10 Greatest Guitar Riffs Of The 90s
8. Paranoid Android - Radiohead
When talking about the greatest riffs of all time, it's pretty easy to pick them out in the song. Since most artists know they have something awesome on their hands, they just sit on that riff and will drive the song on those one or two musical ideas. As far as Radiohead is concerned though, how do settle on one musical idea in something like Paranoid Android?
While most people herald this as the '90s Bohemian Rhapsody, they're not wrong in how many parts this song has, going from an acoustic song to a freakout moment to a funeral dirge. So....which one is the actual riff? It's hard to really keep track, but any guitar player will tell you that you can get chills from the mid section of this song.
As the riff starts out being played on an acoustic guitar, the intensity jumps up by 100 when the electric guitars are brought in, as Jonny Greenwood puts his guitar through absolute turmoil. From the sound of the strings getting bent, it's almost like you can hear the guitar crying towards the back end of this song, almost like the neck is about to snap off at any moment. Even though you can make the case that Radiohead tried to get a lot more synthetic after OK Computer, there's something about this riff in Paranoid Android that feels deliberately human.