Radiohead
At the very moment it reached the summit of guitar rock, this was a band that tore down its own place and built it anew.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Members and collaborators ⏳🌊
- MemberThom Yorke
As singer and principal songwriter, he has carried into his songs the marks of a childhood eye surgery and a lasting unease.
- MemberJonny Greenwood
He handled guitar and keyboards, and later made his name as well as the composer for Paul Thomas Anderson's films.
- MemberColin Greenwood
Jonny's older brother and the bassist, he joined the band first and then brought his younger brother in.
- MemberEd O'Brien
An Oxford native on guitar, he added a thick texture to the band's sound.
- MemberPhil Selway
The oldest member and the drummer, he originally trained as an English teacher.
- ProducerNigel Godrich
From 《The Bends》 on, he was so deeply involved that he has been called the de facto sixth member.
I. The boys of Abingdon School · 1967–1991
In 1985, at Abingdon School, a private boys' school in Oxfordshire, England, five boys formed a band. Friday was the only day on the school timetable when they could use the music room as they pleased, so the band called itself 'On a Friday.' (Yorke) Thom Yorke, on vocals and guitar, was born in October 1968 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England. His left eyelid was paralyzed from birth, and he underwent several operations as a child; for the rest of his life that eye moved differently from other people's. The family moved several times, following his father, who sold chemical equipment, before settling in Oxfordshire, and being teased as the new boy at one unfamiliar school after another made him a quiet, guarded child. (Brothers) Jonny Greenwood, on guitar and keyboards, was born in 1971, and Colin Greenwood, on bass, in 1969; they were brothers. Their father had served in the British Army as a bomb-disposal expert. It all began when Colin joined the band first and then drew in his still-teenage younger brother as a harmonica player. Guitarist Ed O'Brien, born in 1968, was an Oxford native, and drummer Phil Selway, born in 1967, was the oldest of the group and naturally took on the role of big brother. (Reunion) After graduating, Yorke studied English literature and fine art at the University of Exeter while drifting from one band to another, and the other members scattered to their own universities. Returning to Oxford every holiday to keep rehearsing, they came together in earnest in 1991, once all of them had finished their studies. Deciding to drop the name 'On a Friday,' they took their new name, Radiohead, from 「Radio Head」, a song by Talking Heads, a band they loved.
II. The Creep years · 1991–1994
(Contract) At the end of 1991, Radiohead signed a six-album deal with Parlophone, a label under EMI. For young men fresh out of university the terms were not bad, but the advance was modest, and the band went on living frugally for a long time afterward. Their debut album, 《Pablo Honey》, released in 1993, was recorded in a short time and was judged an album caught between grunge and Britpop, without a clear sense of direction. (Alienation) 「Creep」, from that album, was a song in which Yorke set down the shabbiness and alienation he felt watching a student he had a crush on during his Exeter days. Jonny Greenwood found the song boring and tried to sabotage it by slamming his guitar hard just before the chorus, but that harsh chord ended up completing the song. Its plainspoken confession of self-loathing and not fitting in has endured as a self-portrait for countless young people. (Comeback) In Britain, 「Creep」 was at first kept off the air by BBC Radio 1 for being too depressing, and it quietly sank. But a response came first from Israeli radio, and then, when it became a big hit on American alternative radio, the British press belatedly rediscovered the song. The band welcomed the sudden success, yet worried that they would be branded a one-song band, the Creep band. (Touring) The American tour built around the hit was more grueling than their fame would suggest. Being cheered for the same song every night brought the band both a sense of achievement and a sense of being used up, and Yorke confessed in interviews that the life of drifting through strange cities seemed to be eating away at him. The fatigue and loss of direction of this period would be forged into far sturdier songs on the next album.
A song about the shabbiness of unrequited love became the band's first face, thanks to Jonny Greenwood's impulsive urge to destroy.
- The thick chords (power chords) Jonny Greenwood slams out on guitar just before the chorus came from an urge to ruin the song, but instead they gave it its moment of explosion.
- The song's backbone is a contrast: the first verse opens on a quiet chord progression, holding emotion in check, until a harshly distorted guitar tone (distortion) suddenly cuts in at the chorus.
