10 Perfect '90s Rock Songs That Everyone Forgets About
3. Climbing Up the Walls - Radiohead
After being on this Earth for over a quarter century, it feels like fans are still trying to peel back the layers of what Radiohead was getting at on OK Computer. Considering this was the final time that Radiohead had come through with a front to back rock masterpiece, every single song seemed to have an unspoken power behind it, along with being incredibly prophetic of what the digital age was going to come to. Radiohead may have their softer and depressing side, but the back end of the record is where they started to get a little more sinister.
Coming out of the pure rock swagger of Electioneering, there's something that comes with Climbing Up the Walls that's almost violent and disturbed from the moment it starts playing. Set in a minor key and featuring Thom Yorke working in his falsetto through distorted effects, hearing him sing these lines conjure up feelings of uneasiness, as he talks about being right next to you at every moment of the day. This could be a stalker quickly trying to kill you, or it might be the sounds of the voices you hear inside your head.
Even with Thom's performance bringing a lot of dread to the track, the real power behind the song is what Jonny Greenwood was able to do with the string accompaniment, looking to move out of the Eleanor Rigby school of strings and creating something that sounded much more like classical chaos. Radiohead definitely have their moments of getting cerebral and dark from time to time, but this is the kind of unwieldy sounds that feel like they were made for Heath Ledger's Joker.