{"id":902247,"date":"2026-09-23T07:28:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T07:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/902247\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T07:28:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T07:28:22","slug":"radiohead-tour-tickets-sell-out-are-the-british-rock-band-overrated-as-they-prepare-to-tour-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/902247\/","title":{"rendered":"Radiohead tour tickets sell out: Are the British rock band overrated as they prepare to tour Australia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opinion<\/p>\n

\"RobertRobert Moran<\/a>Spectrum deputy editor<\/p>\n

Updated September 23, 2026 \u2014 12:18pm,first published 11:00am<\/p>\n

Updated September 23, 2026 \u2014 12:18pm,first published 11:00am<\/p>\n

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Radiohead have announced a first Australian tour in 15 years<\/a>, and the response from Radiohead-heads has been deafening. They\u2019re in your office, in your WhatsApp groups, in your home \u2013 middle-agers behaving with all the carry-on of Swifties but minus the sense of humour (tell me when the Radiohead forums come up with their version of Gaylor).<\/p>\n

You probably all heard their exclamations last week when tickets went on sale<\/a> for the \u201clucky\u201d bunch who beat the post-registration culling. \u201cArgh, I\u2019m number 39,870 in the queue, wish me luck!\u201d Bro, you\u2019re 55 years old, show some composure.<\/p>\n

\"Radiohead\u2019sRadiohead\u2019s Australian tour has sparked the sort of frenzy that would embarrass Swifties.Sydney Morning Herald<\/p>\n

As a lifelong obnoxious contrarian, there\u2019s no surer way to make me uninterested in something than millions of people telling me it\u2019s the greatest thing. In the words of Pee-wee (via The Get Up Kids<\/a>): I\u2019m a loner, Dottie, a rebel.<\/p>\n

The downside is that sometimes I come around to things late, hopelessly out of touch, years after everyone\u2019s moved on. \u201cHey guys, did you know The Bear is actually great? I don\u2019t think people know how great The Bear is\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

But other times the topic in question is Radiohead, and I remain correct in perpetuity. Because Radiohead are the worst.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to appreciate Radiohead, just because 30 years of critical discourse has told me I\u2019m supposed to. Some of the early stuff\u2019s fine. For all it did to bring the evils of Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Keane to the world, at least The Bends had songs. The way that riff repeats on Black Star? Thumbs up, Jonny and\/or Ed.<\/p>\n

\"ThomThom Yorke, probably yelling about \u201cweird fishes\u201d or something.Getty Images<\/p>\n

But revisiting the rest, just to write this piece, was a torture I wouldn\u2019t wish on my nemesis (you know who you are). I would rather listen to literally anything else. I\u2019ve spent 26 years trying to get through Kid A, and I still haven\u2019t made it awake past Treefingers.<\/p>\n

As a sentient human being in the age of AI, I firmly believe that one should never miss an opportunity to yuck someone else\u2019s yum \u2013 a sentiment that Radiohead, humanist believers, would surely get behind \u2013 so here we go.<\/p>\n

The singing! Why does he do it like that? The fundamental truth about every Radiohead song is that it would be better as an instrumental. Because Thom Yorke boasts the absolute worst voice in music, and I mean worst in a bad way (unlike, say, Billy Corgan or Selena Gomez, who have worse voices but in a good way).<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Radiohead<\/a><\/p>\n

Yorke\u2019s caterwauling whine is the nails on the chalkboard of my temporal lobe. Jeff Buckley died for this? He sings like his throat is in dire need of WD-40. He sings like he\u2019s a cat being squished into the bosom of a brutish toddler. (The other problem with Radiohead fans is they\u2019ll read this and go \u201cExactly!\u201d and explain how the cat is \u201cus\u201d and the brutish toddler is \u201cconsumerism\u201d. It must be fun to claim a band\u2019s every horrible choice as intentional.)<\/p>\n

Worse than his singing is Yorke\u2019s writing. His fans call his lyrics \u201cimpressionistic\u201d, I call them \u201cbarely there\u201d.<\/p>\n

