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Awesome / Radiohead

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Also see Crowning Music Of Awesome


  • Knowing how Broken Base-inducing Kid A is, and how it wasn't really promoted with a media blitz or any singles or whatever, you can't help but feel kind of awesome when it ended up at #1 in the USA for a week. Thom himself said "We were The Beatles... for a week."
    • The album has been included in three editions of Rolling Stone's top 500 albums list, jumping from #428 to #67note  to #20.
  • Music video example: the gasping defiance on Yorke's face during the final chorus of the video for "No Surprises."
  • Another MV example: the "Nude" video, in all of its overcranked awesomeness.
  • Yet another MV example: the man lighting the car that was chasing him on fire in the video for "Karma Police".
  • When Thom snuck into the Copenhagen Summit disguised as a press member in the name of finding out what the hell was going on.
  • A rather notorious one involving Prince, who was rather outspoken for his views regarding videos of his live performances being put up on YouTube. He decided to cover "Creep" at a live show one evening, and someone put it up online, only for that person to be served a cease and desist letter by Prince's lawyers. Cue Thom Yorke stepping in with: "Put it back up, Creep is our song." - whether or not Thom's comments had a direct effect, the performance was eventually re-uploaded six years later with the permission of Radiohead and NPG Music Publishing. Never has irony been so sweet.
  • There's a little awesome moment during "The Daily Mail", which begins as a soft ballad in the vein of "Codex" or "Pyramid Song" and then suddenly turns into a heavy rocker. The transition gives one chills.
  • Whenever the band plays "The National Anthem" live, Jonny Greenwood randomly tunes into whatever stations are being broadcast in the area via his FM radio, so you can imagine the crowd's surprise at the band's 2012 Mansfield, MA show when he tunes into, of all things, a radio station playing free form jazz.
  • The fact that Jonny programmed all of the software used for TKOL. In fact, let's just say that Jonny's obscenely wide range of musical expertise is awesome in itself. Just check out his Wikipedia article. Seriously.
  • The live debut of "Treefingers"... almost twelve years after its release.
  • The guitar solo in "Go to Sleep," particularly in this Jools Holland live performance.
  • The distorted Metal Scream at the end of "Climbing Up the Walls" will send shivers down your spine.
  • While singing "Myxomatosis" live Thom suddenly stops the whole concert to help a fan who had passed out, and then continues the song seamlessly.
    Thom: ...Third verse. "My thoughts are misguided." (Phil counts them off)
  • There's something special about Thom asking their Glastonbury '03 audience if they were having a good time, and the whole place erupting in cheers.
  • Radiohead collaborating with Hans Zimmer to remix their song "Bloom" into a beautiful orchestral piece called "(Ocean) Bloom".
  • The band's embrace, at long last, of "Creep". For years, the band hated the song and never played it, but by 2016 it had found a spot in their setlist rotation. Specifically, it's usually dragged out as a special treat for fans, and live performances are now coveted by the devoted fanbase they cultivated after they escaped the song's shadow. For instance, listen to a crowd full of adoring fans roar with excitement from the first few bars of the song when they played it at Coachella in 2017.
  • In June of 2019, a hacker stole Thom's minidisk drive from the OK Computer sessions, containing hours of unreleased demos, and threatened to release it unless the band paid them $150,000. Rather than sit around and let themselves get extorted, the band opted to release all 16 hours of the thing on their Bandcamp page and donate the proceeds to Extinction Rebellion.

We ride tonight...

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