Radiohead

Radiohead in the mid-2010s. From left: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, and Philip Selway

Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. They comprise Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass); Ed O'Brien (guitar, backing vocals); and Philip Selway (drums, percussion). They have worked with the producer Nigel Godrich and the cover artist Stanley Donwood since 1994. Radiohead's experimental approach is credited with advancing the sound of alternative rock into post-rock.

Quotes about Radiohead

• From roughly 1995 to about 2002, there was arguably no hotter band on the planet than Radiohead. It got to the point that fans worldwide could not wait to hear what was next from Thom Yorke and Co. Radiohead went from a true rock outfit to excelling within the alternative and art rock scenes while also not being afraid to throw in some electronica. There is not a better run of albums with The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac in alternative rock history. Even today, Radiohead still has a major influence on the music scene.
  • Jeff Mezydlo of Yardbarker (February 2025) [1]

• OK Computer was the last gasp of the rock monoculture: an incontestable, unrepeatable, and critically consecrated masterpiece of a genre that was too big to fail, yet too limp to preside over a new century. Picking up grunge’s challenge to macho rock orthodoxy, the bookish Oxford five-piece parlayed corporate resistance and righteous angst into an infernal assessment of mainstream conformism, petit bourgeois inertia, and cartoonish celebrity culture. But where grunge despaired at the gravity of it all, and Britpop buried its head in hedonism, Radiohead made a crucial distinction: Seeing the inferno of modern life in all its grotesque glory was not a curse to endure or escape, but a superpower to wield.
  • Jazz Monroe of Pitchfork (September 28, 2022) [2]

• Radiohead’s OK Computer would become such a resounding popular and critical success that it would essentially destroy an important subgenre — the Britpop of Oasis, Blur, and Suede — with the force of its implication: Three-minute songs about drunken nights or critiques of the English suburbs now seemed unspeakably tiny, and American grunge sounded noisy and antique.
  • Scott Timberg of Vox (Oct 25, 2017) [3]

• The melancholic wonder and mesmerization provided from the UK’s own Radiohead has always been second to none.
  • Quentin Thane Singer of Forbes (June 15, 2024) [4]