I've never been one for the cult of Radiohead, but I admit that I almost fell into that hole with the release of The Bends, which is really a remarkable album worth all the hype that surrounded it. It's not innovative or ground-breaking in any way; it is very mainstream and major-label sounding; but the sheer quality of the songwriting puts it miles ahead of most of what you'd consider its contemporaries. Put simply, nearly all of its songs are superb individually and when you put them together into a single package, well, you just have an absolute, utter classic of an album. I'll never get tired of it.
And I'll equally never understand why their later albums are so highly rated. To me, they just sound like a band whose ambitions got the better of them and led them to overlook the things that they were really good at. And Thom Yorke's voice has just seemed to get whinier and whinier. I still think as far as huge superstar "alternative" bands go they're one of the better ones, but The Bends is the only album I'd go out of my way to hear.
Here's an acoustic version of the song that I still consider to be their crowning achievement.
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