Radiohead (1985-) by DriftingOrpheus

Radiohead (1985-)
(Alternative Rock, Art Rock, Experimental Rock)

Artist Score: 103.8

There are 0 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Radiohead (1985-) has an average rating of 87 out of 100 (from 1 vote). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.

View the complete list of 53,000 charts on BestEverAlbums.com from The Charts page.

Share this chart
Share | |
Collector's summaryLog in or register to discover the great albums that are missing from your music collection!
Sort by
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
Where is the appropriate point of origin? How does one begin eloquently without bellowing out praise like a music-snobbed elitist hell-bent on hard-headedness of musical appreciation. OK Computer's coronation may send shivers down the spines of readers who watch it litter charts all across the platform, a sentiment felt by frontman Thom Yorke, who tries to downplay the record's place in music history in an effort of self-conscious humility. Never one to be put in a creative box, Yorke refuses to be defined by one album and he's surely not. This list is not one of objective knighting, but rather a reflection of the records that reside the deepest in my heart, regardless if many minds consider this to be the greatest album ever constructed. To this point, this listener wouldn't argue, but still, in the context of this chart, such clearly-defined praise would only cheapen the work. In most instances, I derive satisfaction from dissecting each of my favorite albums down to the bone marrow and the negative space between each line of prose. However, OK Computer escapes classification and remains without a need for any sort of justification. The record declares more than any aficionado could hope to. In many ways, OK Computer warns against the monotony of modern times and times to come, but still the album comes home every night, reliable as ever.

Plastered upon its face, an illustration of intersecting pavement in Hartford, Connecticut, far from the homes of the boys who formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. For many, OK Computer is a road map, a canal en route to lovely musical landmarks that both influenced and took inspiration from the seminal album. For me, it's not OK Computer's futuristic motifs, slick guitar lines or harmonic prowess that take the cake. It's the intangible wonder of an album so meticulously crafted to the note and the product of a quintet so acutely dialed in to the very limit of human feasibility. The emotional response that wells up from within during each and every listening experience is paramount and the philosophical resonances never cease to astonish. In an age where resistance to a popular opinion is so prevalent, I'd have every reason in the world to dismiss OK Computer, to liken its listeners to a brand of entry-level beginners to the world of critically acclaimed music, and yet, the album dazzles each and every time. It's adorned in a luster than cannot be eroded by the years or a position on a slapdash, 'Buzzfeed' hot-take list. Despite its warnings that ring truer by the day, the album no longer "stands" for anything and concurrently "represents" nothing. Some like to erroneously place it within a gift-wrapped package labeled "1990's time capsule". They fail to realize that the album belongs to no period of history as its resonance would be seismic during any era. It isn't the champion of any aristocratic sub-culture, as masses of people from all walks of life can be heard singing Karma Police's chorus in physical and spiritual unison. OK Computer is native only to the air it occupies and to the millions it continually enchants. It sounds just as alien today as it did in 1997 while simultaneously swelling, softening and transmitting from some distant, undiscovered galaxy.

"This is my final fit, my final bellyache. With no alarms and no surprises..."

- No Surprises

Standout Tracks:

1. No Surprises
2. Let Down
3. Paranoid Android

102.7
[First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
1997
Appears in:
Rank Score:
77,370
Rank in 1997:
Rank in 1990s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
2. (=)
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
I've never found the old saying "Less is more" to be notably applicable when it came to appreciating music. Often, I've been drawn to a sonic strategy that incorporates a great deal of moving parts, riddled with crushing crescendos and soul-shaking moments of softness. After OK Computer, a sector of Radiohead fans were left a bit perplexed with mouths agape, palms firmly upturned to the sky as they found far "less" with 2000's Kid A. They were wrong.

It's true there are a startling lack of traditional instrumentation here, but the band has never upped the ante like this before or since. While the group had previously made stellar, conscious efforts to avoid being pigeonholed, Kid A marked the planting of a flag which flew colors of musical experimentation and encased Radiohead in the annals of music history as they stared down the barrel of studio pressures for a 'conventional' LP. What the band hand-delivered towards the end of 2000, as the shadow of an unfulfilled Y2K dissipated, was their vision of an approaching apocalypse that would be patient in temperament and self-inflicted.

