Well of course Moon Shaped Pool would make the cut, since I never shut up about Radiohead. There's a lot to be said about the album, which is the first album where both Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood's new musical outlook's meshed perfectly, but we all know how good it is. Instead I want to talk about how being a Radiohead fan has changed for me over the years.
I first listened to Radiohead in 2005, two years after Hail to the Theif was released. I was playing catch-up, listening to OK Computer and thinking it was the weirdest album ever (I was young), going backwards to The Bends, which is the greatest rock album ever, and Pablo honey, which isn't. the graduating to the bands difficult electrontic stage, which baffled me since Kid A was the easiest album to get into. this was at a time when Oasis were still huge, despite the fact that they hadn't released a good album in 10 years. It was when every indie band tried to be The Smiths, or The Jam, or in the case of The Libertenes, themselves. Being a Radiohead fan was still seen as hitching your flag to the weirdo convention, and I proudly hitched.
For two years I was happy in my righteously angry bubble, knowing that the band would never be as culturally important as they were to me. Then they released In Rainbows, they started to make jokes in interviews, overall, they had decided to grow up and not take the music buisness as seriously, to not play the image of the depressed outsiders. Now anytime they rlease an album, everyone takes notice, Radiohead fans are part of the in crowd. Their cultural impact is as big as The Beatles, and Bowie, there isn't one band that don't count them as influences. I'm not bitter about it, with Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead exercised their right as successfull, and important artists to do what ever theywant. It's their least politocal album for decades, it's far from inpenetrable, and with Ful Stop, Present Tense, and The Numbers, have added to their catalogue of claasic songs.
Radiohead are everyone's now, not just mine, and that's great. All I ever wanted was to share them, to obsess with other fans, and now I can. This is what great music is supposed to do, it's supposed to bring people together.
