10 INCREDIBLE Guitar Secrets In Rock Songs You Totally Missed
6. Radiohead's Guitar Competition - Just
Radiohead have made an entire career out of being one of rock and roll's most eccentric acts. Whether it's making the best form of alternative rock on albums like Ok Computer or the trance-like loops of the King of Limbs, the band are always willing to take a musical risk for the sake of their art. Though the band may have specific goals in mind for their tracks nowadays, one of their earliest hits actually came from friendly competition.
Coming from the band's sophomore effort The Bends, "Just" is one of the first songs that pulled the band out of their "Creep" one hit wonderdom, with some of the oddest arrangements of the band's career.
The chords are certainly unusual, but that's the point. Instead of starting as a singular idea, the song was actually written as a challenge between guitarists Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood to see how many chords they could fit into a single song.
From Hendrix like guitar fury to some jazz chord accentuations, Yorke somehow managed to find the perfect off-kilter melody to make the song stand on its own as a musical force of nature. "Just" may have been a bit odd by rock standards, but it was clear that the entire rock world had taken these alt-rock hopefuls for granted.