(Credits: Far Out / Radiohead / Tom Sheehan)
They might have a massive worldwide following and be hailed as the foremost purveyors of thought-provoking postmodern music, but Radiohead aren’t for everyone. This has always been true, even back in their earliest form as just another alternative rock band trying to find their way in a sea of similar acts.
Regardless of the era-defining brilliance of OK Computer, the musical innovation of In Rainbows, or the remarkable refinement fuelling A Moon Shaped Pool, the Oxford band are musical Marmite. Whether it be Thom Yorke’s haunting vocals, their overarching minimalism or the perception of the group as pseudo-intellectuals, there are many reasons why the quintet manage to be divisive despite being so prominent.
By those who see themselves as the purest of music fans, Radiohead are also charged with being highly pretentious, which, despite the musical mastery they symbolise, is partly true. To branch out of alternative rock into an area so distinctive and draw on an array of niche music in doing so undoubtedly takes a touch of self-confidence, or what some may call ego.
Naturally, this deeply divisive nature has earned Radiohead some prominent musicians as haters. Find the most famous ones below.
Five artists who hated Radiohead:
Lemmy
The late Motörhead leader Lemmy was one of the most straightforward men in the annals of rock and wasn’t afraid to speak his mind on any subject. As a traditionalist in the genre, he was also quick to criticise those he saw as young pretenders to the throne, including Radiohead.
When speaking to Stay Thirsty Media in 2010, Lemmy was asked whether he thought that rock ‘n’ roll was starting to come back to power after a period in the mire. He said: “Rock n’ roll always comes back, you know. There’s no fighting it. And these people think they can kill rock n’ roll, they might as well try and stop the flood, you know. There’s no way. It always comes back because there’s always people who want to hear loud, raucous music, you know.”
However, Lemmy did say that all the “shit” that magazines push is not good, using Coldplay and Radiohead as examples. He asserted: “It’s exciting, you know. And all the shit that these magazines like is not exciting. Like, Jesus, Radiohead, you know. Fuck me, you know. Coldplay. Jesus. These are not rock bands. These are sub-emo, you know.”
Noel Gallagher/Oasis
Former Oasis leader and guitarist Noel Gallagher, is no stranger to throwing barbs at other prominent artists. One he has previously decried is Radiohead, as on paper, they represent something of an antithesis to the Manchester group.
After watching their documentary Meeting People Is Easy, Noel commented: “They’re stuck in the back of limousines telling you how bored they are being in a group. If you don’t enjoy it, retire. Do us all a favour. Or move to a mansion in Oxford so we don’t have to listen to you bleeding on about how shit your life is.”
Certainly not coming across as the jealous type, the guitarist told Esquire in 2015: “I’m aware that Radiohead have never had a fucking bad review. I reckon if Thom Yorke fucking shit into a light bulb and started blowing it like an empty beer bottle, it’d probably get nine out of ten in fucking Mojo. I’m aware of that.”
In 2007, Noel Gallagher took one of his most stinging swipes at the Oxford group. “No matter how much you sit there twiddling, going, ‘We’re all doomed,’ at the end of the day people will always want to hear you play ‘Creep’; get over it,” he shared in relation to the band’s refusal to play their most popular song. “I never went to fucking university. I don’t know what a paintbrush is; I never went to art school,” he posited.
As for Noel’s brother Liam, he’s also been critical of Thom Yorke’s band. Regarding 2011’s The King of Limbs, he told The Quietus that year: “I heard that fucking Radiohead record, and I just go, ‘What?!’ I like to think that what we do, we do fucking well. Them writing a song about a fucking tree? Give me a fucking break! A thousand-year-old tree? Go fuck yourself! You’d have thought he’d have written a song about a modern tree or one that was planted last week. You know what I mean?”
Radiohead also have hit back at The Gallaghers. In a 1996 CBC radio session, they produced a parody version of Oasis’ mega-hit, ‘Wonderwall’. At the end of the recording, a band member says: “Is this abysmal or what?” to which Yorke replies: “Yep,” before adding: “It’s always good to make fun of Oasis, though.”
