Sunday, November 28, 2010

Personal Radiohead Top-30 List

I was going to make a list of all the Radiohead songs I know, ranking them all the way from my top favorite to least favorite. To me, this makes sense as this is probably the best band of the century so far, deserving a place in the pantheon of renown rock bands of the past like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, R.E.M., and Pink Floyd. However, there are still a couple of glitches in my quest: I only know a minority of Radiohead's songs, even though I have six of their seven studio albums and know all of the tracks on these pretty well.

The one Radiohead album I am missing is their first, Pablo Honey. It contains their most famous single, Creep, along with other good songs that I like (and some I don't particularly like). But I haven't heard it enough to form a clear judgement about the material, as I have on their subsequent works: The Bends (1995), OK Computer (1997), Kid A (2000), Amnesiac (2001), Hail to the Thief (2003), and In Rainbows (2007). I am currently exploring the least expensive (albeit legitimate) avenue through which to obtain a copy of Pablo Honey, so it is just a matter of time here. But there is an even greater factor delaying my comprehensive Radiohead songs list.

Much of Radiohead's released studio material comes from EP releases or as singles B-sides. I'm thinking of about 60 songs here, and I have just begun to explore them. Of course, I could just limit my initial top-to-bottom Radiohead list to their full-length studio albums and deal with the rest later. What I'll probably end up doing is eventually to include Pablo Honey as I become more familiar with it, along with a number (but not all) of those "extras".

Here is my personal Radiohead "top-thirty" so far, with their albums in brackets (note that #2 and #3 are different versions of the same song):

1 Reckoner [In Rainbows]
2 Morning Bell [Amnesiac]
3 Morning Bell [Kid A]
4 Faust Arp [In Rainbows]
5 I Might be Wrong [Amnesiac]
6 In Limbo [Kid A]
7 Go to Sleep [Hail to the Thief]
8 Sail to the Moon [Hail to the Thief]
9 Dollars and Cents [Amnesiac]
10 Karma Police [OK Computer]
11 Idioteque [Kid A]
12 There There [HttT]
13 Everything in It's Right Place [Kid A]
14 Scatterbrain [HttT]
15 Planet Telex [The Bends]
16 All I Need [IR]
17 Pyramid Song [Amn]
18 15 Step [IR]
19 Paranoid Android [OK C]
20 Punchup at a Wedding [HttT]
21 Bodysnatchers [IR]
22 My Iron Lung [Bends]
23 Optimistic [Kid A]
24 No Surprises [OK C]
25 Jigsaw Falling Into Place [IR]
26 National Anthem [Kid A]
27 Bones [Bends]
28 Packed Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box [Amn]
29 Videotape [IR]
30 Subterranean Homesick Alien [OK C]

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Now this is an indication of my blog's present condition. Ideally, I would be getting feedback comments saying things like "yeah, I like that song" or "dude, wtf are you thinking, ranking that one that high". I doubt that my good friends from New York and Maryland even listen to Radiohead, so although I DEEPLY value their input, in this case I am depending on a broader input from readers. Which apparently isn't there!

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