Dear Radiohead: you’re fucking awesome.
That wasn’t so hard. In fact, it feels good to finally say it.
I can’t remember why I resisted Radiohead. I bought The Bends in high school and liked it. Fake Plastic Trees hurt me good, and I realized the sad limitations of my voice by trying to sing High and Dry in the car. Then I gave the CD away like it was one of those promotional demos you get for spending an hour in a music store.
A few years ago I told, and then immediately regretted telling, my new boyfriend that I didn’t like Radiohead. I think I was just being snotty, then. Perhaps I was afraid that if I joined the Radiohead machine, I would compromise my unending mission to unearth good, if somewhat bizarre, music. It’s particularly ironic that I was bent on avoiding the bandwagon given that I spent a good number of those years in the deepest love with U2. Perhaps they were my one concession, or perhaps I rejected Radiohead to remain faithful to them. Either way, I was misguided.
I’ve been a Radiohead convert for a couple years now – I’ve just never said anything about it. Being an obsessive downloader of music, I’ve owned all of Radiohead’s LPs for a while, and once they worked into the iPod rotation, it didn’t take long for me to fall for them. What I’ve since realized is that I was more than wrong about them. They’re not just good – they’re utterly brilliant. They’re the James Joyce of music, except that they’re as accessible as they are dumbfounding.
A few minutes ago, I sat down to work on an article about Sarajevo. Then Let Down shuffled onto my iPod. Good god. When was the last time you listened to that song? I suggest you listen to it right now, just to make sure. That questioning guitar in the beginning divides like a cell into strums and picks and then layers into Yorke’s voice. The song becomes this intricate weave, bending and poking itself in all these different directions and angles at once. And despite the lyrics, the song is so goddamn earnest. Unlike many of their other songs, there’s a distinct lack of defeat.
I got so caught up in Let Down that I lost my motivation to write. I didn’t want to do anything except be inside of that song. So I played Paranoid Android, which you should listen to right now, I’m not kidding. Thom Yorke’s voice is tin foil, I’m chewing on it, and it makes me cringe. What’s this? It’s such a complicated song, like the score for a sectioned orchestra with Yorke’s voice the leading violin. The song has at least two movements, maybe three. In its second half, the song morphs – a costume change – and the dial’s been cranked to the frequency of pain. Yorke’s wails layer over themselves like fireworks. As you listen you feel like you’re going to topple over.
Radiohead first did this to me on a 25-mile bike ride not long after my dad died. I got all tangled up in the songs (this is really happening), physically riding through them as I worked down the trail, feeling every beat and pulse in my legs. I sped up when they sped up, I stood and raced and breathed like a freight train when Yorke’s voice shook like a thinning atmosphere. Sometimes it felt like I was powering the songs, changing their intensity with my pedalstrokes, as though the music would stop if I did. Radiohead linked my body to my soul and provided the perfect catharsis. Every now and then, they managed to offer a reedy ray of hope.
After I shake myself out of the radiohold, I think about how many people not just love Radiohead, but react to them this way. For whom is there not at least one Radiohead song that delivers that suckerpunched feeling? This suggests the existence of a collective unconscious whose emotions Radiohead has learned to tap. But how? What does Radiohead know? Whatever it is, what amazes me most is that the music they forge from it sometimes makes me forget how to breathe. In a good way.
Now it’s official: Radiohead, I’m sorry I’m so late to the party. But I brought some really good beer and an even better playlist.
