Radiohead have evidently proved themselves to be a continuously evolving alternative rock band since the 90’s throughout their track record of distinguishably diverse, but brilliant, albums. Even using the term “alternative rock” is pushing them into a category they can not be confined to.
Most top 10 song lists will contain the most popular songs which are usually the ones that hit the mainstream. But for a band like Radiohead, whose career spans almost four decades, it would be a disservice to discuss the mainstream songs for the sake of them hitting the mainstream.
Here, interesting song-writing methods, innovative audio engineering techniques, rare musical instruments and finally, popularity, will be the determining factors of what makes it on this strictly chronological list; we already know what Creep sounds like.
1. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
Known for its acoustic arpeggios and sixth single off the British quintet’s second album The Bends (1994), Street Spirit (Fade Out) was one of the tracks that kicked Radiohead’s music career into gear. However, it’s also known as Radiohead’s only song with not a strand of hope in it’s message. Thom Yorke, lead singer and primary song-writer of Radiohead, said, “‘Street Spirit’ is our purest song, but I didn’t write it, it wrote itself; we were just its messengers, it’s biological catalysts.” He goes on to being unable to articulate what the song is even about; hence the amalgamation of bizarre imagery and short stories in the lyrics.
2. Paranoid Android
Released at the height of the digital revolution, Paranoid Android is the lead single off of Radiohead’s Grammy Award Winning Ok Computer (1997) recorded in a 16th century mansion. It’s popularized by it’s four-part distinct song sections and multitudinous rhythmic changes. It starts off with a clean riff at moderate tempo, moves into a faster, heavier section with a different rhythm and key, then seamlessly transitions into a slower, vocally-magical wonder which finally resolves to a chaotic reprise in the final section where a screaming Yorke can be heard. Nigel Godrich, long time producer of Radiohead, has explained, “He did that in the orange room. I think he just needed to go out and scream. It’s in a room made of glass out in the garden.” Nothing like it had been
created at the time.
3. Exit Music (For a Film)
Another fan favorite off of critically acclaimed Ok Computer (1997), Exit Music (for a Film) is inherently Yorke’s vocals with an acoustic guitar and a ghostly choir previously recorded on a mellotron. However, the song takes an interesting turn towards the end when a grimy, growling bassline enters with the drums as the mellotron’s choir soar through the climax of the song — a haunting release. Also tracked in the ancient manor mansion, Yorke’s vocals were achieved by recording in the stone entrance hall which created the natural reverberations heard on the track.
4. Everything In Its Right Place
Selected as the opening track for their second time Grammy Award Winning album Kid A (2000), Everything In Its Right Place was the first song Yorke wrote on his piano before transferring it to a synthesizer.This occurred after being completely disillusioned by rock music following Radiohead’s rising fame created by Ok Computer’s success. Yorke intended for his vocals to not be at the forefront of the track but manipulated with electronic textures instead. He has expressed, “I think there’s a lot of not really trusting anybody in being lost. I didn’t trust people at all . . . and that means you really have nothing to hold onto. ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ is about that. You’re trying to fit into the right place and the right box so you can connect.”
5. How to Disappear Completely
Possibly the song most recognized by the use of Jonny Greenwood’s eerie ondes Martenot lines, and known by Radioheaders as How to Disappear Completely (and Never be Found), it might as well had been a single off of Kid A (2000) had they released any singles off the album. Yorke explains the state of mind he was in after Ok Computer’s recognition, “The lyrics came from something Michael Stipe [of R.E.M.] said to me. I rang him and said, ‘I cannot cope with this.’ And he said, ‘Pull the shutters down and keep saying, ‘I’m not here, this is not happening.” The song emotively speaks to the soul when it’s wandering in a bleak and unknown place. It has a silky orchestral section arranged by Greenwood which explodes into the shrieking modulation of the Ondes Martenot fused with the warped orchestral strings.
6. Pyramid Song
Also known for Jonny Greenwood’s use of his beloved ondes Martenot as it echoes Yorke’s crooning, Pyramid Song was the first single spun off Kid A’s sister album Amnesiac (2001). Yorke was inspired by an Egyptian exhibit in Copenhagen, Stephen Hawking’s theory on time being a cyclical dimension, and Dante’s Divine Comedy as the bassist Colin Greenwood has mentioned, “[it was the image of] people being ferried across the river of death” that impacted Yorke the most. It’s about not fearing death for all your past and future loved ones are all there. It begins with these simple, melancholic piano chords and builds up to a syncopated, rhythmically swung cycle of wonder while the guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, bows his guitar to recreate “a high-pitched wailing sound . . . similar to whale cries”.
7. 2 + 2 = 5
Possibly known as their most famous political song, 2 + 2 = 5 was released as the third single off of their heavily political album, Hail to the Thief (2003). Based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 (1949), the song explores the same theme as the novel; the government has the power to alter factual truths and influence it’s population by exploiting them and playing mind control. Yorke and O’Brien’s delicate vocal harmonies intertwining in the intro lure you into the violent explosive climax where you can hear Yorke’s deranged singing over all the distortion. It progresses into the experimental outro where the Ondes Martenot and analogue systems played by Jonny Greenwood are audible.
8. Nude
Off of their third Grammy Award Winning album In Rainbows (2007), the second single Nude truly emulates the progression of Radiohead’s capability to emotionally convey themselves with their instruments. It aurally encapsulates a dream-like state of mind with the consistent atmospheric ambience throughout the song. It transitions from following melodic clean guitar arpeggios to being replaced by the sacred presence of Ed O’Brien’s guitar reverberations caused by his eBow, an electronic sustaining device that generates drones. Not to mention Yorke’s angelic use of his falsetto — it’s no wonder it
took them ten years to release.
9. Reckoner
Known to Radiohead fans since 2001 and released six years later, Reckoner is a stunning ballad on In Rainbows (2007) as well. Throughout the song, an entire choir of Thom Yorke, specifically his piercing falsetto, can be heard. The percussion is rich with percussive elements of the drums, lemon shaker, tambourine and the mysterious production talents of Nigel Godrich. Once the percussion stops in the midsection, the track engulfs you into this mystical swirl where you’re hovering in a transcendental plane leaving reality behind, as the lyrics denote. The orchestral strings section comes in at the same time Yorke secretly sings “In Rainbows”, the title of the album.
10. Daydreaming
After the long anticipated A Moon Shaped Pool (2016), Daydreaming was the second single to be released, and what a single it is. The song opens with a pitch-warping effect created by slowing down tape and essentially revolves around a sorrowful piano motif. Listening to it is like falling in an altered reality, like being in a lucid dream. The ending has cello’s striking sharply, Jonny Greenwood has noted, “the cellos all tune their bottom strings down about a fifth . . . you can hear them struggling to stay in tune and you have the low growl sound”. In the outro, a distorted, repetitive line is phonetically inaudible due to reversering the lyrics “half of my life”, which has been suspected to be about Yorke spending literally half of his life, 23 years, with his ex-partner, Rachel Owen.