Ranked: Radiohead

Ranked: Radiohead

I'm going to do something incredibly original here and rank the discography of Radiohead. It's overdone as anything but honestly, it's one of the most divisive, full and best discographies from one of the arguably most important bands in modern music, as far as progressing music goes at least. Very little of this will be anything close to an original take or anything but oh well, it's my blog so I can do what I want. It's worth noting that this is a mix of what is my favourite and what is the 'best'. Let's get started with the worst, shall we?

Pablo Honey

This is no surprise to anyone who has listened to any albums by Radiohead past Pablo Honey. When I was 14 or so I found Creep and thought it was the deepest thing ever and thought Pablo Honey was some sort of beautiful piece of work, only to realise a few years later when I listened to more 90's grunge and went further into the band's discography that PH is just boring. It's not a bad album, I still think 'Stop Whispering' is a genuinely good track and 'How Do You?' is an unoriginal but generally enjoyable of-the-time cut that just doesn't quite work anymore. Obviously, the main issues with the record come from the fact that not only is it boring and uninspired compared to the band's later entries but it just isn't even anything interesting or out of the ordinary for its time either. 

Verdict: An okay album with one fantastic song, a couple of okay ones, a handful of duds and nothing at all to say.

Amnesiac

This is where the issue of what's good goes against what I like, I think objectively Amnesiac probably deserves to be a bit higher than where I'm putting it but gosh I just find it tired and boring. It's well known that the songs are all from the recording sessions from Kid A and while the band tries to say that they weren't just offcuts the tracklist really begins to feel like that. There are some obvious highlights with what I believe to be the superior 'Morning Bell', 'Pyramid Song' and 'Knives Out' are obviously stunning and incredible songs in their own right but it just doesn't hold up. The opening and closing tracks come nowhere close to the rest in the band's discography when you compare them to tracks such as 'Airbag', 'Videotape', 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)' and 'Everything In Its Right Place'. Not only that but the concepts on the album are very scarcely different to that from Kid A, with the ones that are new being poorly executed and the rest being lazier and worse versions of that on the previous album. 

Verdict: A record that suffers from a fantastic predecessor, little image and tired songs

The King Of Limbs

What is probably their most ambitious work since Kid A (Amnesiac came from the same recordings so doesn't count) and definitely their most experimental but for once an experiment that didn't quite work in the Oxford group's favour. The songs are still good and there's nothing inherently wrong with the album but it just doesn't quite click together like some of the later entries on this list do. I'm not sure that the structure of the record works particularly well either. Radiohead albums always work best when listened to as an entire piece but the songs are often autonomous works too. The tracklist on TKOL doesn't lend itself to this, instead only really working in the context of the album. The longer track lengths make this more apparent and somewhat cumbersome to listen to, despite some genuinely fantastic soundscape-like tracks.

Verdict: Great idea and concept which just doesn't quite pay off in the right way.

A Moon Shaped Pool

Thom Yorke and co. do not make happy music, this is well documented and simply hammered in on A Moon Shaped Pool, the most recent addition to the discography. 'True Love Waits' is often referred to as Radiohead's saddest (although I don't agree, I'll expand on that later) and the overall mood of the album is just pure melancholia. Despite being a collection of old songs from previous album recording sessions the production and overall tone manages to make it really feel like a cohesive unit rather than a random collection of songs, unlike similarly built Amnesiac. It's simply a stunning record, but just a bit of a sleepy one, not the band's most ambitious and the somewhat one-note tone leaves you feeling like you've gone nowhere and just wanting a bit more from the group.

Verdict: A beautiful record that feels like a settling point in the discography, gearing up for something big in the future.

Hail To The Thief

In theory, I should absolutely love Hail To The Thief, it's Radiohead's crash landing back to rock after the departure to the land of weird for Kid A and Amnesiac. Opener '2+2=5' slowly brings this back to land over the course of its runtime until you know the guitars are well and truly back. But something about the record never quite clicked for me, it's always felt a bit superficial, not the raw and intimate group the band are on their best outings. This does work in their favour on tracks like 'Myxomatosis', the distorted and fuzzy beats adding to the dissociating and distant feel of the jarringly groovy track. There are obvious highlights on it and it all comes together beautifully, but just never quite hit me as a collective piece properly.

Verdict: The return to relative normality punches hard but doesn't always quite connect.