A dystopian, shivering piece of art, depicting a future that has completely gone metallic, Kid A is the brain's answer to OK Computer's heart. It was here where the marriage of the band and synthesizer incorporation was fused as they devised chemical processes like crazed alchemists in order to weld tracks which could survive both boiling heat and glacial cold. The opening tones of Everything in its Right Place encapsulate a sound which would soon serve as an idiosyncratic anthem as Radiohead firmly shook the hand of the 21st century. The skittering, emergency siren of Idioteque snags a snapshot of a world on the brink of collapse, too preoccupied to sense impending armageddon. Finally, the faux comfort of better times evaporates during the final moments of Motion Picture Soundtrack, ending the album with metaphorical hands full of ash.

Radiohead didn't redefine the rock record with Kid A, for there is no all-encompassing definition. What the band truly managed, was the elusive task of redefining themselves, synchronously altering expectations for their subsequent work and thrusting headlong into an unbroken cycle of phoenix-like reincarnation and reinvention bedizened with staggering success.

"Who's in a bunker? Who's in a bunker? I have seen too much. I haven't seen enough."

- Idioteque

Standout Tracks:

1. Idioteque
2. How to Disappear Completely
3. Everything in its Right Place

102.2
[First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
2000
Appears in:
Rank Score:
51,673
Rank in 2000:
Rank in 2000s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
For many, In Rainbows is the definitive record for the prodigal sons from Abingdon, Oxfordshire. It's certainly the most earthly and naturalistic of the lot. More importantly, it's the most human from a band that's consistently alien. The warm embrace that In Rainbows provides is a welcomed outlier amidst a catalogue fearful of the outside world and entrenched in emotional isolation. On the album, Radiohead don't create panic over climate change like on Kid A. They don't warn of a technology-driven future due to human complacency and they don't protest the political direction of world powers like on Hail to the Thief. They simply reflect, ponder human vanity, recall drunken evenings and most of all, have fun.

The band collectively "letting their hair down" has led to an undeniably earnest entry in the Radiohead canon. Emerging with the bouncy, yet refined 15 Step, it's easy to admire Phil Selway's percussion on the track. The 5/4 time signature creates the illusion of a mutated pop song, awash in sarcastic wit. Bodysnatchers seems to rekindle the band's love for guitar rock as Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien imprint their likenesses all over the thundering track. Nude, track three, could easily take the cake for Radiohead's pinnacle of aesthetic beauty, a song that unfurls slowly and fades into the ether ever so softly. Yorke's vocals on this cut are among the finest he's ever produced. It's very apropos that a song about physical vanity ends up being so tangibly gorgeous.

Late album entries such as Reckoner, Jigsaw Falling Into Place and the heartbreaking Videotape, bookend an album submerged in consistency. Still, there is no grand memorandum, no life-lesson other than what it means to be human, whether fallible, physically self-conscious or devoid of direction. Radiohead have made a name for themselves by zigging and subsequently zagging, but In Rainbows resides on the straightest of lines. A line that is neither accessible nor challenging, existential nor nihilistic. Ten tracks of simply being, at the heights of exuberance and the base of sorrow. A full spectrum of emotion, paralleled by the spectrum of light that dons the album cover.

"No matter what happens now
You shouldn't be afraid
Because I know today has been
The most perfect day I've ever seen."

-Videotape

Standout Tracks:

1. Nude
2. Videotape
3. Jigsaw Falling Into Place

95.9
[First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
2007
Appears in:
Rank Score:
51,533
Rank in 2007:
Rank in 2000s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
Radiohead were an entirely different beast in 1995. Long before they were gray-bearded and critically adored, they were fresh off the heels of an introductory effort that was met with a lukewarm reception, noted only for its lead single to which the last fleeting grunge aficionados clung to with vigor. Pablo Honey has now gone on to gather a cult following in the wake of more complimentary retrospective reviews, but what they would produce next would shape the trajectory of their careers for years to come. The Bends is an easily discernible maturation for the group as the songwriting becomes more poignant and the musicianship undergoes a colossal leap forward. It was in the finest details of The Bends where the band had carved out their sound and, more importantly, their confidence.

