10 Albums That You Need To Listen To More Than Once

Once Radiohead made their grand musical statement with OK Computer, most fans had been convinced that we found our next rock gods. That’s not what anyone in Radiohead really wanted though, which led to a tour that made them feel even more alone and caused them to get fed up with the kind of music that they helped create for the past decade. It was time for a change of pace, and fans were not really ready for the kind of music that came on Kid A.

After having songs like Karma Police and Paranoid Android become some of the biggest alt rock songs of the past decade, here was an album that was full of electronic soundscapes and a much colder atmosphere than before. Looking to move past all of the melody and focus almost exclusively on rhythm, Thom Yorke gets a lot more cerebral this time around, with songs that deal with much more apocalyptic imagery on songs like Idioteque. The more you sit with an album like this, the more you start to realize what the band is really going for.

Since you don’t have the heavy guitars to rely on most of the time, each of these songs seems to go for an overall mood rather than a catchy chorus, letting the songs spread out a lot more on something like Optimistic or the National Anthem. In an effort to upend their sound from the past decade, Radiohead came through with a project that feels like much more than just electronic songs smushed together. It’s almost like coming across a rundown planet. It may have had some promise years before, but all we’re looking at is the embers of what used to be thriving.