on the comp.
Lots of great stuff that isn’t on that compilation.
I remember it had a distinctive music video that was a single take of Thom Yorke singing in an astronaut helmet that slowly fills with water throughout the song.
Creep is just a great song, but it seems that there is something about it that the band didn’t like and they changed their musical direction because of Creep, IIRC.
I could never get the Hollies song out of my head when I hear “Creep.” Never been a big fan of it; I prefer “Fake Plastic Trees” by far for their early work. But they just sounded to me like run-of-the-mill Brit Pop until OK Computer. Now, like I said, I don’t listen to their music all that much, but that’s where they seemed to start finding their voice and identity to me.
Ok Computer is probably my favorite album of all time. It’s so fucking…on. All of the tracks are amazing.
I never really got in to their other stuff. I’m not deep enough for Kid A I guess.
I do love many of their singles tho: “Creep”, “Fake Plastic Trees”, “Just” and “High and Dry.” And I love the track from the 2017 re-release of Ok Computer, “I Promise.”
Radiohead is a band I’ve tried to get into a couple times, but just never seemed to connect with. I listened to the albums I had, but it never clicked. I even posted a thread about them years ago about how I just didn’t get them. So I kinda gave up and moved on.
Just a couple weeks ago, I’m listening to the satellite radio, and this real cool song comes on. Turns out its Radiohead. From an album I have. Can’t remember the title now.
