The Top 10 Worst Radiohead Songs
By Blake Butler
5. “A Punchup At a Wedding”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upJuupWjcx8&w=584&h=390]
Beginning a song with what sounds like a men’s orgy mixed with toy-motorcycle-road-movie bassline could be an interesting idea in theory, but no it’s not. I’m trying to imagine what Sylvester Stallone would do if someone played this song for him in his kitchen with his full attention and all I can think of is him asking to go to eat at Subway. Someone let the effects guy put an actual noise that sounds like a machine farting on here. If I weren’t so lazy I’d go through all the Radiohead songs and just cut out his “la la di di” and moaning parts and collage them into the most effective audio torture weapon of all time. I kind of think this song had to be a private joke and I don’t understand how anyone else could say different. Email me.
4. “Faust Arp”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQx0xmp44E&w=584&h=390]
He starts this song saying “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine.” I don’t know what else I need to say after that about this song, but the string arrangement sounds like it was scribbled down in a gym after a good session watching dudes do squats. If you let children hear this song before they’ve begun to speak they never learn to speak. I’m kind of enjoying, though, thinking about the bearded guy who works at the Apple store who made his girlfriend do their first dance at their wedding to this two-minute piece of doo, though probably lived happily ever after.
3. “Anyone Can Play Guitar”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di2d7-rsdUI&w=584&h=390]
They played an XBOX 360 commercial before I was allowed to watch the YouTube video of this song since I don’t have the album in my iTunes and I seriously thought it was this song, as my memory of it maintains about as much artistic intelligence as the dudes who write jingles for XBOX. At least they were too wrong to know better at this point, but seriously if you want to hear a song like this go into any local rehearsal studio area where there are a bunch of bands all playing horrible chode-rock all at the same time and stand in the middle where you can hear several of them all at once and it feel pretty much the same as this song. This makes me feel sure if I have ever a baby it will come out with a cleft palate and a lazy eye and no hair and continuously itching.
2. “You and Whose Army?”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdPtlIeJYQ&w=584&h=390]
This might actually be the song that made me realize for the first time I was going to have to start hating Radiohead. It sounds like it was recorded in a Porta Potty and is about how defiant the band is. The guitars make me want to watch someone drown in a bathtub while I stand in the dark in all my clothes holding up a picture of Paul McCartney masturbating.
1. “The National Anthem”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02PhHaeRG4&w=584&h=390]
I seriously think about killing myself every time I hear this song. In some way then maybe I wish it was the actual national anthem.