Awesome Music / Radiohead

Pablo Honey

• "Creep", the emotion in that song, and the self loathing.
• "Blow Out" is a wonderful closer, building up from gentle drumming and riffs to heavier riffs and culminating in a noisy and exhilarating finale.

The Bends

• "Planet Telex", with its echoey riffs and powerful vocals ("EVERYTHIIING IS... Brokennn..."), which is all the more impressive when you find out that the band recorded it after drinking copious amounts of wine, and Thom Yorke sang the vocals lying flat on his back, totally wasted.
• "The Bends" in general - the guitar intro is awesome. Calls up images of a sunny morning on a city street. WE DON'T HAVE ANY REAL... FRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENDS.
• "Fake Plastic Trees" is a sorrowful song about what seems to be real turning out to be fake. It's especially beautiful from around the 3 minute mark to the end, when the song picks up before drifting into calmness once again.
• "Nice Dream" is an all around beautiful song, led by an acoustic guitar and some glorious vocals on Thom's behalf.
• "Just". Special mention goes to the guitar and that epic solo at the end...
• "My Iron Lung" is often considered the superior version of "Creep", and it shows: the sudden change from a britpop ballad to a harsh alternative song is as burtal as it is awesome.
• "Bullet Proof... I Wish I Was" is a gentle and melancholic piece about wishing for good yet implausible things in dark times.
• "Black Star". That chorus and riff... "Blame it on the black star / Blame it on the falling sky / Blame it on the satellite that beams me home..."
• "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". From the guitar buildup to Thom's broken voice, you have a magnificiently tragic Album Closure.

Singles

• "Lewis (Mistreated)", the B-Side to "My Iron Lung" , can only be summarized as Radiohead at their most garage rock-y.
• "Talk Show Host", the B-side to "Street Spirit" and easily the band's most popular B-side, is based around a simple guitar riff but still manages to build a solid listening experience with brooding lyrics and the likes.

OK Computer OK NOTOK

OK Computer

• "Airbag". The guitars, the riffs, the cut-up beats and Thom's elated lyrics and singing combine to create a triumphant and awesome opening track.
• "Paranoid Android" starts off as a gentle, somewhat oddball tune - and then the heavy guitar riffs come in. We all die of awesome overload the moment Thom shouts "YOU DON'T REMEMBER!"
• "Subterranean Homesick Alien" gives listeners a break before the darker parts of the album with its relaxing, spacey feel.
• "Exit Music (For a Film)", possibly the coolest song inspired by Romeo and Juliet ever recorded. Its quiet start, accentuated by sheer guitar and electronic choir, is equally awe-inducing and chilling, but it gets real awesome when the drums and synths kick in, building up to one of the most incredible climaxes in Radiohead history. Never did you think the sentence "Now we are one in everlasting peace" could be uttered with such grandeur.
• "Let Down", especially the "You know where you are" bit. It's sparkly, it's simultaneously ecstatic and heartbreaking, and it manages to make something truly beautiful out of depression and alienation without glamorizing either.
• "Karma Police" starts with a calming piano and acoutsic guitar duet, then the tension rises to lead to the Creepy Awesome electric sirens.
• "Fitter Happier" is an example of Creepy Awesome, as well as summarizing what the entire album is all about.
• "Electioneering" is a good song for those looking for a harder sound on the album.
• "Climbing Up the Walls" is one of the darkest songs on the album due to the dark ambient noises, string section, and lyrics from the perspective of a stalker. Special mention goes to Thom's bone-chilling Metal Scream at the end.
  CLIMBING UP THE WAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGHH
• "No Surprises". A different form of creepy than "Climbing Up The Walls", this song is a good embodiment of suburban ennui and the effects of modern life on the average person. Not to mention the Glock added in for extra irony.
• "Lucky" combines a calm instrumental with an awesome guitar solo and a beauitful rising choir, with the lyrics about a survivor of a plane crash making the whole thing seem bittersweet.
  It's gonna be a gloooorrrriiiiouuus dayy...
• "The Tourist" is a refreshing closer to the album, with a more peaceful sound than the songs before it. The lyrics, which can be seen as a message for one to slow down and relax, add to its beauty.

OK NOTOK

• "Big Boots". Radiohead with an awesome, almost James Bond-esque feel to it. After existing for twenty years as a bootleg recording ripped from Meeting People Is Easy, a proper studio recording (titled "Man O' War") has been released along with "I Promise" and "Lift" for the 20th anniversary edition of OK Computer. Huzzah!
• "Polyethylene (Parts 1 and 2)", especially part 2. Another example of Mundane Made Awesome with operatic declarations of "plastic bag, middle class, polyethylene" and "there is no significant risk to your health", not to mention the music itself. The way the song spirals out at the end as if it were a spacecraft launched into the atmosphere? Lovely.

