The 10 most overlooked Radiohead songs

‘Give Up The Ghost’ (2011)

Contrary to the thoughts of my Radiohead ranking partner, I think this is one of Radiohead’s finer moments. While I have heard it described as many things—my favourite being something made by a busker in Byron Bay with a loop pedal—I think its simplicity dampens its reception amongst Radiohead fans, old and new.

When all of Radiohead’s pistons are firing, and they achieve a true sense of sonic innovation, the element that has heightened a song’s value has always been Yorke’s voice. Dark, delicate and deeply complex, it has the ability to humanise their music and capture the humanity within the experimentation. While ‘Give Up The Ghost’ can be argued as an overlooked moment for Radiohead as a whole, for me, it’s a performance that reaffirms Yorke’s position as a deeply influential yet harshly overlooked vocalist.

‘Myxomatosis’ (2003)

‘Myxomatosis’ has all the hallmarks of being a quiet favourite of Thom Yorke. Bursting with anxious energy and fusing together harsh elements of electronic music, it’s a typically innovative track that incites a more active listen than some of their biggest hits. But despite its edgier profile, it represents a creative struggle for Yorke, who only grew to like it come its live performance.

“When we did it in the studio, we kind of liked the sound of it, but it really frustrated us, because we didn’t really understand where it was going,” he told The Observer in 2004. “Then we played it live, and the last three or four times we got this absolutely amazing reaction. It was like a train crash, you know? And sometimes these things happen.”

But as a recorded entity it stands as one of the band’s most intriguing tracks. Philip Selway stands in the middle of track, spinning plates of sonic experimentation that range from crunching distortion to screeching synths that all come together in a unique sense of ordered chaos.

‘The Tourist’ (1997)

How can the closing track of one of the most famous and adored albums of all time be overlooked? Given that the placing on the album offers an artist one last opportunity to wow the listener before they either sit back and digest what they’ve just experienced or immediately return to track one for a repeated listen, an album’s finale ought to be a true showpiece, and that’s exactly what ‘The Tourist’ serves as on OK Computer.

While ‘The Tourist’ is a song that encompasses all of the splendour of the rest of the album into a finale of exceptional magnitude, it has to compete with so many other classic cuts on the rest of the album that it suffers the fate of being overlooked in favour of others. It’s very few people’s favourite song on OK Computer, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve to be served the same level of praise as ‘Paranoid Android’ or ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’.

‘Planet Telex’ (1995)

The opening track of an album that follows the critical success of a debut is steeped with anticipation. Teetering on the edge of continued promise and brutal disappointment, it’s perhaps a moment never repeated in a band’s career and an opportunity to make a cutting sonic statement.

With ‘Planet Telex’, the Oxfordshire four-piece showcased their magic; extending one hand with warm invitation, only to retract at last minute and punch you in the face. It set the stall out for a much richer step forward with The Bends that allowed them a nuanced foray into the world of rock ballads. I’d make a strong argument for this song being one of the first few for any Radiohead newcomers to delve into, for it’s stunning ability to have light and darkness war with one another so delicately feels a vintage moment for the Oxfordshire band.

‘Staircase’ (2011)

At only eight songs long, The King of Limbs has always felt a little scant compared to other Radiohead releases, and while the tracks that were selected for the release all gel together well, one can’t help but think what the album might have been like if it was beefed up a little. Considering the band released a handful of standalone singles around the same time, some of these could’ve easily made the cut but were instead relegated to the sidelines.

Having released ‘Supercollider’ and ‘The Butcher’ shortly after the album, the band followed up the double single later in 2011 with ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘Staircase’. As the most rhythmically complex track of the four, it wouldn’t have seemed at all out of place among songs such as ‘Bloom’ and ‘Feral’ on The King of Limbs, and the way they brought the track to life on the record’s Live from the Basement recording with the help of additional percussionist Clive Deamer demonstrates how crucial polyrhythms were to that period of the band’s output.

‘Sail To The Moon’ (2003)

Let’s be perfectly honest: if people could get over the fact that Hail To The Thief is “too long” (a whole three minutes longer than OK Computer), then maybe the masses would be ready to accept that they’ve spent far too much energy hating on some of the finest and most understated moments in Radiohead’s catalogue. Yes, it’s a somewhat cluttered and varied album, but with patience, you’ll be able to pick out a number of gems buried within its tracklist.

