10 Most Underrated Radiohead Songs
Gems From the Musical Cyborgs.
No other band can claim to have the career trajectory that Radiohead have had. After being called one hit wonders in the first part of their career off of the single Creep, they have pretty much gone everywhere they can as a band since, creating new avenues for other bands along the way with records like Kid A and the Bends. When you have that much music to take in all at once though, there tend to be a few songs that go unnoticed.
Across nearly every album that have made, there has always been a few songs that aren't nearly as celebrated among the best that the band has to offer. When you break down their musical journey though, these are where the interesting parts of themselves come out, from weird genre tangents in the '00s to the more ambient passages you get from the modern day sounds of records like A Moon Shaped Pool.
Hell, some of these songs tend to be so far away from each other that you'll sometimes wonder whether you're listening to the same band from one track to the next. These are all the same musical cyborgs that you know and love though, and sticking to the hits like Karma Police and High and Dry is just scratching the surface of what they can really do.
10. Sail To The Moon - Hail To The Thief
There's the old joke that's been going around the Internet that Hail to the Thief is Radiohead's "angry album." Being the first record being released in the Bush administration of the US government, you can tell from the album cover that these guys had a lot of stuff to say. That doesn't mean that they lost their touch for some of the more introspective moments.
Along with the more rock leaning tracks like 2+2=5 and Go To Sleep, there's a lot more inner turmoil going on in this track, with one of the more emotional vocal performances that Thom would lay down during this era. Though there are a lot of guitars on here to be sure, this is definitely a piano song if there ever was one, as Thom's contempt for the higher ups being a lot more cynical sounding than brow beating.
Considering this album was also the result of being recorded over a handful of weeks in Los Angeles, there's a lot more organic feel to the way that everything is mixed, as if you're hearing the band play it in real time. They haven't turned their backs on the Kid A era of their career either though. If anything, this feels like they took the atmosphere they created on Kid A and brought it into the rehearsal room to flesh it out in real time.