The Bends

I would really struggle to tell you whether this or my top entry is my favourite Radiohead album, it definitely used to be what I'd say is the best and I still think it's an underrated and underappreciated album from the band. It moved boldly away from the moderate commercial success of their debut to far more experimental and out-of-the-box songs while retaining the ability to make fantastic and accessible singles. But when I listened to it in full for the first time properly in over a year for this list it just didn't hit quite right, tracks like 'Just', 'The Bends' and 'Black Star' feel like bloating, a callback to the more normal and grungy placements on the bands' debut. Despite this, 'High And Dry', ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)' and (the best) 'Fake Plastic Trees' are some of the band's absolute best work and are essentially the reason the album has this place on the list. Support from 'My Iron Lung', '(Nice Dream)' and 'Planet Telex' fill it out and still make it worth listening to but it's really about the main three. 

Verdict: A record that shows its age but with excellent cuts and is vital to the progression of the band.

In Rainbows

A lot of people call this the best Radiohead album, perhaps because its the most listenable album past OK Computer, the opener proving this straight away with such a groove that makes it one of Radiohead's most danceable albums. For once the group aren't entirely dreary, with plenty of tracks on this record, 'Bodysnatchers', 'House of Cards' and 'Reckoner' all being genuinely upbeat songs for once. Not to say that In Rainbows doesn't make you want to never get out of bed again, with 'Videotape' closing the album as what I believe to be the band's saddest song. In Rainbows is essentially just a lot more fun than most Radiohead albums, it experiments with song structure, has plenty of bleeps and bloops to make it Radiohead but brings everything together into a neat, easily understood and accessible package.

Verdict: A very good album that makes the band seem unpretentious for once, but just doesn't quite pack the punch of the last two.

Kid A

Most Radiohead fans will place one of these last two albums in their top 2, with a lot having these filling both spots, but for me Kid A just falls short of the top spot. If I'm brutally honest I think it's the better of the two albums: it's progressive, experimental, fresh, the production is clean and on point, the song structures are complex and interesting without being unnecessarily so, the album flow is perfect, there's enough normality to ground yourself in and some still relatively easy-listening singles. Some of their best songs are on this record, 'Everything In Its Right Place' is probably the best opener of the discography, 'The National Anthem' has a pitch-perfect jazz freakout, 'How To Disappear Completely' is stunning and haunting and devastating all at once and 'Idioteque' is just a masterpiece of social and political awareness packaged in an intuitive yet foreign framework. There are just a few things that stop it short of the top spot for me: the run of 'Treefingers' (the worst on the album), 'Optimistic' and 'In Limbo' is fairly weak, 'Morning Bell' is better done on the followup and the album sorely lacks a proper closer with 'Untitled' completely spoiling the end of the album for me. Despite this, Kid A remains one of the greatest curveballs in any bands discography, the almost complete drop of guitars being a brave and drastic change for what was primarily a guitar-based Rock band.

Verdict: So close to being the best with some of the band's best work but just drops it in some places.

OK Computer

I didn't once doubt this would land in my top spot while writing this list, and as I'm listening to it now I don't quite know how someone would put anything besides this in its place. Okay yes, it has its flaws, 'Electioneering' is fairly dull in the context of the album, 'Subterranean Homesick Alien' feels outdated and 'Fitter Happier' ruins the album flow after the first one or two listens. But honestly, they're minor things, 'Electioneering' is still a fantastic work of hard rock, the drumming alone being a showpiece and 'Subterranean...' does a good job of calming things down after 'Paranoid Android'. Even 'Fitter Happier' is still a chilling reminder of technology's presence while having direct influence over albums to come such as The 1975's A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. Beyond that there is simply so much that makes up for these flaws, 'Airbag' is an incredible opener and the multisectional masterpiece of 'Paranoid Android' is one of the most technically brilliant songs of all time. 'Exit Music (For a Film)' and 'Karma Police' pair up as eerie but incredible ballads, with 'No Surprises' and 'Let Down' being, in my opinion, the two strongest tracks on the record. Tracklist aside, OK Computer defined the decade it was in, not just musically but in its technological scepticism and critique of a materialist and capitalist society, 'Gucci little piggie' never fails to make me snort. The album is as close to perfect as you can get, and is simply just a joy to listen to.

Verdict: The pinnacle of the pile 

As I said, I don’t have masses to add to the Radiohead conversation that’s not already been said but there you go, my fairly basic and unoriginal ranking. 

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