We all listen to music in our daily lives, whether that’s on the radio, from your friends, or even in your free time. For most people (including myself) we have specific bands and genres that we listen to, and in my case, this is the band Radiohead.
Radiohead is a popular British band from the 1990s – 2000s and are still popular to this day. In 1993 Radiohead went on to release their first album “Pablo Honey”. To the band’s surprise, this album blew up, skyrocketing in the British charts. One of the songs, “Creep,” was disliked by the band – Jonny Greenwood famously tried to sabotage the song and make it sound harsher by strumming aggressively just before the chorus, but ironically, that helped create its signature dynamic. Radiohead did not want to be defined by this song because they didn’t feel it truly represented who they were or where they wanted to go musically. Little did they know that this song would become their biggest hit worldwide, never to be topped by any other song they ever created. “Creep” has over 2.2 billion streams on Spotify alone, and has been featured in many movies, the most popular one being The Book of Life. Moving into 1995, Radiohead released their second album “The Bends”. This was – and still is – a great album, and as of right now, one of the songs “Fake Plastic Trees” is seriously trending.
Radiohead has many albums, but their most popular one, released in 1997, is “OK Computer”. This album consists of 12 tracks, quite a few of these being some of Radiohead’s biggest hits. The two most streamed songs from this album are “No Surprises” and “Let Down”. Both tracks talk about deep and meaningful subjects which many people will be able to relate to at least at some point in their life. I love this album so much and would say it is my favourite out of every Radiohead album there is.
The Band Members
The band members consist of five (main) members: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Philip Selway and Ed O’Brien. Ed’s role in the band is something he called “servicing the songs”. By this he meant he backed up the main singer (Thom Yorke) with vocals and created ambient sounds with the guitar.
Philip Selway is the drummer of the rock band and combines excellent rock drumming with electronic percussion. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead in 2019. Some of the popular songs he collaborated with are “Let Down” (OK Computer) and “All I Need” (In Rainbows).
Colin Greenwood, the older brother to Jonny Greenwood, is Radiohead’s lead bassist. His basslines were often the starting point to every Radiohead song and the band just built off them. The most notable song that Colin came up with would be “Dollars and Cents” (Amnesiac) for the amazing bassline in it.
Jonny Greenwood is Radiohead’s main guitarist and keyboardist. Because of his skilled playing, he has been identified as one of the best guitarists of all time, including by publications such as Rolling Stone. He also helped write songs for the band, including some of the lyrics in “The Tourist” (OK Computer) in addition to working with Thom to create “Just” (The Bends) which in my opinion has some extremely good guitar playing in it.
Finally, of the main five, we have Thom Yorke – lead singer and primary songwriter. As well as his voice, Thom also plays a variety of instruments, such as the guitar, bass and keyboard. Much like Jonny, Rolling Stone also commented on his falsetto and overall vocals, recognising him as “one of the most influential and greatest singers of his generation”. Since he is the primary songwriter he was involved in almost all the songs, including “No Surprises” and “Exit Music (For a Film)”, and the significant “Airbag” – (all from the album OK Computer). Airbag is a unique song because Thom wrote it himself to express how he came very close to death, only having been saved by an airbag.
The “unofficial” sixth member of Radiohead is second drummer and percussionist Clive Deamer. Clive has joined Radiohead‘s tours since around 2011 and plays alongside Phillip Selway.
All of Radiohead’s members have played a significant role in either making the songs, or playing them to their best potential, and even if one of the members had been someone else, the Radiohead as we know it today could have been very different.
