Listen to Buena Vista Social Club cover Radiohead classic ‘High and Dry’
Radiohead was the angsty offspring of Abingdon School, Oxfordshire, an establishment noted for its distinctly hostile, Dickensian atmosphere. The comedy actor behind Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan, David Mitchell, is among the school’s other misfits that somehow found themselves revered at the cutting edge of the arts.
In 1985, Radiohead formed under the early name On a Friday, which referred to the day they would meet for their main rehearsal each week, finding solace from oppressive teachers and fellow students. After hesitant flirtations with university education, Radiohead regrouped in the early 1990s for a shot at the big time. That shot was 1993’s Pablo Honey, a vital building block in the band’s development which has been lost to the sands of time save for its lead single, ‘Creep’.
During David Mitchell’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ episode on BBC Radio 4 in 2009, he picked out ‘Creep’ as one of the tracks he would take to his desert island. He introduced it as “a brilliant song, but the words are so depressing, and I like to think of it as our school song. I would like one day, as a stunt, to arrange for all of the pupils in Abingdon School to stand up in chapel and sing an organ arrangement of this song.”
Following a seismic reaction to ‘Creep’, Radiohead regrouped for their second album, The Bends. Released in 1995, the album came as the group’s first refined and well-balanced offering with a bounty of hit singles and slower moody tracks teeming with ‘Creep’ DNA. The record helped Radiohead migrate from their status as a one-hit-wonder to become one of the most important British bands of the time, alongside Oasis and Blur during their famed Britpop battle.
One of the album’s moody singles was the divisive ‘High and Dry’, a favourite among beginner guitarists and angsty teens worldwide. It was originally recorded in 1993 during the Pablo Honey sessions, and while it didn’t make the cut for the debut, frontman Thom Yorke reluctantly allowed the remastered track to appear on The Bends.
The catchy guitar tracks and soaring chorus vocals have made ‘High and Dry’ one of Radiohead’s most-played classics, but it’s safe to say the band aren’t particularly proud of it. Yorke once reflected on the track revealing that the lyrics were about “some loony girl I was going out with” but became “mixed up with ideas about success and failure”. He later asserted that the track is “not bad, it’s really bad”.
Whether you’re a fan of the song or not, I hope you’ll agree that Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club offered an attractive rendition for their 2006 covers album, Rhythms del Mundo. The album also featured covers of songs by the likes of Arctic Monkeys, U2, Kaiser Chiefs, Jack Johnson and Coldplay.
