Quick question: Anyone else think Radiohead sucks?

OpinionSpectrum deputy editorSeptember 23, 2026 — 11:00amSeptember 23, 2026 — 11:00amRadiohead has announced its first Australian tour in 15 years, and the response from Radiohead-heads has been deafening. They’re in your office, in your WhatsApp groups, in your home – middle-agers behaving with all the carry-on of Swifties but minus the sense of humour (tell me when the Radiohead forums come up with their version of Gaylor).You probably all heard their exclamations last week when tickets went on sale for the “lucky” bunch who beat the post-registration culling. “Argh, I’m number 39,870 in the queue, wish me luck!” Bro, you’re 55 years old, show some composure.Radiohead’s Australian tour has sparked the sort of frenzy that would embarrass Swifties.Sydney Morning HeraldAs a lifelong obnoxious contrarian, there’s no surer way to make me uninterested in something than millions of people telling me it’s the greatest thing. In the words of Pee-wee (via The Get Up Kids): I’m a loner, Dottie, a rebel.The downside is that sometimes I come around to things late, hopelessly out of touch, years after everyone’s moved on. “Hey guys, did you know The Bear is actually great? I don’t think people know how great The Bear is…”But other times the topic in question is Radiohead, and I remain correct in perpetuity. Because Radiohead is the worst.I’ve tried to appreciate Radiohead, just because 30 years of critical discourse has told me I’m supposed to. Some of the early stuff’s fine. For all it did to bring the evils of Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Keane to the world, at least The Bends had songs. The way that riff repeats on Black Star? Thumbs up, Jonny and/or Ed.Thom Yorke, probably yelling about “weird fishes” or something.Getty ImagesBut revisiting the rest, just to write this piece, was a torture I wouldn’t wish on my nemesis (you know who you are). I would rather listen to literally anything else. I’ve spent 26 years trying to get through Kid A, and I still haven’t made it awake past Treefingers.As a sentient human being in the age of AI, I firmly believe that one should never miss an opportunity to yuck someone else’s yum – a sentiment that Radiohead, humanist believers, would surely get behind – so here we go.The singing! Why does he do it like that? The fundamental truth about every Radiohead song is that it would be better as an instrumental. Because Thom Yorke boasts the absolute worst voice in music, and I mean worst in a bad way (unlike, say, Billy Corgan or Selena Gomez, who have worse voices but in a good way).Yorke’s caterwauling whine is the nails on the chalkboard of my temporal lobe. Jeff Buckley died for this? He sings like his throat is in dire need of WD-40. He sings like he’s a cat being squished into the bosom of a brutish toddler. (The other problem with Radiohead fans is they’ll read this and go “Exactly!” and explain how the cat is “us” and the brutish toddler is “consumerism”. It must be fun to claim a band’s every horrible choice as intentional.)Worse than his singing is Yorke’s writing. His fans call his lyrics “impressionistic”, I call them “barely there”.For a guy perennially praised as the voice of our post-technological alienation, he has some clunkers (that is, when he can even be bothered stringing a sentence together, and not just blaming his lyrics on Burroughs’ “cut-up technique”). “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon” isn’t the sort of line most artists would repeat once, let alone four times. Lana Del Rey conveys more alienation in one breathy sigh.Sonically, Radiohead is everything bad about music: overly-intellectual, anti-melodic, self-serious, and other similarly hyphenated terms. It’s music for people who think it’s a virtue when drums have no discernible pattern because they don’t know how to dance anyway.The Universal Radiohead is Excellent Agenda (UREA) is full of lies. People claim that Radiohead is the best band of all time, when they’re not even the best band out of Oxford (that would be Comet Gain, or maybe Heavenly if I’m feeling particularly twee).Radiohead’s popularity is the sort of phenomenon that makes you think you’re a victim of a global psyops project, like that time the internet tried to convince me that Argentinian football invented racism. Does Samuel L. Jackson like Radiohead? (“There is no public record or confirmation that Samuel L. Jackson is a fan of Radiohead,” Google AI tells me, which partly rehabilitates his reputation in my eyes.)There’s the oft-repeated claim that Radiohead – a band that, in the past decade, has released more statements “clarifying” their roundabout position on the war in Gaza than music – is the most “innovative” and “forward-thinking” band in pop history, probably because they dared to stuff ambient breakbeats and ’60s free jazz into the same song. But just ’cause you’ve never listened to Burial or Eric Dolphy, doesn’t mean Radiohead invented them. And as far as “forward-thinking” goes, Britney’s Blackout makes Kid A sound like medieval England – and you can sing her songs at karaoke even!More to the issue, what’s the point of innovation if you’re just inventing something that sucks? It’s like me making you a chopped sardine and Nutella soup. It’s certainly innovative, but it will probably make you vomit. Radiohead is the chopped sardine and Nutella soup of music.Radiohead’s post-OK Computer albums sound exactly like what they are: rich dorks noodling about. Did you know that In Rainbows took two-and-a-half years to make? That’s too long to be messing around with an “ondes Martenot”. Get a job, Radiohead! Guided By Voices would’ve made six albums, drunk, in that amount of time (and at least half of them would be better).Radiohead also gets praised for “revolutionising the music industry” through their “pay-what-you-want” release of In Rainbows in 2007. I guess it’s purely a coincidence that the value of music has been zero dollars ever since?The historical criticism against Radiohead from my side of the hater divide has been that they make “sad-sack music”, music for depressives. That’s a bit harsh. Radiohead is too boring to inspire depression.Elliott Smith, on the other hand – now that’s what I call sad music! Morrissey made misery hilarious, and Paul Westerberg made it romantic. But if I wanted to be sad and bored, I’d just read my kid’s diary.Still, don’t let me dissuade anyone from enjoying Radiohead’s upcoming concerts. The idea of an arena full of dull chinstrokers chanting “weird fishes!” and doing that frantic head-nod that British backpackers do when they listen to trip-hop makes me giggle. After all these years, we’ll finally get something worthwhile from Radiohead: a laugh.Want more Verdicts?Tom Cruise: It’s time to take the Hollywood star seriously againNext Gen NYC: This reality show achieves the impossible – it makes you feel sorry for rich nepo babiesJeopardy!: The best thing on TV right now is a quiz show hosted by a Mormon brainiacFemme fatale: Why killer women are better than boring alpha menNice guys finish first: Why this film is criminally underratedBinge-watching: Short seasons are ruining TV; bring back the 22-episode seasonRobert Moran is Spectrum deputy editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners