Whatever makes you happy

Whatever you want

You're so f*****g special

I wish I was Special

But I'm a Creep

I'm a Weirdo

What the hell am I doing here?

I don't belong here

-Thom Yorke, Vocalist and Guitarist

With the song Creep, Radiohead were propelled to a kind of fame. Lead singer Thom Yorke seemed to speak for the misfits of the world. Thousands found solace in the way he could vocalise the despair and hatred felt by people around the world who failed to fit into what people wanted them to be. Since then Radiohead have continued to produce some of the most powerful and meaningful music of the nineties, and possibly a long time before then. Since their debut album, Pablo Honey, the Oxford based quintet¹ seem to have gone from strength to strengh with each album only surpassing the last, from the Bends to OK Computer to Kid A, Radiohead continuously produce brilliant, thought-provoking and most importantly original music.

Pablo Honey - Thinking about You

The highlight of Radiohead's first album was the positively anthemic Creep. The bass powered verses give way to the infamous guitar crunches of the bridge² and the powerful guitars of the chorus accompanied by Thom's beautiful lyrics of self disgust. Another highlight on the album include the wistful lyrics and guitar-driven harmonies of Thinking About You. All in all, this was a good solid debut album with a good promise of greater things to come.

The Bends - You Do It To Yourself

Here Radiohead demonstrated a consistent talent for producing excellent rock anthems. Virtually every song on this album was a potential hit. The excellent singles Just, High and Dry, Street Spirit and My Iron Lung, are a sample of the breadth of the album, from the melancholy beauty of High and Dry to the powerful guitar riffing of Just. Lyrical genius seems to seep from every pore of this album and the emotion of Thom's unique voice is at it's most powerful on songs like The Bends where we hear Thom scream 'I wanna live, breathe, I wanna be part of the Human Race' with such a passion that it's hard to note feel that ache within everyone to fit in. Other great songs on the album (I'm resisting the urge to simply copy out the track listing) include Fake Plastic Trees, a heart-wrenching tortured ballad about the false nature of beauty in the modern world based around a simple bit of guitar strumming with a gentle organ underscore at times, and Black Star a great guitar-driven track that marked Radiohead's first collaboration with Nigel Godrich, who remained their producer for the more recent albums. The Bends recieved much critical acclaim and, if I remember correctly, several awards. But was only a prelude to what most consider the pinnacle of Radiohead's carreer.

OK Computer - Fitter Happier More Productive

Radiohead seemed to reach apotheosis with this amazing album. An almost operatic tale of life and alienation in the modern world. The whole spectrum of human emotion seems to be portrayed here, especially when it comes to fear, alienation and suffering. The Hitchhiker inspired Paranoid Android itself reaches through into the depths of human paranoia to produce a dazzlingly brilliant rendition of a tortured soul. The pain of a family running to escape from child abuse is revealed in the beautiful Exit Music (For a Film) a lightly melancholy guitar strumming intro gives way to a choral harmony and then an immense tide of bass as the song climaxes in a dramatic plea from the abused 'Now we are one in everlasting peace/We hope, that you choke, that you choke' as the song gently gives way to the next. The succesive song is a change of pace, with a slightly more positive sound in Let Down where Thom professes how he's been 'crushed like a bug in the ground' before appealing to not get sentimental cause 'It always ends up drivel'. Another brilliant song in the earlier stages of the album is Subterranean Homesick Alien which offers a birds eye view of a world where all of us can be seen to 'drill holes in ourselve and live for their secrets'. Thom notes how the alien can sum up the whole of human existence in one phrase 'They're all up-tight. The second verse features an impassionaed appeal for the aliens to come and take Thom, and 'Show me the world as I'd love to see it'. The simplistic beauty and seeming naivety No Surprises masks a plea to change the world from a man trapped in the office block in his own tortured world, perhaps these lyrics best sums up the emotional power of the album as Thom mourns 'A heart that's full up like a landfill, a job that slowly kills you, bruises that won't heal' and carries on killing himself in the corporate rat race.

I can't think of anything else to write about this album, well i can, but it really should speak for it self. Q Magazine readers in the UK voted it the Best Album of all time...enough said. It really is that good. If you haven't already got a copy and claim to be a music fan, buy this.

Kid A - How To Disappear Completely

After a massive world tour to promote the immensely succesful OK Computer, Radiohead dissappeared for about 18 months or so. It seemed that touring had taken it out of the band, and success seemed to have badly damaged the seemingly totured soul of Thom too much. This isn't to say that the band weren't producing, in fact they seem to have developed enough material for the somewhat obtuse Kid A, and the forthcoming album, Amnesiac.

Kid A was a massive change of direction for the band, as they decided to move into a much more electronica influenced mood. Perhaps the lyrics aren't the emotionally charged brilliance of the earlier albums being much more obscure 'Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon. However, Kid A seems to break barriers into completely unexplored musical territory, a breakaway that many older fans seem to resent. Certainly, this album is much harder to digest, but to me seems to be a work of art more than anything else. The bouncy rythms and unintelligable lyrics of Kid A seem to only fully form in the last moments of the song, when a bass line links up the toy music box melodies that make up the bulk of the song. The song is followed by The National Anthem, which could perhaps the anthem of choice for a post industrial nightmare state. The song is driven by a powerful bass, a steady march of drums, until it builds up to an immense, and beautifully orchestred cacophony of trumpets, saxaphones and every instrument under the sun. For me, the highlight of the album is How to disappear completely which seems to be the tale of a man walking through the streets trying his hardest to make no difference, and escape some unknown tortured, Thom's heartfelt vocals are highlighted by the minimalist guitars and there is so much of that tortured passion in his voice as he cries 'I'm not here, this isn't happening' with the conviction of a man terrified by the world around him. Towards the end of the song is in my opinion, the albums subtlest highlight, as the guitars and the keyboard harmonies seem to fall apart for just a few bars, before being reuninted together in a torturously beautiful moment of brilliance overlayed with Thom's mournful crying. Another track of subtle genius is the a minimalist Treefingers, which merely provides a musical womb of sound, transferring from note to note slowly weaving a simple, transparent veil of sound. The album seems to sound like more traditional radiohead only for Optimistic a riff driven monster over ridden by Thom's cry of 'if you try the best you can, you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough', the track segue's beautifully into In Limbo a slightly Jazzy feeling song with more mournful and somewhat unintelligable lyrics from Thom. The album ends with another favourite track of mine, the subtle organ intro and the gentle singing of Thom mark the start of Motion Picture Soundtrack a heartfelt song mourning for the loss of who knows what, that gives way to the exquisite harp and beauty of the end of the album. The lyrics of the final song sum up the feelings felt by anyone mourning the loss of one close to them 'A little wine, and sleeping pills, help me get back to your arms, a cheap suit, and sad film, help me get where I belong. I think I'm crazy, maybe'. All in all the album is a brilliantly experimental journey through themes and emotions familiar to Radiohead, now treated in an amazingly unique way.

Amnesiac - Life in a Glass House

During the bands two years away from the public eye, they were clearly busy, producing enough material to fill two albums. Perhaps they would've worked better as a double album, or maybe that would be just too much to stomach. This second album sacrifices none of the ingenuity of Kid A, and adds a few more guitar driven tracks, and some superb piano work from Thom Yorke himself. It fails to be quite as innovative and beautifully realised as Kid A, but still ends up an excellent album, that really gets under your skin, and works to permeate your soul with a kind of paranoia that only Radiohead seem able to create. Opening with 'Packt like sardines in a crushd tin box' the album gets going brilliantly, with an inexorable drum ryhthm pushing forward through the sounds of Thom's unique moan. This opening track succeeds in being one of my favourite ever Radiohead tracks, an impressive accolade indeed. This is followed by the Piano fueled single 'Pyramid Song' a beautiful requiem seeming to chart the passage of a dead man to his eventual Valhalla. 'Pulk/Pull revolving doors' is one of the weaker tracks in my opinion, with a mostly rhythmic accompaniment producing what can be called little more than vaguely interesting noise. A return to guitar based brilliance is marked by the stunning 'I might be wrong', a bass driven song that really gets going to be something special. 'Morning Bell' makes a welcome return from Kid A, now sounding more mournful and also in a 4/4 rhythm, as opposed to the unusual 5/4 of the original³. The final track 'Life in a glass house' is a typically brilliant ending to the album, with a gentle piano chord progression accompanied by a meandering wind accompaniment weaving its way through the melody in a beautifully discordant way. Humphrey Lytleton plays a brilliant Jazz trumpet along with his band that provides a fitting end to Radiohead's latest album. What more is there to say, any band that can release five consecutive albums of this quality deserve more recognition than any band could recieve. On this album Thom is complaing 'I might be wrong', and i think we can all say to that..no Thom..you've been right all along.

Any Radiohead fans in the h2g2 universe please feel free to add comments on anything you feel I've missed out (I know there's loads, I'm not very knowledgable really), or should mention. I also apologise for the somewhat onesided reviews of their albums, I find it hard to find fault with this band, and always have.