While examining the title track, The Bends, the two-headed monster of guitar fury is let loose as Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien flourish their talents all throughout a track named after a sensation caused by gas-infused bubbles in the blood. However, the concepts communicated in the song deal with fair-weather friends riding the band's coattails into stardom and knowing who the true confidants are. The conclusion is drawn by Thom Yorke himself who snarls, "We don't have any real friends". Fourth track Fake Plastic Trees goes down as an early era anthem of rejection for the band, serving as a wiser, more contemplative Creep evolution. Working both as a blistering assessment of consumerism in modern society and as Yorke's own disillusion towards the porcelain nature of his experiences of human interaction, particularly those with the opposite sex. The song delicately unfolds before crashing thunderously with guitar hits subbing for lightning. The track softly recoils as Yorke sorrowfully ponders, "If I could be who you wanted, all the time". This was, for lack of a better term, a "grown up" piece for the band and it was also the moment of discovery for Yorke's own lyrical voice. Closing cut Street Spirit (Fade Out) sculpts out a place alongside other Radiohead classics with an emotional weight not yet produced by the group. Commencing with a guitar hook that could inspire ominous dread within Satan himself, the track explores nihilistic motifs and the chilling-certainty of life's short duration. Yorke has even claimed that "it hurts like hell to play" and likened it to "staring the Devil in the eyes". The backing vocal harmony during the second half beseeches images of wandering souls lost in transit as the frontman begs those who listen to "immerse your soul in love". Street Spirit (Fade Out) serves as a proper creative zenith for the band, acting almost as a baptism into a higher consciousness of musical inspiration for the English quintet.

In May of 1997, Radiohead would go on to release the seminal OK Computer and the rest, as they say, is history. For all of OK Computer's ingenuity and attention to detail, the seeds for the album were really sown two years earlier on The Bends. The 1995 effort often draws the short straw when most recall Radiohead's most polished discography entries. It's easy to overlook the stratospheric ascent in dynamism between the band's first and second LPs. The Bends enjoyed a mostly cordial reception by critics but few could be astute enough to cite the album as the birthing of a modern music legend. The pyramid of what we now know as Radiohead was still being built, and the blocks of stone at the foundation are just as important as the ones that sit atop them.

"Faith, you're driving me away,
You do it every day,
You don't mean it, but it hurts like hell,
My brain says I'm receiving pain,
A lack of oxygen,
From my life support, my iron lung."

-My Iron Lung

Standout Tracks:

1. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
2. Fake Plastic Trees
3. (Nice Dream)

94.8
[First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
1995
Appears in:
Rank Score:
33,390
Rank in 1995:
Rank in 1990s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
90.5 [First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
2001
Appears in:
Rank Score:
11,685
Rank in 2001:
Rank in 2000s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
88.7 [First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
17,145
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
88.3 [First added to this chart: 03/04/2024]
Year of Release:
2001
Appears in:
Rank Score:
641
Rank in 2001:
Rank in 2000s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
86 [First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
2003
Appears in:
Rank Score:
9,070
Rank in 2003:
Rank in 2000s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
80.1 [First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
2011
Appears in:
Rank Score:
5,065
Rank in 2011:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • iTunes
  • Spotify
  • #Sponsored
70.9 [First added to this chart: 10/24/2020]
Year of Release:
1993
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,944
Rank in 1993:
Rank in 1990s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 10. Page 1 of 1

Don't agree with this chart? Create your own from the My Charts page!