Kid A Mnesia

Kid A

• "Everything in Its Right Place" for being beautiful and sort of terrifying. The awesomeness may be either diminished or increased for you once you figure out what he's saying...
  "Yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon"
• "The National Anthem" already starts out good with its catchy bassline, but then the brass section comes in, which is amazing in its jazzy yet atonal sound.
• "How to Disappear Completely". All of it. Especially when the trumpets come in in their strange arpeggiated patterns, they don't fit in but they just... do. Thom even at one point called it his best song, for good reason.
• "Optimistic". The song is, true to its name, optimistic, especially in its lyrics ("You can try the best you can/The best you can is good enough"). The transition from "Optimistic" to "In Limbo" is also very well done.
• The big giant Apocalyptic disco beast that is "Idioteque" is the musical definition of CMoA. Not just the beat, but the vocals paired with the lyrics are superb.
• "Morning Bell" is already pretty awesome, but then the halfway point comes to accentuate to the weird awesomeness: "Cut the kids in half."
• "Motion Picture Soundtrack" is quite possibly the most simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting song in the universe.

Amnesiac

• "Pyramid Song", especially the part where Phil Selway's drumming falls in. It's also a lesson in composition when you realize it's in Common Time.
• The climax of "You And Whose Army?". So much punch delivered through such simple lyrics.
  "We ride tonight... ghost horses."
• "I Might Be Wrong" is driven by an awesome guitar riff and metallic beats. There's also the fake ending, where a smoother guitar riff comes in as you think the song's about to end.
• "Knives Out". An unnerving, yet fantastic single that deals with Cannibalism taking heavy inspiration from The Smiths. Johnny Smith had this to say about the song: "I was beyond flattered and quite speechless – which takes some doing. He (Ed O'Brien) explained to me that with that song they'd tried to take a snapshot of the way I'd done things in the Smiths – and I guess you can hear that in it."
• Kid A's "Morning Bell" was already an awesome song, but then it was rerecorded and revamped with a much more orchestral overtone for Amnesiac.
• "Like Spinning Plates" is magnificent, especially when one considers how it was made.
• The entirety of "Life in a Glasshouse". Especially the full length version on the two-disc version of the album. It's five minutes of awesome!

Amnesiac singles

• "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy", a B-side with a creepy, industrial feel to it. The layered vocals and eerie, pounding drum riff just make it sound all the more awesome... picture Radiohead doing a Queens of the Stone Age song.

Kid Amnesiae

• Unreleased fan favorite "Follow Me Around" is headed by cool and somewhat folky guitar strumming and features lyrics about something that keeps following us around, which can be interpreted in different ways. It was later released after being circulated for about 20 years as a proper studio recording for the 20th anniversary of Kid A and Amnesiac alongside "If You Say the Word" in 2021.

Hail to the Thief

• "2 + 2 = 5", the moment when Thom loses his ever-loving shit about halfway through and starts screaming: "HAVE-NOT-BEEN! PAYING ATTENTION! PAYING ATTENTION!" See also: "DON'T QUESTION MY AUTHORITY OR PUTMEINABOX!!"
• "Sit Down. Stand Up." is accompanied by a rhythmic keyboard riff and grows increasingly intense until the electronic breakdown with pitter-pattering beats and Thom repeating "And the raindrops" over and over again.
• "Backdrifts". The small piano solo is pretty cool, and the beat sounds like a malfunctioning steam train. It's like Industrial, Ambient, Glitch and Hip-Hop were thrown into a blender...
• "We Suck Young Blood". Never has a quiet song about vampires been so awesome. At one point in the song, the sound almost explodes.
• "Go to Sleep", a simple yet effective alternative song.
  OVER MY DEAAAD BOOO-OOODY!!
• The beautifully eerie "The Gloaming", which starts off with a jittery IDM-y loop before turning into a warbling, claustrophobic piece with Thom's echoing voice sweeping over the apprehensive soundscapes.
• The climax of "There There". Take some guitars, heavy drums, "WEEEE ARRRRRE AAAAACIDENTS WAITIIIING TO HAPPENNNNNN!!!!" and a video with Bagpuss and Thom Yorke grabbing golden clothes and experiencing its tree-morphing side effects and you've got yourself the Crowning Alternative Rock Anthem of Awesome. It is, somehow, both ominous and uplifting.
• "A punchup at a wedding. (no no no no no no no no.)" has a smooth bassline and slightly discordant, jazzy piano melody, over which Thom sings a beautiful, quietly angry song, which he stated in interviews was about a critic who went to a Radiohead show and basically made up a load of crap about the fans because he couldn't think of any good criticisms of the band, which Thom took exception to. However, even not knowing the context, the song's anger will still be relatable to anyone who's ever had a fight, verbal or physical, with somebody, especially if they were in the wrong or made up lies. Also, if you're an anime fan, you might notice the song's backing track sounds weirdly similar to "Logos Naki World" from the original Hellsing series.
  Hypocrite. Opportunist. Don't infect me with your poison.
  A bully in a china shop. When I turn around you stay frozen to the spot.
  The pointless snide remarks of hammerheaded sharks;
  The pot will call the kettle black, it's a drunken punchup at a wedding, yeah.
• "Myxomatosis", with its strange time signature and awesome guitar part, not to mention the chilling part where everything drops out but the vocals and drums. "But now. I. Don't. Know. Why I. Feel. So. Tongue. Tied." And then it all comes back in again and goes on to become more and more awesome.
• "A Wolf at the Door" is just amazing and unlike any other Radiohead song, with brilliant pattering lyrics.