- Thom Yorke sings low, almost murmuring, then at the end of the chorus suddenly raises his voice into a cracking cry — and this emotional drop carries the song's feeling directly.
- In the latter part of the song, where the same line is repeated again and again, the voice was recorded in multiple layers (overdubbing) to add thickness.
III. The Bends · 1994–1996
(Crisis) When 《Pablo Honey》 fell short of expectations, talk went around inside and outside EMI that Radiohead would turn out to be a flash in the pan. The band instead took this as a spur and began work on their second album with producer John Leckie, while engineer Nigel Godrich, who had joined as a studio apprentice, gradually became deeply involved in shaping the sound. (Growth) On 《The Bends》, released in 1995, the band moved beyond simple alternative rock to show far more delicate arrangements. 「Fake Plastic Trees」 took its title from the artificial landscaping of London's Canary Wharf, and 「Street Spirit」 dealt with death and helplessness. The emptiness they felt inside the daily cycle of consumption and success seeped straight into the songs. (Stipe) Around this time Radiohead joined R.E.M.'s tour as the opening act. Singer Michael Stipe offered heartfelt advice to this nearly unknown British band, and was an elder who showed them, up close, how to sing on a big stage without cynicism or bravado. Yorke later recalled that the friendship of this period gave him the courage to keep making music. (Exhaustion) Success had come, but it had a price. Yorke often appeared worn out by too many shows and interviews, and the whole band is said to have grown exhausted, physically and mentally. Yet this fatigue would be sublimated on the next album into a larger theme: anxiety about technological civilization.
Its title came from the artificial landscaping of London's Canary Wharf, and Yorke burst into tears after finishing the recording.
- It opens gently with acoustic guitar picked one note at a time (arpeggio), and as it moves toward the end, the whole band slowly builds up the density.
- Thom Yorke is said to have recorded the song in a single take, and everything is captured, right down to the moment his voice cracks slightly in the last verse.
- A string arrangement lies softly underneath, lifting the emotion without ever stepping to the front — that restrained placement is worth listening for.
- Live, the guitar tone is often played rougher than on the studio version, giving a tension different from the fragility of the original.
IV. OK Computer, the summit · 1996–1998
(Seclusion) In 1996 the band rented St Catherine's Court, an old manor house near Bath, and began recording. Living and recording not in hotel rooms or studio booths but in a mansion with worn staircases and fireplaces had something to do with the sense of isolation that permeates the whole album. It was here that Nigel Godrich first took on the role of producer in his own right. (Anxiety) 《OK Computer》, released in 1997, was an album portraying how computers, automation, airplanes and capitalism alienate people. Yorke himself carried a fear of flying and a vague anxiety about advanced technology, and that personal dread expanded into a portrait of an entire era. In 「Fitter Happier」, a mechanical voice recites sentences that sound like a self-help book, cynically depicting a world where people manage themselves like products. (Structure) 「Paranoid Android」, a song more than 6 minutes long, took the radical form of three different song fragments stitched together. It was too long and complex for radio, but that very strangeness pushed the band out of the category of alternative rock. Critics immediately hailed the album as the masterpiece of its time, and it was a major commercial success as well. (Collapse) Success led straight into a touring schedule too heavy to bear. Yorke was tormented by the feeling of burning himself out every night in front of strange faces, and the documentary 「Meeting People Is Easy」, which records this period, shows without embellishment the exhaustion and disillusionment behind the glittering stage. By the end of the tour, Yorke vowed never to make music this way again.
With its radical structure of more than 6 minutes, this is the song that pushed the band beyond the borders of alternative rock.
- Built from three different songs joined together, it has no verse–chorus pattern; an opening, a frenzied section and a quiet close follow one after another.
- In the middle, Jonny Greenwood's guitar solo is short and sharply clipped, placed so that it seems to leap out suddenly.
- In the frenzied section, Thom Yorke sings in a rougher, more agitated tone than usual, almost shouting, in strong contrast with the calm sections around it.
- Despite the title, the latter part settles quietly into layered, choirlike harmonies, and this drop defines the emotional arc of the whole song.
