Readers’ Poll: The 10 Best Radiohead Songs

Absolutely everybody loves it now, but when Kid A came out back in 2000, some people weren't blown away. People expected another guitar album like their 1990s records, but Radiohead was clearly on a different path. (Nowadays, Kid A sounds like Aqualung next to some of Radiohead's more recent efforts.) The saddest song on the record is "How To Disappear Completely," which was inspired by a comment from Thom Yorke's friend Michael Stipe. The R.E.M. frontman told him that the best way to deal with the pressures of touring is to say to yourself, "I'm not here, this isn't happening…"

Radiohead spent an unusually long period of time tinkering with "Reckoner." The song was first heard live in 2001, though at the time it was called "Being Pulled Apart By Horses." A stripped down version popped up at later shows, though it wasn't until the release of In Rainbows in 2008 that it was finally recorded. It was worth the wait. It's one of the highlights of the album and even better when they play it live. Also, check out Gnarls Barkley's cover of the song. 

The first single from 2003's Hail To The Thief has also become a live favorite over the past decade, though it requires three-fifths of the band to be on drum duty in order to properly pull it off. Radiohead haven't gotten much radio play in recent years, but this one does occasionally pop up. 

OK Computer hit a lot of people by surprise when it hit shelves in the summer of 1997. People paying attention knew the band were more than just the group that did "Creep," but few were prepared for the creative leap they had taken in the short time since The Bends came out just two years earlier. In an album full of classics it's easy to overlook "Let Down," but its haunting beauty certainly earns it a ranking very high on any list of their finest songs. "Andy Warhol once said that he could enjoy his own boredom," multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood said. "'Let Down' is about that. It's the transit-zone feeling. You're in a space, you are collecting all these impressions, but it all seems so vacant. You don't have control over the earth anymore. You feel very distant from all these thousands of people that are also walking there." 

This stand-out track on The Bends was a clear sign that Radiohead were maturing at a very dramatic pace. This is one of the few songs from the old days that they regularly play in concert, and one of the darkest tunes in their catalog. "All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve," Thom Yorke has said. "'Street Spirit' has no resolve . . . It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition." 

The kick-off track to Kid A was a clear sign to fans that this wasn't going to be Ok Computer II. The guitar is no longer the dominant instrument. It's been replaced by Yorke's piano work. In fact, he wrote this song on a baby grand immediately after buying the instrument. The lyrics were inspired by an experience he had after a U.K. show in 1997. "I sat in the dressing room and couldn't speak," Yorke told Rolling Stone.  "I actually couldn't speak. People were saying, 'You all right?' I knew people were speaking to me. But I couldn't hear them. And I couldn't talk. I'd just so had enough. And I was bored with saying I'd had enough. I was beyond that."

"Karma Police" began as an inside joke with Radiohead around the time that they toured with Alanis Morissette in the summer of 1996. When somebody in the band acted like a dick, someone would warn them that the Karma Police were coming after them. An early version of the song was premiered on that tour, but they finished it in the studio when the tour wrapped up. The track was a single on OK Computer and it got them a fair amount of play on alternative radio at the time. 

They'll never admit it now, but many people first heard "Fake Plastic Trees" in the movie Clueless. It's in the scene where Cher comes home and finds her step-brother (and future boyfriend) Josh in her house. It's playing on the radio. "Yuk! Uh, the maudlin music of the university station," she says. "What is it about college and cry-baby music?" It's definitely a cry-baby song, especially the acoustic version used in the film, but it's also one of Radiohead's most anthemic songs. The first notes of it are guaranteed to send any crowd at a Radiohead show into absolute hysterics.