10 Amazing Songs Written Out Of Competition

Every Radiohead album seems to require some sort of cerebral headspace to fully comprehend. Across albums like Ok Computer and Kid A, it almost feels like Thom Yorke and co. are musical professors trying their best to push the boundaries of what their sound can really do. In the early days though, the inspiration for the more outlandish stuff was a lot less mind-expanding.

Across their sophomore effort the Bends, songs like High and Dry feel ready for radio...and then there's Just. Compared to the rest of the record, this song has the most sonic left turns, changing keys almost on a whim and escalating to a stellar climax. Despite the headtrip behind the production, the actual beginnings come from Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood competing with each other about writing a song.

As the story goes, Greenwood and Yorke had originally posed a challenge for each other by trying to write a song with as many chords as they could think of, which eventually resulted in the more unusual harmonies found in Just. Hell, even the lead guitar that Greenwood plays outlines the basic parts of a diminished chord, which you'd normally find in a jazz song rather than an alt rock classic. Regardless of where they took their inspiration from, the vast array of chords on display showed that Radiohead were on their way to much bigger and brighter things.