Yorke churlishly told London Calling the year prior: “They’re a joke, aren’t they? It’s just lots of middle-class people applauding a bunch of guys who act stupid and write really primitive music. Then people say, ‘Oh, it’s so honest.’”
Muse
Stadium-filling nerds, Muse, have always been regarded as a group closely linked to Radiohead. However, the Devon trio have made their pessimistic thoughts on Thom Yorke and his band very clear. Nobody knows where it started, but there is bad blood between both acts, particularly from Muse’s side.
Muse were always reticent to accept that Radiohead had a defining impact on their work. When young, frontman Matt Bellamy said of the comparisons: “There are elements where we’ve been influenced by a lot of the same things, but not influenced by them [referring to Radiohead]; everything will be fine”. However, drummer Dominic Howard also explained: “When we were 16, Radiohead was one of our major influences. The Bends was my favourite album when I was younger.”
In the following years, Muse would become much more disparaging about Radiohead. In one interview, Bellamy sarcastically noted how Howard “is on splendid terms with Thom Yorke,” which prompted the drummer to go on a tangent of just how rosy things were between him and the Radiohead vocalist. He said: “Splendid terms my arse. I respect them musically, but the last time I met him, we almost started a fight; he treated me badly, looking down on me.”
What goes around comes around, and Thom Yorke has been equally as derisory about the Devon misfits. Yorke was reported telling one interviewer in 2001: “I draw the line at Muse because they openly slag us off as well as openly rip us off. And that’s like, ‘How fucking dare you?’… That’s just not cool, that’s incredibly bad karma.”
Billy Corgan
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan is another who is no stranger to criticising the work of others. In 2012, he was quoted as saying he would “piss on” Radiohead for “pomposity”, and compared the work of Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore to that of Jonny Greenwood.
He told Antiquiet: “I can’t think of any people outside of Weird Al Yankovic who have both embraced and pissed on rock more than I have. Obviously, there’s a level of reverence, but there’s also a level of intelligence to even know what to piss on. Because I’m not pissing on Rainbow. I’m not pissing on Deep Purple. But I’ll piss on fucking Radiohead, because of all this pomposity. This value system that says Jonny Greenwood is more valuable than Ritchie Blackmore. Not in the world I grew up in.”
He continued: “Is Ritchie Blackmore a better guitar player than me and Jonny Greenwood? Yes. Have we all made valuable contributions? Yes. I’m not attacking that. I’m attacking the pomposity that says this is more valuable than that. I’m sick of that. I’m so fucking sick of that. I’m so fucking sick of it and nobody seems to tire of it.”
Corgan, who is potentially the most contradictory man in music, would seemingly change his tune later, although the sincerity of the comments is hard to judge. Speaking to Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, The Smashing Pumpkins leader said that until 1997, he had “very little respect” for Radiohead and that they were an “enemy band”.
“Radiohead figured out the world that was coming pretty much before every band on the planet, and they reaped the reward of that and did a lot of great work, in essence, anticipating this dissociative world,” he added.
Robert Plant
Although Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant has made it clear over the years that he has his finger on the pulse of contemporary music, he reportedly is not a fan of Radiohead in the slightest.
In 2008, The Sun (per The Sydney Morning Herald) published that a source from Camden’s Fifty-Five Bar had told them that Plant had demanded that they stop playing Radiohead’s “rhyming crap” and put something else on.
The source told the publication: “Robert was drinking with a woman and didn’t like the choice of tunes playing. Radiohead was on, and he started complaining. He said, ‘What’s this rhyming crap?’” In response, the staff put on Red Hot Chili Peppers, but the then-59-year-old was left equally as vexed.
The insider continued: “The staff were obviously keen to please so they changed their music. They put on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who they thought might be more up his street. But he didn’t like their stuff either and said it was like a ‘nursery rhyme’.”
With this weirdly specific comment, they supposedly added, “He then said he wanted to listen to Captain Beefheart, an American musician who was famous at a similar time to Zeppelin from the ’60s to the early ’80s.”
