Like the albums themselves, our ranked list of Radiohead’s oeuvre has arrived after years of overwrought sessions, scorched-earth changes of direction, and personal meltdowns. Ever since the founding of The Hard Times way back in 2014, we’ve experimented with multiple languages and fonts (including 4 fruitless years in Wingdings), and we’ve changed the number one spot 114 times. At one point we even brought Brian Eno in to help, that was a waste of $2,800 and he still won’t return our texts. But as it turned out, his instruction for us to write the entries backwards onto papyrus and then fax them to Björk was a huge breakthrough, and after that the list came together briskly in less than 18 months.
9. The King of Limbs (2011)
As insults go, “Worst Radiohead Album” is a pretty mild one, along the lines of “Least Cute Cat”, or “Worst Lifesaving Procedure” – even the lesser ones pretty much hit the spot. However, everything about TKOL and its release felt oddly low-key, to the extent that I’m never 100% sure I didn’t dream it. (Yes, that is a brag).
Play it again: “Codex” very beautiful, and never has a brass section sounded less like a ska song.
Skip it: “Morning Mr Magpie” promises magpie content that it doesn’t deliver.
8. Amnesiac (2001)
The songs on “Amnesiac” came from the same sessions as the previous year’s “Kid A”, and yet this somehow wasn’t another era-defining masterpiece. The fuck? Were they spitting directly into the faces of the loyal fans here? According to me back then, yes. But with some objective distance, these are actually 11 inventive songs whose only real crime is not transporting me to “Kid A”‘s intangible magical nether-dimension.
Play it again: Several great moments, but “Pyramid Song” is the one that endures.
Skip it: “Life in a Glasshouse”
7. A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)
I want to love this as much as everyone else, and for the first 3 tracks I absolutely do. But for some reason the rest of it just doesn’t seem to get to me – with one very notable exception. “Present Tense” fucks me up good and proper, and every time the “as my world comes crashing down” lyric hits I invariably crumple to the floor and start bawling (really inconvenient when I’m out and about).
Play it again: Technically it’s “Present Tense”, but shout out to “Decks Dark” for being as close to sex music as Radiohead has ever come.
Skip it: “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief”
6. Pablo Honey (1993)
Before Jonny Greenwood had his head turned by old French wooden synthesizers and clockwork oboes (probably), his part in the band’s three-guitar attack was their secret weapon (alongside Thom Yorke’s not-so-secret voice). Idiosyncratic and virtuosic without being punchable (very rare), his lead guitar added some sizzle to this (relatively) conventional debut. It would all get even better on the next album, but I will fight anyone (including members of the band) who tries to write this one off.
Play it again: “How Do You?” – obviously not their pinnacle, but Thom being briefly possessed by Johnny Rotten would pay dividends a few years later in snarly songs like “Just” and “Paranoid Android”.
Skip it: “Creep” but only because you’ll probably hear it later today anyway.
5. Hail to the Thief (2003)
The guitars had taken a back seat for the best part of two albums, and dads across the world were getting antsy. Would there ever be another “Creep”? There wouldn’t, but the axes did get a bit of a run out this time, including on many of the strongest songs. That said, the standout track is “Myxomatosis”, which is dominated by a galumphing synth riff that transforms it into easily the funkiest song ever written about sick bunny rabbits.
Play it again: “Myxomatosis”
Skip it: “We Suck Young Blood”
4. In Rainbows (2007)
Radiohead disrupted the music industry’s album-release template here, with an innovative “pay-what-you-want” system. One million copies of “In Rainbows” were left by a farm gate on a country lane in Oxfordshire, and fans were invited to put “a few quid” into a wooden honesty box that was shaped like a sharp-toothed cartoon bear – eventually raising a commendable £842. It’s a remarkable, beautiful album, that deepened our love for the band in a way that we didn’t think was possible at the time – and in retrospect my payment of 12 pence and an expired condom severely undervalued it.
Play it again: “Nude”, “Reckoner”, “Videotape” everything sounds effortless on this album (and almost certainly wasn’t).
Skip it: Nah.
3. OK Computer (1997)
Not much more jizz needs to be spilled fluffing this rightly celebrated album, but it’s worth spending a moment on the excellent lyrics. Not as coldly impersonal as they’re reputed to be – just as often they’re vulnerable, or furious, or even funny. The line “kicking squealing Gucci little piggy” [sic] is an absolute world-beater, and I sincerely hope Thom gave himself the rest of the month off after writing it. (Update: he didn’t).
Play it again: “Paranoid Android” obvious choice, but it’s still absolutely thrilling.
Skip it: “Fitter Happier” instead, listen to the cover version on “Radiodread,” Easy Star All-Stars’ superb reggae tribute album (no, really).
2. Kid A (2000)
I fully hated this on the first listen. When a fucking free-jazz brass ensemble parped themselves into existence midway through track 3, “The National Anthem”, I was all ready to frisbee my compact disc right out the window. But I made it through to a curious second listen, and then by listen three I’d already become insufferably evangelical about it. Some kind of witchcraft is at play here – nothing on the album would make it into my top 10 Radiohead songs, and yet the sum of its parts is just magic.