Radiohead (1985-) composition

Decade Albums %


1930s 0 0%
1940s 0 0%
1950s 0 0%
1960s 0 0%
1970s 0 0%
1980s 0 0%
1990s 3 30%
2000s 5 50%
2010s 2 20%
2020s 0 0%
Artist Albums %


Radiohead 10 100%
Country Albums %


United Kingdom 10 100%
Live? Albums %
No 9 90%
Yes 1 10%

Radiohead (1985-) chart changes

Biggest climbers
Climber Up 1 from 7th to 6th
A Moon Shaped Pool
by Radiohead
Biggest fallers
Faller Down 1 from 6th to 7th
I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings
by Radiohead

Radiohead (1985-) similarity to your chart(s)


Not a member? Registering is quick, easy and FREE!


Why register?


Register now - it only takes a moment!

Swans (1982–1997, 2010–2017, 2019–present) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Deerhunter (2001-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Joanna Newsom (2002-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Interpol (1997-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Arcade Fire (2001-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Blitzkid (1997–2012, 2019-present) Ranked by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Tame Impala (2007-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Joy Division (1976-1980) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The Adicts (1975-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The Beatles (1960-1970) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The Jasons (2014-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The Misfits (1977-1983), (1995-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The National (1999-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The Renfields (2014-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The Smiths (1982-1987) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Thom Yorke (2006-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Vampire Weekend (2006-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Acid Bath (1991-1997) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Björk (1975-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Scott Walker (1958-2019) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Aphex Twin (1985-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
The Velvet Underground (1964–1973, 1990, 1992–1993, 1996) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
Favorite Artists of All Time by DriftingOrpheus (2023)
Run the Jewels (2013-) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)
フィッシュマンズ [Fishmans] (1987–1999) by DriftingOrpheus (2024)

Radiohead (1985-) ratings

Average Rating: 
87/100 (from 1 vote)
  Ratings distributionRatings distribution Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AV
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.

N.B. The average rating for this chart will not be reliable as it has been rated very few times.

Showing all 1 ratings for this chart.

Sort ratings
RatingDate updatedMemberChart ratingsAvg. chart rating
  
100/100
 Report rating
11/09/2020 23:09 DJENNY  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 4,410100/100

Please log in or register if you want to be able to leave a rating

Radiohead (1985-) favourites

Please log in or register if you want to be able to add a favourite

Radiohead (1985-) comments

Be the first to add a comment for this Chart - add your comment!

Please log in or register if you want to be able to add a comment

Your feedback for Radiohead (1985-)

Anonymous
Let us know what you think of this chart by adding a comment or assigning a rating below!
Log in or register to assign a rating or leave a comment for this chart.
Recognised  Decade Charts (2020s)
1. 100 Best Albums of the 2010s: Staff Picks by Billboard (2019)
2. Top 100 Albums of the Decade by Crack Magazine (2019)
3. The Needle Drop's Top Albums Of The 2010s by The Needle Drop (2019)
4. The A.V. Club's 50 best albums of the 2010s by The A.V. Club (2019)
5. Top 50 Albums of the 2010s by The Wild Honey Pie (2019)
6. NME's Greatest Albums of The Decade: The 2010s by New Music Express (2019)
7. Gorilla vs. Bear Albums of the 2010s by Gorilla vs. Bear (2019)
8. The 50 best albums of the decade – 2010 to 2019 by Independent (2019)
9. BrooklynVegan's Top Albums of 2010s by BrooklynVegan (2020)
10. The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s by Pitchfork (2019)
11. All The Best Albums Of The 2010s, Ranked by Uproxx (2019)
12. 100 Best Albums of the 2010s by Rolling Stone (2019)
13. The 100 Best Albums Of The 2010s by Stereogum (2019)
14. The 101 Best Albums of the 2010s by Spin (2020)
15. The 50 Best Albums of the Decade by Deep Cuts (2019)
16. Die 100 besten Alben der 10er Jahre by Musikexpress.de (2020)
17. Top 100 Albums of the 2010s by Consequence of Sound (2019)
18. The 100 Best Albums of the 2010s by Paste (2019)
19. Tiny Mix Tapes 2010s: Favorite 100 Music Releases of the Decade by Tiny Mix Tapes (2019)
20. BEST OF 2011 - 2020: Die besten Alben des Jahrzehnts by laut (2020)
Back to Top