{"id":119181,"date":"2025-09-06T18:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T18:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/119181\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T18:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T18:58:08","slug":"the-radiohead-song-thom-yorke-wants-to-be-remembered-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/119181\/","title":{"rendered":"The Radiohead song Thom Yorke wants to be remembered for"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thom<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Greg Williams)<\/p>\n

Sat 6 September 2025 16:30, UK <\/p>\n

Much to the band\u2019s intense disdain, chances are, Radiohead<\/a> will be remembered for \u2018Creep\u2019. With an anthem that huge and defining, it\u2019s pretty much impossible to escape, even if they quit playing it long ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe seemed to be living out the same four and a half minutes of our lives over and over again. It was incredibly stultifying,\u201d Johnny Greenwood said of the song as it boomed to success. That was their initial response: boredom. But as the years have gone on, it\u2019s intensified into something else.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFuck off, we\u2019re tired of it,\u201d<\/a> Thom Yorke once yelled at an audience member requesting the song. Now, they\u2019ve called their biggest hit \u201canally retarded\u201d and essentially claimed that anyone who likes it is stupid. But those stupid people got them a multi-platinum record and bought them the career they had from then on, as that looming debut single opened a lot of doors for them and granted them a lot of freedom from that moment on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, if it were up to Thom Yorke, he\u2019d wipe that track from the face of the other earth and replace it with another. In his mind, the song he\u2019d want to be remembered for is something slower, sadder and less conducive to a singalong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Written during a period of intense burnout and poor mental health during a hectic touring schedule, \u2018How to Disappear Completely\u2019 would be Yorke\u2019s pick for his legacy as he said simply, \u201cIt\u2019s the most beautiful thing we ever did.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI dreamt I was floating down the Liffey, and there was nothing I could do. I was flying around Dublin, and I really was in the dream. The whole song is my experiences of really floating,\u201d Yorke said, talking about a dream he had that inspired the track.<\/p>\n

But perhaps there\u2019s more to it than that. The track details Yorke\u2019s feelings of complete disassociation, inspired by some advice from REM\u2019s Michael Stipe<\/a>. \u201cI just needed a break. And in fact, I didn\u2019t get one for another year and a bit, by which point I was pretty much catatonic,\u201d Yorke recalled of its emotional context and in a moment where he felt he might quit it all, he called up Stipe who told him to repeat the phrase \u201cI\u2019m not here, this isn\u2019t happening\u201d to himself.<\/p>\n

Inspiring those exact lyrics in the song, the track is both about Yorke\u2019s coping mechanism, but also became one itself as it saved him from packing it all in, as this new spark of inspiration hit him at his lowest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As far as the band goes, it\u2019s a good contender for a legacy song. Yorke\u2019s vocal performance is beautiful, the instrumental is interesting and nuanced, and it\u2019s cinematic and wistful as ever. But will it ever come close to usurping \u2018Creep\u2019? No, absolutely not, and that\u2019s something the band just need to get used to.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Greg Williams) Sat 6 September 2025 16:30, UK Much to the band\u2019s intense disdain,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,27498,27500,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-119181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-radiohead","11":"tag-thom-yorke","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}