They’ve been around for decades and after their amazing headline set at this year’s Glastonbury they’ve proved to us all that their still just as relevant as ever! Radiohead for me have always been the pinnacle of experimental music, the first band to pop into my head whenever the subject’s brought up. Over the years they’ve racked up quite an impressive catalogue of tracks, they’ve been loved and they’ve been ridiculed for albums such as Kid A and The King of Limbs. Say what you want about Radiohead, but you can’t deny that their delightfully unpredictable in a time where music has never been more so the opposite. So without further ado I’ve compiled a list of my top 5 Radiohead songs and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy but the list is as follows….
5: No Surprises
The simple beauty of this track is what makes it so compelling, it’s the story of a man at the end of it all and as strange as it may sound, the track has you feeling like there could just be something beautiful in that. He’s clearly fed up and has suffered a great deal, but he takes solace in knowing that he will soon be at peace. It’s melancholic as these bleak lyrical themes are only contrasted by dreamy high pitched guitar chords which carry the track along ever so gracefully. “Bring down the government, they don’t speak for us” was a line that in light of recent events couldn’t have felt any more appropriate as it was sung by thousands of people at this year’s Glastonbury festival.
4: Nude
Taken from their seventh album, In Rainbows is quite possibly their most popular album from the 2000’s and rightly so. It’s an absolute masterpiece from start to finish and this track in particular would have to be the cherry on top. Thom Yorke’s vocals are a dream here, accompanied by such a smooth bass line. You can feel a release with each cymbal crash and those strings just transcend you to another world. Nude isn’t just a song, it’s an experience and the same goes for the entire In Rainbows album as a whole.
3: Burn the Witch
The announcement of their most recent album A Moon Shaped Pool was accompanied by this very single and I’ve got to say at the time of its release I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I certainly wouldn’t have expected it to ‘creep’ (I’m so punny) into my favourites all these months later. Burn the Witch made it abundantly clear that the new album would mostly revolve around Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral arrangements which was probably the best way to go considering this was following on from The King of Limbs, an album which largely split opinion. The progression on this track is really something and I’d love to hear it featured in a film or TV show someday as it’s just so atmospheric.
2: Karma Police
A song that couldn’t stray any further from musical conventions if it tried! I’ve only just recently noticed that Karma Police doesn’t actually have itself a chorus and yet it still manages to all fit together perfectly like a puzzle pieces meticulously crafted to connect and match with each other. I remember the first time I heard Karma Police and its outro seemed invasively abrupt to me, but I’ve come to realise it’s the unconventional nature of this track which has ultimately gone on to make it so iconic. It’s oddly brilliant outro was achieved by Ed O’Brien playing a few guitar notes that were then distorted by overloading an AMS rackmount digital delay unit. The song comes to a close with the distorted notes melting as he turns the delay rate knob down to a low frequency. It’s all very technical and oh so impressive!
Special Mentions: Lucky, The Bends, Street Spirit (Fade Out), Daydreaming, Let Down
1: Paranoid Android
Paranoid Android never fails to blow my mind with each and every listen! It’s over six minutes long and contains four distinct sections, Colin Greenwood admitted that the band felt like irresponsible schoolboys when attempting to make some of the more disparate elements work together. He went onto say that “Nobody does a six and a half minute song with all these changes, its ridiculous!” and yet Ed O’Brien denies that they wrote a “Bohemian Rhapsody for the nineties”. Paranoid Android is an absolute beast of a track with its angsty guitar riffs which almost seem to shred through the very fabric of the song, it hits you like being caught in the eye of a hurricane.