Com Lag ( 2 + 2 = 5)

• "I Am Citizen Insane". Super-chill but slightly creepy.

In Rainbows

Original album

• This live performance of "15 Step" at the 2009 Grammys, where Thom is backed by the Spirit of Troy, USC's legendary marching band. It's especially awesome since it's Radiohead's first ever performance at the Grammys.
• "Bodysnatchers", especially its spine tingling ending, with the guitars going into overload and Yorke screaming vocals.
• "Nude" is an amazing song: there is a single and sublime chord change (that happens multiple times) at the 2:26 mark. Thom Yorke's ethereal and wondrous vocal performance may be his greatest by a long shot. When they started a remix contest for this song, one of the contestants submitted a version done on an oscilloscope, an old printer and scanner, and an answering machine (which played the vocals), played through hard drives instead of speakers.
• "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" is inextricably awesome, the massive buildup for an entire song and then completely stripped down at 3:03.
• The bridge in "Reckoner", when all the percussion cuts out and all you're left with are the rising voices and strings. And then Cee Lo Green covered it.
  iiiiiiiin Raaaaaaainbooooooows...
• "Jigsaw Falling Into Place", a 4-minute alternative upbeat and relaxing song.
• "Videotape" is a real Tear Jerker, especially when paired with this insanely awesome video.

Disk 2

• This live performance of "Bangers and Mash". Thom playing a second set of drums like a madman and singing at the same time.

The King of Limbs

The King of Limbs From the Basement version gives the whole album a more alternative feel compared to the original.

The album itself

• On February 18th, 2011, a gleeful fandom began its The King of Limbs experience with "Bloom", quite possibly Radiohead's best opening track yet. The wailing, echo-y vocals are just eerie and ominous enough to set the tone of the album. The Hans Zimmer-produced orchestral arrangement of the song, "(Ocean) Bloom", is equally powerful, if not more so.
• "Morning Mr Magpie" sounds like Radiohead trying to do Funk music in their own way, and it works beautifully.
• The epic brass background in "Codex" is amazing. It's scary and apprehensive and beautiful and nostalgic all at once.
• When the wall of distorted vocals singing "into your arms" hits at about the 3 minute mark of "Give Up the Ghost".
• A contender for best closing track is "Separator". The beat is strangely addictive... and after the heartbreaking double of "Codex" and "Give Up the Ghost", this song wraps up the album on a comforting, calming and hopeful note. "If you think this is over, then you're wrong..."

Other

• "Supercollider". They made a 7-minute-long song about a particle accelerator.

A Moon Shaped Pool

• "Burn the Witch", a track teased and anticipated for years, was finally released as the first single of the album on May 3rd, 2016. And it was worth the wait. Even without the music video, the song's progression makes it seem like it's trying to tell a story - with varied strings, electronic beats, and the synth bass all playing at the right time.
• "Daydreaming" manages to mix the ambient of their Kid A era with In Rainbows-style art rock for one beautiful Mind Screw.
• "Decks Dark" is a song that feels like it's been around forever, with timeless piano melodies and an infectious jazzy groove.
• "Ful Stop" has an incredible amount of buildup, and an equally incredible payoff once the second set of drums kicks in, not to mention some more great guitar riffing near the end.
• A hi-hat-heavy hip-hop style beat? Cool. Indie Rock-style guitar riffing? Nice. A manic synth solo? Great. All of these at the same time? "Identikit".
• "True Love Waits" has been floating around as an unreleased song since The Bends and was finally officially put on the tracklist. Needless to say, it's a perfect, albeit sorrowful, ending to the album.

Other Songs

• Radiohead's (almost) actual James Bond theme, "Spectre". The strings, the bass, the drums, Thom's voice...

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