V. Putting down the guitar · 1999–2001
(Refusal) Suffering the aftereffects of touring, Yorke grew sick of the very act of writing songs on guitar. He said in interviews that he wanted to escape his position as the singer of a guitar-rock band, and for a while he fell into a creative slump in which he could barely write new songs. It was a precarious time, when a breakup of the band was seriously discussed. (Electronics) What broke the slump were electronic musicians on Warp Records such as Aphex Twin and Autechre, and jazz musicians such as Alice Coltrane and Charles Mingus. The band took up synthesizers and samplers in place of guitars, and instead of bringing in finished songs, they chose to build up sounds improvisationally in the studio. During this period Yorke said in several interviews that he had become disillusioned with rock music itself. (Adventure) 《Kid A》, released in 2000, was an album with no obvious single and no familiar choruses. 「Everything in Its Right Place」 chopped Yorke's voice into small pieces and spliced them so that the original lyrics were hard to make out, and 「Idioteque」 laid an apocalyptic mood over samples of old electronic music. The press predicted commercial suicide, but the album won a great response from critics and the public alike. (Twins) 《Amnesiac》, released the following year, was a sister album gathering songs from the same sessions. With these two albums the band moved completely from alternative-rock stars to an experimental band crossing genres. Fans were divided, but this gamble became the grounds for the freedom the band would enjoy afterward, whatever music they chose to make.
It was a song like a manifesto from a band that had set the guitar aside entirely and crossed over into electronic sound.
- Short repeating rhythmic fragments (loops) over samples of old electronic music hold up the whole song, and the guitar barely appears.
- Rather than singing, Thom Yorke conveys a sense of crisis through urgent, murmured delivery, and that impatience seems to thicken as the song goes on.
- The song's rhythm is woven not from drums played by a person but from prepared electronic signals (synthesizers and samplers), giving it a texture completely different from the earlier albums.
- The ending, which breaks off suddenly while the tension still holds, is often stretched out at length in live performance.
VI. In Rainbows and independence · 2002–2011
(Anger) In 2003, 《Hail to the Thief》 bore a title aimed at the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and the contested 2000 U.S. presidential election. Yorke had long been wary of wearing his politics openly, but on this album he voiced his anger at war and the surveillance society more directly than ever before. (Break) When the band's contract with EMI ended with this album, they chose an independent path rather than signing with a new label. Behind the decision lay a distrust of the major labels built up over long years of disputes about royalty accounting and ownership of their albums. (Experiment) In 2007, 《In Rainbows》 was released through the band's own website, where buyers could download it and pay whatever they wished. The entire record industry watched the experiment closely, and in the end the band earned considerable income without the conventional distribution network. A physical release followed through the record label XL Recordings. (Rhythm) In 2011, 《The King of Limbs》 was filled with shorter, more rhythm-driven songs than before. By then the band members lived scattered in different places, yet had grown used to writing songs by trading material online. A collaboration that had lasted more than twenty years was now solid enough to keep rolling without everyone gathering in one room.
Of the album they put out into the world without a label, this is said to be the song the band itself cherished most.
- Over a rhythm lightly tapped on the hi-hat (a small cymbal) at the start of the song, Thom Yorke begins softly in falsetto (head voice).
- In the middle section a string arrangement gradually swells in, raising the song's temperature, and it is these strings, more than the guitar, that set the song's central color.
- Harmonies built from many layered voices (a chorus) fill the final section, giving the sense not of one person but of many singing together.
- Live, the band often plays it with a rhythm section stacked considerably thicker than on the studio version.
VII. Loss and the present · 2012–2026
(Tragedy) In June 2012, ahead of a concert in Toronto, the stage roof structure collapsed, killing drum technician Scott Johnson and injuring other crew members. The band immediately cancelled the show and could not shake off the shock of the accident for a long time, and lawsuits and investigations followed for several years afterward. (Parting) In August 2015, Yorke and the printmaker Rachel Owen announced their separation after twenty-three years together. The parting soon seeped deeply into the next album. (Lament) On 2016's 《A Moon Shaped Pool》, 「Daydreaming」 and 「True Love Waits」 dealt with separation and loss respectively. 「True Love Waits」, an unfinished song played only live since 1995, was formally recorded after twenty years, and after Owen died of cancer that December, it was heard anew as a lament for Owen. Jonny Greenwood, meanwhile, was building a reputation as a film composer for director Paul Thomas Anderson. (Present) In 2019 the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Studio albums have grown scarce since then, but the band has never announced a breakup, and Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, together with drummer Tom Skinner, unveiled the side project The Smile in 2021 and have released new albums with it. The name Radiohead is regarded as merely paused, not finished for good.
