The Best Song From Every Radiohead Album
When Radiohead released their debut album in early 1993, nobody thought they'd become a career band, let alone the planet's most important new artist going into the 21st century.
But more than 25 years, and more than a half-dozen classic records, later, no other band has had the impact, influence and creative zeniths, as our list of the Best Song From Every Radiohead Album proves.
It didn't take them long to get there. After their somewhat inauspicious first LP, Pablo Honey, they almost immediately took a significant turn with the My Iron Lung EP, which arrived six months before their second album, The Bends, a watershed work that merely hinted at what was to come.
After OK Computer arrived in 1997, Radiohead were heralded as alt-rock's answer to Pink Floyd – a headphones band whose records gained more depth and relevance the more you listened to them. And like the earlier British band, this newer group of British art-rockers made album-length works that were meant to be taken in all at once.
That made pulling individual songs out for the below list tough at times. So many of Radiohead's now classic LPs – from OK Computer to Kid A to In Rainbows – gain much more resonance as entire pieces, as lyrical and musical themes weave their way in and out of the tracks.
Still, there are favorites. The band's massive legion of fans will tell you that; so do the group's set lists, which lean heavily on a core collection of tracks. Let our list of the Best Song From Every Radiohead Album serve as a guide. But dig deeper for even more and richer rewards.