‘Airbag’: The Radiohead song that failed to “sound like DJ Shadow”
To reach the stark artistic heights that they’ve enjoyed for nearly 30 years, Radiohead pulled on a range of different influences. Yet, as with any band that underwent a stark metamorphosis, things wouldn’t turn out as they had hoped or imagined when creating music using another artist as a reference point.
Ironically, though, this is a trend as old as music itself. The desire to emulate what an artist regards as another’s finest aspects can produce innovation, which occurs through the prism of their self and the fact that they can never fully replicate what another does as it is extracted from the inherently unique character and its experiences. In many ways, this is the very essence of how influence operates in the musical context.
In a show of the extent of Radiohead’s taste and how they have always had their finger on the pulse, when it came to recording the follow-up to their hit 1995 album, The Bends – a rock album with touches of electronica thrown in – on 1997’s OK Computer, they explored the era’s flourishing electronic textures in more forensic detail than before.
Given this more prominent angle, they looked to the work of one of the day’s more groundbreaking artists, electronic pioneer DJ Shadow, a man who seamlessly blends different genres. Ironically, his influence manifested in the album opener ‘Airbag’, one of the most guitar-heavy tracks.
Famously, the song was first performed acoustically by the band, with the working title ‘An Airbag Saved My Life’, which referenced Indeep’s 1982 hit ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’. It was written about a car crash frontman Thom Yorke was involved in with his girlfriend in 1987 and the mechanical nature of automobiles that he says we’re “not really in control of”.
However, for all of the existential parameters of the track, the way the band tried and failed to sound like DJ Shadow is fascinating, as it points to their desire at the time to push themselves into a more imaginative area. Recalling the group failing to meet the brief, guitarist Jonny Greenwood said: “‘Airbag’ is a classic example of Colin and Phil saying, ‘Let’s make it sound like DJ Shadow.’ But unfortunately – or fortunately – it doesn’t, because we missed again. It’s that thing of lumbering around in the dark, but still being excited by what we do. We’re discovering these things for the first time rather than getting the pros in to show us how to do it.”
Listen to ‘Airbag’ by Radiohead below.