It was a song that spoke obliquely of loss, born from where a relationship of some twenty years had ended.
- Over piano chords that quietly repeat, strings and electronic sounds slowly layer in, and with no clear chorus the whole song unfolds as a single current.
- Thom Yorke's voice begins low and calm and grows ever fainter, in a tone closer to hinting at loss obliquely than naming it outright.
- Hidden at the very end of the song is a short passage of Yorke's voice played backward, and listening closely, one feels the strange texture of human speech turned inside out.
- Because the song was made together with its music video, the stillness of the opening is said to have been designed to mesh with the slow scenes of movement in the film.
Lesser-known stories
Phil Selway studied English and history at university, and until the band signed a record deal, worked as an English teacher, a copy editor, and the drummer in the pit band for touring musicals. This background is thought to have something to do with the especially calm, restrained impression Selway gives on stage. Thom Yorke is known to have drifted through various part-time jobs before the band found success. Biographers speculate that this experience of watching patients up close may have shaped the images of anxiety and mental crisis that recur so often in Yorke's songs. The machine voice heard in 「Fitter Happier」 was not specially produced; it was simply lifted from the speech-synthesis program built into Macintosh computers at the time. Few people know that the moment often named as the album's most chilling actually came from ordinary office software. Rachel Owen was Yorke's partner for more than twenty years yet almost never appeared in public. Many fans learned of Owen's existence only through the news of Owen's death in 2016, which is in keeping with the whole band's deep reluctance to expose their private lives.
Glossary 📚🔎
Distortion
(In rock) A tone made by deliberately driving a strong signal into a guitar or amplifier so the sound tears apart. At first it sounded like something broken, but rock musicians embraced its rough texture as a means of expression. Think of the raw feeling of singing at the top of your lungs until your voice is hoarse. (Elsewhere) The warping of an image in a photograph or lens is also called distortion.
Falsetto
(Literally) From the Italian falso, meaning 'false'. It is a way of singing in which a man produces notes far above his natural range by resonating in the space of the head rather than the chest, and it got its name because it is not the 'true' voice. (In rock) It refers to the technique of drawing out high notes in a thin, delicate tone, as Thom Yorke does. It is like the feeling, in choir class, of the sound ringing in your head rather than your throat when you reach for a note much higher than usual.
Changing meter
(Literally) In Hanja, byeon (變), 'to change', and bak (拍), 'beat' — meaning the meter changes partway through. (In rock) It means changing the beat unit that makes up a measure within a single song, or using unfamiliar units such as 5 or 7 beats instead of a familiar one like 4. It is like learning a dance where, after marching in step, you suddenly have to switch your footwork every three steps, so it feels awkward until you get used to it.
Synthesizer
(Literally) From the English synthesize, meaning 'to combine' — the idea of making sound by combining electrical signals. (In rock) An instrument that looks like a keyboard but, rather than playing recordings of real instruments, generates waveforms directly with electronic circuits or a computer. It is closer to creating color and texture from scratch in a computer program than to applying paint by hand.
Loop
(Literally) The English word for a ring or circle. (In rock) A technique of recording a short phrase or fragment of sound and making it repeat exactly. Just as a round keeps repeating the same melody, a machine endlessly repeats a snippet of rhythm or sound to lay the foundation of a song. (Elsewhere) In programming, too, a loop refers to a structure that executes the same instruction repeatedly.
Overdubbing
(In rock) A method of recording a new performance or voice layered on top of one already recorded. Without erasing the first take, you add harmonies over it one by one, much like finishing a painting, waiting for it to dry, and then laying another color on top.