Radiohead: This Is What You'll Get When You Mess With Us

Let’s face it, Radiohead should have gone in last year, on their first nomination to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and it’s absurd that we have to consider them again. Leaving them out of the Hall of Fame is like leaving the Kinks out, or Neil Young, or the Go-Go’s. Wait, the Go-Go’s aren’t in?

Radiohead is as important to contemporary rock music as Buddy Holly was to his generation, seeing things in the music that other people hadn’t come across but that would soon become obvious and greatly desired by all. In the early 1990s, they mastered pop music with songs like “Creep” and “Fake Plastic Trees,” and then they decided that wasn’t good enough, so they tore the whole thing up and reinvented it, and sounded better than ever.

The only knock against Radiohead is their relative lack of chart success. They only had two top Forty hits in the U.S.: “Creep,” which went to No. 34 in 1992, and “Nude,” which went to No. 37 in 2008. They did have several hits on the U.S. alternative charts, for whatever that's worth, and they were much bigger in the U.K., where all three of the brilliant singles from OK Computer, “Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police” and “No Surprises,” made the Top Ten.

They don’t need the credit for that, though. Jimi Hendrix had one Top Forty hit. Carl Perkins had one Top Forty hit. If you’re as important and as good as Radiohead, chart success is a bonus, not a central qualification.

Hey, here's one more awesome thing about Radiohead: Their lyrics. They're not exactly Dylanesque streams of stanzas, but more aphoristic and incantatory, in a way that other bands couldn't even attempt. Thom Yorke will find a line he likes, then chew it around until it loses all meaning and becomes something completely different. What I most like about Radiohead's lyrics is that they're formed distinctively and unmistakably like Radiohead lyrics, and you know exactly what I mean by that. 

Take a look at the rhymeless, repetitive, yet haunting lyrics to "Karma Police" 

Karma police
Arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radio

Karma police
Arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo
Is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party

This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with us

Karma police
I've given all I can
It's not enough
I've given all I can
But we're still on the payroll

This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with us

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself

The Matched Set I’ve been listening to a lot of Bee Gees lately, from their early days, which span roughly from “New York Mining Disaster,” in 1967, to “Love So Right,” from 1976. After that, of course, Saturday Night Fever happened, the Bee Gees became briefly the biggest stars in the world, with six Number One hits from 1977 to 1979. When people think of the Bee Gees these days, they think of the late-70s, “Stayin’ Alive” era band.

But the music they made before disco blew up was already worthy of the Hall of Fame, a collection of gorgeous, delicate Beatlesque pop that kept them on the charts for the better part of a decade. (Some of the Saturday Night Fever music, like “You Should Be Dancing” and “How Deep Is Your Love,” had actually been released on prior Bee Gees albums.)

Anyway, I think Radiohead suffers from a little bit of the same phenomenon. OK Computer was regarded as such a revolutionary achievement, from the moment it came out, that it overshadowed what they had already done. The Bends is arguably their best album! “High and Dry”! “My Iron Lung”! They made this ridiculously good guitar album, one that would be a career capper for most bands, then they tore up the blueprints and started over again.

Unlike the Bee Gees, Radiohead didn’t have enough material in the can before the career-altering event, but man, were they awesome already. They were one of the world's best guitar bands, then they became the absolute best deconstruction whatever-you-want-to-call-it band. They didn’t need to turn the world upside-down to become one of rock's most important acts, but they did it anyway.

The Verdict I heard of a couple of voters who passed over Radiohead last year so they could vote for Sister Rosetta Tharpe, assuming that Radiohead’s induction was a foregone conclusion. Fellas, in a world where Deep Purple and ELO are considered worthy, Radiohead is not obvious to everyone. Let’s not make that mistake again. I'm voting Yes for Radiohead.