{"id":641176,"date":"2026-05-13T19:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641176\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T19:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:26:11","slug":"the-album-that-made-radioheads-thom-yorke-take-music-seriously-it-turned-my-life-upside-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641176\/","title":{"rendered":"The Album That Made Radiohead\u2019s Thom Yorke Take Music Seriously: \u201cIt Turned My Life Upside Down\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year 1996 was a pretty significant one for the rock band Radiohead<\/a> and their frontman, Thom Yorke. They were between legendary albums, having just released The Bends in 1995, and would release OK Computer in mid-1997. A lot was happening, and there was likely a lot of songwriting going on. But Yorke wasn\u2019t completely self-involved. Like many a musician who loves music, Yorke was listening to what other musicians were dishing out at the time. And, of course, he listened to one of his favorite bands\u2019 new records that dropped that very year.<\/p>\n

That record was New Adventure In Hi-Fi, which Yorke himself said contained R.E.M.\u2019s \u201cbest song of their career.\u201d He also described how much R.E.M. has impacted him since he discovered the band in the 1980s, per an interview from 2020.<\/p>\n

Thom Yorke Is a Huge Fan of R.E.M.\u2019s 1996 Record \u2018New Adventures In Hi-Fi\u2019<\/p>\n

In a 2020 interview with Vinyl Writers<\/a>, Thom Yorke gushed about how much the R.E.M. album New Adventures In Hi-Fi changed his life around the time the album came out in 1996.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael Stipe from R.E.M. is a genius,\u201d Yorke opened the interview. \u201cA master when it comes to conveying impressions. His lyrics are like a car ride along a street full of traffic signs and billboards. A neon-colored trip, total cinema in your head, and endlessly inspiring. I assume that there is wisdom in all of his lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yorke went on to say that he first started listening to R.E.M. in the mid-1980s. At the time, he was \u201clistening to bands like Japan\u201d and was really only interested in listening to \u201cmusic to kill time with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I discovered R.E.M. and it turned my life upside down,\u201d said Yorke. \u201cMichael Stipe was singing about his flaws and weaknesses, and that it is okay to be weird. I was weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

Songs like Radiohead\u2019s massive 1992 hit \u201cCreep\u201d seem to explore that feeling. Yorke noted that Michael Stipe\u2019s lyrics encouraged him to stop trying to justify himself to people, and soon after, Yorke \u201csigned up for art school and started to take making music seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yorke continued by saying that his favorite R.E.M. record is New Adventures In Hi-Fi, and that he heard the melody of the song \u201cElectrolite\u201d while hanging out with the band in Dublin. In U2\u2019s hotel, of all places.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you can write something like this, then you deserve to be heard by millions of people,\u201d said Yorke.<\/p>\n

Honestly, when listening to New Adventures In Hi-Fi, especially \u201cElectrolite\u201d, one can hear a little bit of Radiohead. It\u2019s clear that R.E.M. influenced Yorke\u2019s music in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

Photo by Goedefroit Music\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The year 1996 was a pretty significant one for the rock band Radiohead and their frontman, Thom Yorke.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216,47263,2156],"class_list":["post-641176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-radiohead","tag-rock-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}