The Radiohead song Thom Yorke described as a “victim of its own simplicity”
Some songs thrive on their complexity. Brian Wilson’s pop creations for The Beach Boys, for example, left millions stunned by their complicated orchestral arrangements and seamless harmonies. The Beatles sparked the same awe in listeners with intricate works like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, experimenting with tape loops and sampling in seminal uses of those techniques. But a song doesn’t necessarily need those ambitious complexities to resonate with audiences.
Many songs excel in their simplicity. Nirvana’s signature hit, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, is made up of just five chords, and yet it has enthralled audiences for decades, while ‘Wonderwall’ charmed Britpop fans and budding guitarists with its easy strums. Though they may be tempted to keep playing around with melodies and adding elements to a track, sometimes, keeping it simple is the best choice a musician can make.
This has been a particularly hard truth for Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke to come to terms with. As the band’s primary songwriter, Yorke helmed some of the most influential tracks in the alternative rock sphere. His creations for Radiohead often featured abstract lyricism about computers and capitalism, buried amidst experimental soundscapes that seamlessly tread the line between rock and electronica. They were anything but simple.
When it came to penning the delicate piano track ‘True Love Waits’, then, Yorke found it difficult to leave the song alone. Speaking with The Singers Talk about the 2016 work, as quoted by Rolling Stone, the frontman recalled thinking that the piece was “too easy” after penning it as a straightforward acoustic guitar song.
“I’ve done that,” he shrugged, “Poor thing, it became a victim of its own simplicity”.
The final track certainly evolved from its first form, from soft strums into twinkling keys, but it maintained an element of that initial simplicity. This was essential to maintaining the beauty of the song—Yorke’s gorgeous lyrics and desperate requests of “just don’t leave, don’t leave” are all the more affecting with such sparse accompaniment.
Yorke also seemed to acknowledge that simplicity served the song best and admitted that he often has a tendency to needlessly complicate compositions. “One of my mistakes is dismissing things because they’re simple,” he stated, “[Producer] Nigel [Godrich], more so than the others, would say to me, ‘You’re making a mistake because you want to see something in it that’s not there so, stop fucking trying to change it.’”
He suggested that this approach has allowed certain things to “fall by the wayside,” citing ‘True Love Waits’ as an example. In live versions of the track, he often seems to revert back to that original acoustic version, perhaps implying that he regrets altering the song for its final studio form.
Though Yorke seems unsure about the changes he made for the recording that appeared on A Moon Shaped Pool, it has resonated with millions of listeners and reduced many of them to tears. This is, in part, due to its sparkling simplicity. Of course, the studio recording wasn’t quite as raw as the original acoustic track, but it didn’t stray too far into experimentation or electronica to remove the feeling of the original idea.
Rather, it enhanced the melancholy of the track and the gorgeously straightforward yet aching lyrics with a slightly more dainty instrument. It was more streamlined, but it didn’t complicate the piece any more than it needed to. Almost a decade on, it remains one of the most gorgeous songs in Radiohead’s catalogue.
