You’re So Fucking Special. I’m A Creep

I’m going to say something wildly unpopular and terribly uncool. I don’t like Radiohead post OK Computer. And after many listens, I don’t think In Rainbows is the brilliant album music critics say it is.

A few weeks ago, Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney dared to confess on NPR and on her blog that she didn’t like Radiohead and that In Rainbows was one of her biggest musical disappointments of 2007. But she couched it in the nicest of terms, blaming herself for not singing the praises of Sir. Thom and his merry band of depressives. Oh, Carrie. Cut the self-flagellation. That took guts. I feel exactly the way you do about Radiohead. To quote Mer, "I feel a little January" about them.

I don’t like music where I can’t find its emotional center. What is Thom Yorke offering, other than a nihilistic vision of the future? What is Radiohead’s music about, other than despair and bleakness? Must the glass not only be half empty, but “broken and filled with poison?”

After OK Computer, Yorke turned out the musical mash-up of a paranoid android and Steven Hawkins, um, I mean Stephen Hawking. This is what every song sounded like to me: “Blip, blip, blip, I’m depressed. Blip. Blip. Blip. It’s all in vain. Beep. Beep. Beep. I’m a sexless, sad little robot.”

Someone's got a case of the Mondays...

As I’ve said before, I generally use music to elevate me. I don’t need Radiohead dragging me down with them. I can go there myself, thank you. But after all the hype surrounding In Rainbows, I thought perhaps I’d been wrong. That I’d judged too quickly. Come back Thom, all is forgiven…  

Even Nigel (my father) dug in a little. He’d been an earlier fan of Radiohead’s works, and like me, left the train after OK Computer. But this Christmas, he asked for Amnesiac, Kid A and had already downloaded In Rainbows. “There’s something interesting going on in that music,” he said at the dinner table a few weeks ago. I took that as code that there were some musical complexities in Radiohead that had passed me by. I generally trust his judgment on these things. He was an early GBV enthusiast, after all.

But no matter how hard I try, Radiohead is never going to be one of my favorite bands. I’ve listened to In Rainbows many times over the last few weeks. And I say: Thom baby, lighten up! I swear to you, it won't be winter forever. The ice is slowly melting. Here comes the sun.