You don’t even have to stick with the album that long to find that only three songs in is one of the band’s most crushingly beautiful numbers. ‘Sail to the Moon’ was penned by frontman Thom Yorke as a lullaby-cum-warning message to his then-newborn son to not be fearful of the twisted world that he is being welcomed into, and while that might seem like heavy going for an infant to have to listen to, it’s a showcase of just how moving Yorke’s balladry can be.

‘Lotus Flower’ (2011)

It’s a song that exhibits Yorke’s versatility and how it’s been the cornerstone of Radiohead’s sonic experimentation. With soaring vocal takes laid on top of a deep groove and glitchy melodies, it’s a masterclass in how the band can make the warped sound beautiful.

The undeniable groove beneath the entire track, creates an ever-sense of foreboding that only adds to the depth of the lyrical content. The song’s chorus – “There’s an empty space inside my heart/ Where the weeds take root / So now I set you free / I set you free – aptly depicts the feelings of conflict that often come with growth. And while the address very present realities for Yorke and his conflict with fatherhood at that time in his life, there’s a profoundly arbitrary nature to them that, when sung with the ethereality of his vocals, gives the song a deep sense of spiritualism. All of which is strengthened by the simply stunning composition of the music.

While for many, this is the obvious stand-out track from their 2011 album King Of Limbs, it’s somewhat overlooked in the band’s overall back catalogue. As artists who have constantly moulded the limitations of contemporary music, I think this track represents one of their most crystallised ideas.

‘Knives Out’ (2001)

Perhaps because their 2001 record Amnesiac followed the critically acclaimed Kid A from 2000, the record’s brilliant moments like ‘Knives Out’ get somewhat overlooked.

While the inclusion of a jazz-inspired rhythm section could be gimmicky, the band manage to seamlessly fold it into an indie soundscape that pair brilliantly with Yorke’s sprawling vocals. The song’s blended sonic profile also provided Yorke a suitable sonic platform to begin exploring complex lyrical imagery that satiates the appetite of the many rabbit-hole Radiohead fans:

“‘Knives Out’ is not exactly cruelty,” recalled Thom Yorke of the song. “Let’s rather say that to express some feelings, I can’t help but use some violent vocabulary. ‘Knives Out’ was inspired by several different situations. I think the important thing is not that it sounds violent but rather that I try to express specific moments that I have experienced in my life: I transcribe them again, especially those I’ve been through in the music business. It doesn’t hurt many people when someone disappears, they can always take advantage of what remains. In short, the lyrics are more violent than the feelings behind them. The song is also about the death of the people close to me. Each song tries to elucidates things that I don’t understand. ‘Knives Out’ is especially brutal because it is a desperate attempt at solving something very complicated for me.”

‘Life in a Glasshouse’ (2001)

It’s no secret that Radiohead were on something of a jazz kick when they wrote and recorded Kid A and Amnesiac, but the most explicitly jazz-oriented song of this period is ‘Life in a Glasshouse’, the track that serves as the closer of the second of these sister albums. Recorded with the assistance of jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttleton and his band, this funereal dirge is the perfect ending to the band’s most alienating and despairing record.

However, despite it being a formidable closer, the band only ever performed the track live once – and it wasn’t even at their own concert. Inviting Lyttleton and his ensemble on stage to perform the track with the rest of the band during an appearance on Later… With Jools Holland in 2001, this marked the only occasion that the band performed the song to an audience. While it may be due to the difficulty of doing it justice without the addition of a brass band, or out of respect for the fact that they can no longer perform it with Lyttleton following his death in 2008, the song’s omission from the live set is a travesty.

‘Man Of War’ (2017)

Radiohead are no strangers to writing a song and letting it lie dormant for many years while they fine-tune all of its imperfections, and ‘Man of War’ is a prime example of this. Initially written in 1995 during the earliest sessions for OK Computer and given the working title of ‘Big Boots’, the band were never fully satisfied with the end result when it came to recording the track and having it exactly how they wanted it.

Over the years, they slowly managed to iron out all of its perceived faults and even submitted it as a potential James Bond theme song in 2015, only for it to be rejected on a technicality. It could easily have made it onto the band’s 2016 album, A Moon Shaped Pool, in the same way that another older song, ‘True Love Waits’, managed to, but it was instead included on the 20th anniversary expanded edition of OK Computer. Its release, or lack of, was a fabled one among Radiohead fans who had been eagerly anticipating a complete version of the track to surface, but it never got the star treatment it truly deserved.