For a guy perennially praised as the voice of our post-technological alienation, he has some clunkers (that is, when he can even be bothered stringing a sentence together, and not just blaming his lyrics on Burroughs\u2019 \u201ccut-up technique\u201d). \u201cYesterday I woke up sucking a lemon\u201d isn\u2019t the sort of line most artists would repeat once, let alone four times. Lana Del Rey conveys more alienation in one breathy sigh.<\/p>\n

Sonically, Radiohead are everything bad about music: overly-intellectual, anti-melodic, self-serious, and other similarly hyphenated terms. It\u2019s music for people who think it\u2019s a virtue when drums have no discernible pattern because they don\u2019t know how to dance anyway.<\/p>\n

The Universal Radiohead are Excellent Agenda (UREA) is full of lies. People claim that Radiohead are the best band of all time, when they\u2019re not even the best band out of Oxford (that would be Comet Gain, or maybe Heavenly if I\u2019m feeling particularly twee).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Radiohead\u2019s popularity is the sort of phenomenon that makes you think you\u2019re a victim of a global psyops project, like that time the internet tried to convince me that Argentinian football invented racism. Does Samuel L. Jackson<\/a> like Radiohead? (\u201cThere is no public record or confirmation that Samuel L. Jackson is a fan of Radiohead,\u201d Google AI tells me, which partly rehabilitates his reputation in my eyes.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the oft-repeated claim that Radiohead \u2013 a band that, in the past decade, has released more statements \u201cclarifying\u201d their roundabout position<\/a> on the war in Gaza than music \u2013 is the most \u201cinnovative\u201d and \u201cforward-thinking\u201d band in pop history, probably because they dared to stuff ambient breakbeats and \u201960s free jazz into the same song. But just \u2019cause you\u2019ve never listened to Burial or Eric Dolphy, doesn\u2019t mean Radiohead invented them. And as far as \u201cforward-thinking\u201d goes, Britney\u2019s Blackout makes Kid A sound like medieval England \u2013 and you can sing her songs at karaoke even!<\/p>\n

More to the issue, what\u2019s the point of innovation if you\u2019re just inventing something that sucks? It\u2019s like me making you a chopped sardine and Nutella soup. It\u2019s certainly innovative, but it will probably make you vomit. Radiohead are the chopped sardine and Nutella soup of music.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Radiohead\u2019s post-OK Computer albums sound exactly like what they are: rich dorks noodling about. Did you know that In Rainbows took two-and-a-half years to make? That\u2019s too long to be messing around with an \u201condes Martenot\u201d. Get a job, Radiohead! Guided By Voices would\u2019ve made six albums, drunk, in that amount of time (and at least half of them would be better).<\/p>\n

Radiohead also get praised for \u201crevolutionising the music industry\u201d through their \u201cpay-what-you-want\u201d release of In Rainbows in 2007. I guess it\u2019s purely a coincidence that the value of music has been zero dollars ever since?<\/p>\n

The historical criticism against Radiohead from my side of the hater divide has been that they make \u201csad-sack music\u201d, music for depressives. That\u2019s a bit harsh. Radiohead are too boring to inspire depression.<\/p>\n

Elliott Smith, on the other hand \u2013 now that\u2019s what I call sad music! Morrissey made misery hilarious, and Paul Westerberg made it romantic. But if I wanted to be sad and bored, I\u2019d just read my kid\u2019s diary.<\/p>\n

Still, don\u2019t let me dissuade anyone from enjoying Radiohead\u2019s upcoming concerts. The idea of an arena full of dull chinstrokers chanting \u201cweird fishes!\u201d and doing that frantic head-nod that British backpackers do when they listen to trip-hop makes me giggle. After all these years, we\u2019ll finally get something worthwhile from Radiohead: a laugh.<\/p>\n

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\"RobertRobert Moran<\/a> is Spectrum deputy editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opinion Robert MoranSpectrum deputy editor Updated September 23, 2026 \u2014 12:18pm,first published 11:00am Updated September 23, 2026 \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-902247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}