10. There There – Hail to the Thief
“There There” was the first song I ever saw Radiohead play live. It was at the dreary 2003 Field Day Music Festival in East Rutherford, NJ (Giants Stadium) that I got to see my favorite band for the first time and it was utter euphoria from start to finish. I remember being in awe of both Jonny and Ed bashing away on tom-toms as if they were being possessed by voodoo spirits. On record, the song is fantastic too, with it’s strange seventh chords and its references to the sirens and walking in pitch dark. The highlight comes at the end with the coda section, with Thom and Ed wailing, “We are accidents waiting to happen” above the crooked-tooth chomping din of Jonny’s jagged lead guitar.
9. Idioteque – Kid A
First of all, Idioteque is so great because it essentially invented (for me, and I know a lot of other people too) the crazy spasm dance move. Just watch any live footage of Radiohead performing this and you’ll witness Thom doing his headless chicken (reference!)/techno raver rain dance. Speaking as someone who cannot dance very well at all, I can’t be more thankful to him for creating a borderline acceptable dance for people who have absolutely no talent for it. As far as the song goes, just listen for yourself. It’s all jittery computer blips and kaoss-padded vox bouncing viciously over a bed of super funky synth drums and an idiotic (ahem) keyboard part.
8. Fake Plastic Trees – The Bends
The most moving ballad of the mid-90s. Thom turns in perhaps his most evocative performance on acoustic guitar and vocals, and the band ride in on a landslide on the third verse. Another great usage of an understated refrain too. Everything about this song is perfect, from the beautifully dramatic strings, to the crashing vainglory (ed: all glory is vain) of the distorted guitars, right on up to the impossibly high falsetto notes of the melody. This song also takes me back to my childhood in Hong Kong for some reason.
7. Karma Police – OK Computer
It sounds a little like Sexy Sadie, sure, but I didn’t know that when I first heard this song. I do know that it’s brilliantly understated chorus is one of the coolest musical tricks ever. I’m pretty sure the song made it onto one of those Now That’s What I Call Music comps, which is pretty absurd, and just goes to show how Radiohead seem to miraculously be able to appeal to just about everybody (except my Dad). What I really love about this song though is the kind of sinister subject of this guy sort of getting second thoughts about this uber-totalitarian society he lives in and then getting lobotomized right at the end during the coda. The best moment of the song is when the robo-phantom siren choir comes in right around 3:15, only to be drowned out by a horrendous maelstrom of drone-y feedback perpetrated by Ed (I believe).
6. You and Whose Army? – Amnesiac
Another of my all-time favorite vocal takes. On this track, Thom sounds like he’s either a) got a bad head cold or b) just got the snot beaten out of him and is lying in a dirty gutter in the middle of some random high street out of Conan Doyle. It also appeals to me as a musician, since it’s got a lot of these cool jazz chords, which are pretty dazzling coming outta Jonny’s Fender Starcaster semi-hollow guitar. The rousing coda at the end is one of those spine-tinglers for me. “We ride tonight!” I always get this image of maybe the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or something.
5. Lurgee – Pablo Honey
It’s kind of a less remembered song, being from Radiohead’s first and, admittedly, flawed album Pablo Honey, but Lurgee is just one of those songs that I just got really attached to. Like so many Radiohead songs, its bittersweet and could be interpreted as a pretty sad song, but I just find it really inspiring and I used to listen to it before I had to do anything important as a kind of embarrassing fan-boy ritual. I have no regrets! Also, I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced Luhr – Gee (like a hard ‘g’ sound) and not Luhr-jee (as in jellyfish).
4. Cuttooth – Knives Out CD Single
Once I got really obsessed with Radiohead during freshman and sophomore year of high school I started buying all their singles and paying exorbitant amounts of money for Japanese imports, but the first B-side I ever heard was “Cuttooth.” It’s a piano-pounding little number with a snarling Thom vocal that mostly stays in the baritone register, with the occasional lilting howl occasionally thrown in just to make things too good to bear. I remember trying to figure out the lyrics and just loving the line that (I think) goes “I won’t lead your wallpaper life, I’m running away to the Foreign Legion.” I must’ve listened to the CD single it’s on dozens and dozens of times and it never gets old. It works really well as a follow-up track to “Knives Out” as well, and I often think that Amnesiac would’ve been better if some of the fantastic era B-Sides had been included.
3. Let Down – OK Computer
This song blows me away. Featuring guitars in weird time signatures I don’t understand, visceral imagery like “shell smashed, juices flowing, wings twitch” (disgusting!), and perhaps the most uplifting harmony line I’ve ever heard (at about 4:18 thru), this song dips you in a vat of liquid nitrogen, pulls you out again, and then smashes you to smithereens with a hammer swung in part by every person you’ve ever thought you’ve been in love with ever. It really does.
2. Climbing Up the Walls – OK Computer
The scariest rock song ever written. This song is anchored by a terrific growling bass synth line played by Colin, but it’s the vocal take that really thrills me. Thom Yorke starts out singing in this kind of slurry falsetto that makes him sound like he’s this rabid lunatic escaped from an asylum. Then it transitions to a more frantic delivery in the second verse and the more shrill notes start distorting and then the song really takes off. I just get this vision of scraping metal and hissing steam as it reaches its noisy climax and then it suddenly ends real violently with this horrific shriek. Unbeatable. What’s more, it’s followed immediately by No Surprises in the running order of OK Computer, so you feel like you’ve just witnessed some traumatic event and now you’re in therapy and someone’s playing Pet Sounds on the hi-fi.
1. Optimistic – Kid A
Optimistic was the first song I ever heard by Radiohead. I remember around 2001 I was in the eighth grade and still had a CD wallet full of M.O.R. excrement like Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory, Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other, and others I would name if they didn’t cause me to projectile vomit. It was also around this time that I kept seeing the Kid A blips (maybe it was 2000 then?) and I was really fascinated by the little minotaur cartoons. Then I saw the video for Optimistic, where the band was shown playing the song live in Dublin. I remember Thom introduced the song saying “This song is for Jubilee 2000” and I remember also not knowing what that meant.” What followed was five minutes and sixteen seconds of mind-invading psychedelic pop ecstasy that changed my entire life. Love that watery organ in the background, but it’s the wordless falsetto bits at the beginning and the end that just send me to another planet.
