10 Rock Bands With 2 Masterpiece Music Albums

When most of the rock scene got their first glimpse of Radiohead, there was a good chance they were going to be relegated to the bargain bins. While Creep may have been a fine enough song on its own, its borrowing of grunge tropes led most people to lose interest pretty quickly, labelling them a one hit wonder in the next few years. Radiohead weren't content with their sound either though, and OK Computer was where the rock scene got a glimpse of the future.

Framed as a meditation on technology and intimacy, every song on Radiohead's third record feels like an event, from making orchestral arrangements on Exit Music (For a Film) and No Surprises to trying to reinvent their own version of Bohemian Rhapsody on Paranoid Android. It looked like the '90s had found their own version of U2 at this point, but the next record saw Thom Yorke throwing everything out the window.

Having been desensitized to his own music, Kid A is one the most drastic pivots in music history, as Radiohead draw a line in the sand as they try their hand at experimental rock, from glitchy electronic soundscapes to using techniques in the studio like emphasizing rhythms more than melody and toying around with sonic chaos on a song like the National Anthem. Compared to Ok Computer, this feels like walking through the remains of a city, looking through the skeletal side of Radiohead and finding something much more interesting than the guitars. It's one thing to build off your momentum as kings of the music world, but both of these records taken together was Radiohead telling us that you don't even need momentum to keep audiences listening.