Play it again: “Idioteque”
Skip it: I don’t love all the songs equally, but skipping would be blasphemy.
1. The Bends (1995)
I can’t even remember what else I was listening to in 1995, but it all got ditched soon after “The Bends” came along. It just had this indefinable aura, although I will concede that maybe a small part of that aura could actually be defined as “total dweeb listens to good music for the first time”. So it’s a pretty subjective number one. But if you think its conventional rock band sound makes it automatically less sophisticated than the albums that followed it, might I entreat you to suck upon the octatonic flex that is “Just”? A whole lot of theory shit is going on under its hood, but before you get a chance to discern whether the opening four chords have borrowed a note from the Lydian mode, the song flings you against the wall, stuffs your manuscript paper into your mouth and sneers into your stupid nerdy face.
Play it again: “Just”
Skip it: Just don’t.
Apparently, this record’s title is a British colloquialism that means ‘give it a try,’ which is the exact amount of effort a listener should be expected to put in here. The band tracked this one mostly live, while inexplicably managing to commit the most expired-sounding version of themselves thus far to tape. Quite the feat considering how well-known they were for their explosive performances at the time. Nobody sounds less excited to be on the record than lead singer and frontman, Alex Turner, who delivers his vocals as if he’s half asleep while sadly only fully waking for some of the album’s weakest tracks. To quote Turner, himself, ‘ipp, dipp, dog-shit rock and roll,’ indeed.
Fresh off their massively successful debut, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not,’ Arctic Monkeys’ sophomore album suffers from the urgent desire to repeat the conditions that led to their newfound adoration. This record is essentially the musical equivalent of that time in high school when you dressed precisely the way your friends did in a failed effort to look like a unique individual. By tapping directly into the British dance-rock scene of the time, ‘Nightmare’ drops the satirical elements of their previous offering by fully committing to the trendy aspects of the genre. Because of this, ‘Nightmare’ is the only album in the band’s discography that sounds as dated as the MySpace pictures look that you took in 2005.
On the band’s most recent album, one thing is abundantly clear: Alex Turner is fucking tired of being Alex Turner. With stunning production and amazing orchestration, ‘The Car’ is certainly not without its charm. Still, the voice on top of it all rarely sounds like it can be bothered with all the pageantry. Turner even goes as far as to admit it in revealing lines like ‘I had big ideas, the band were so excited… but now the orchestra’s got us all surrounded, and I cannot for the life of me remember how they go.’ Much like your old bud from college that still pretends to be ‘indie’ despite earning a six-figure salary, ‘The Car’ nails the aesthetic but lacks the veracity.
This is the album that probably led to a bunch of your friends calling the band ‘sell-outs’ while secretly bobbing their heads to the near-perfect riffs that permeate the entire track listing. This record was so phenomenal that most people didn’t even care how corny the band’s cosplay-Fonzie aesthetic was during its press tour. ‘AM’ finds Turner as the braggadocious, Alexa Chung-dating, Drake-covering, single-gold-chain-wearing frontman he always aspired to be. The transformation was pretty similar to your dad’s recent mid-life crisis but markedly less off-putting.
Considering the multi-faceted aspects of the band’s sound, the title of their excellent debut album may as well be their mission statement. Coming as a shock to all involved, ‘Whatever People Say I Am’ quickly became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history, an accolade it still holds to this day. Thanks to excellent singles like ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor,’ Arctic Monkeys steadily became a household name. This would only prove to be a modest beginning for the group, allowing them to annoy music fans that hate to see bands evolve for years to come.
As is tradition, every fledgling sleaze-rock indie band must participate in a rite of passage. One that involves going to a remote location in the desert and cutting a record with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. Consider it the modern version of the Crossroads, and yes; that means we are calling Josh Homme the Devil here. ‘Humbug’ marks a dark turn for the band’s sound, trading in their carefully crafted dance-punk sound for something more akin to stoner-metal, but without sacrificing their pop sensibilities. This very well could have been number one, but there’s a strong ‘we just tried weed for the first time’ vibe on this record that occasionally stunts its progression.
Okay, get it out of your system now and call us idiots for this one, but we only ask that you hold off judgment of this album’s placement until you finally get around to actually listening to it. Some so-called fans of the band will argue that this album is too far of a left-turn, while more observant admirers will tell you that this album is the most the Arctic Monkeys have ever sounded like the Arctic Monkeys. Having made a career out of flirting with Bowie-style arrangements, Turner cranks the sonic and lyrical freak level up to eleven here with a concept record about a high-rise hotel situated on the lunar surface. Many even believe the record somehow predicted the pandemic with its themes of isolation, political extremism, gentrification, and, of course, horniness. Find another of the group’s albums where Turner gets away with a line as cringe as ‘kiss me underneath the moon’s side boob’ and we’ll gladly reconsider this album’s rightful place at the top. This may not be your favorite Monkeys album of all time, but it is unequivocally their masterpiece.
