Hating on Radiohead is for Boring Nerds
Several weeks ago, a friend sent me an incredibly funny antique Vice article called “Radiohead Is for Boring Nerds.” Sadly, it is not funny in the way that it wants to be (a searing takedown of an elitist group of music snobs), but rather it is funny in its absurd anti-snobbery snobbery. It opens with the author, Dan Ozzi, stating that “Radiohead fans are the type of people who feel perfectly comfortable dropping a hundred bucks on some rare Japanese import single and then shrink wrapping it, putting it on a meticulously organized shelf (alphabetical, then chronological), and never touching it again.” Well!
Now, I do love a good hot art take. I loathe Wes Anderson. I think Speed is one of the greatest films ever made. When I was a freshman at NYU Tisch, a professor in a film seminar asked us to go around the room and name the last movie we saw that we thought of as “pure art.” Obnoxious as I was, I named Jim Carrey’s Liar Liar. My teacher sputtered and scoffed, but who was he to decide what art was? If I thought Liar Liar was better than Citizen Kane (I do), that was my god-given right.
So, whatever your take is, I am all ears. Think William Shatner's "Lucky in the Sky with Diamonds" is better than the original? Cool! Think the best Godfather movie was the third one? Nice! Art preference is, by definition, subjective. But this specific, ironic Vice-ean brand of criticism leveled at Radiohead goes deeper than the odd hot art take. It provokes a strong reaction in me, a reaction that has been festering, bubbling, for a long time.
Now, before I go on, I want to make something else clear. As much as I love a good hot take, I am not a music snob. Simply put, music is just not one of the things I am savvy about. I love music, but I’m not into music, not knowledgable, not particularly thoughtful with it, delicate with it. My high school boyfriend almost broke up with me when he found out I frequently listened to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on shuffle. My dad and I got into a brief but vicious stand-off after I said, “If Bob Dylan is so good, then why can’t he locate a note?” I lost many a Hinge match back in the day once I started talking about how much I love the band Creed (and that, my friends, is called self-selection). For the most part, my music taste is, and always has been, informed by what is around me. I grew up listening to Springsteen (Dad’s side) and Stevie Wonders (Mom’s side). My older siblings listened to a mix of hip hop and garage rock, though my sister had a penchant for early 2000s indie rock; The Fratellis, Franz Ferdinand, and “that horrible band with that horrible man” (my mother’s moniker for The Libertines). I now listen mostly to Lana Del Rey, Fleetwood Mac, Phoebe Bridgers, Rufus Wainright, George Harrison, and, of course, Radiohead—musicians I have collected over the years through recommendations, happenstance listens, and at least one instance of really liking an SNL musical guest. Music is great. All music is welcome here. Like the songs I like or not, we are cool.
So why does the vitriol leveled at Radiohead bother me so much?
I discovered Radiohead through Weezer, whom I have loved since I was a kid, thanks to my big brother playing their debut album loudly in his room when he came home from school almost daily. I stumbled upon a video of Weezer covering the Radiohead classic “Paranoid Android” and was floored by the beauty of the song, its range from manic to operatic (and Rivers Cuomo does a fucking incredible job dialing the whole thing up to an eleven with his powerhouse angsty rock vocals). This discovery, early in my college days, led me to a wonderful and delightful journey through Radiohead’s discography. Radiohead formed in the mid-80s and became a sensation in 1991 with the release of their debut album “Pablo Honey” and the now-iconic song “Creep.” Their style is experimental; alt-rock infused with elements of jazz and electronic, ever-changing, ever-growing. The musicians that make up the band are nerdy, oddball misfits, deeply passionate, and tortured. Their lyrics span from topics of unrequited love to themes of political resistance. Though I loved the way the whole thing sounded, I could not understand a goddamn word that Thom Yorke said ever, one of the criticisms Dan Ozzi levels at him in his article (which we’ll get to in a minute). Thus, I frequently listened to Radiohead with the lyrics pulled up, lyrics that were so beautiful I felt I was beginning to understand why people become religious about music. In an interstellar burst. I am back to save the universe.
My love for Radiohead stayed with me through college. In 2018, I went to see Radiohead at Madison Square Garden. The concert was beautiful, meticulous, professional, the best I had ever seen and probably have seen to this day. What the musicians lacked in bad-boy charisma, they made up for in fastidious artistry, professionalism, and dedication to the music they were playing. When they played “Fake Plastic Trees,” the entire crowd sang the chorus: She looks like the real thing. She tastes like the real thing.
Radiohead stayed with me through the pandemic. I used to listen to “The Bends” when I went for my sad little runs around the block in my childhood neighborhood (I was never able to run for longer than the title track—I am not a runner). Later on, when my subconscious knew I wanted to quit drinking but my conscious just hadn’t figured it out yet, I could not stop listening to “Just”: Don’t get my sympathy, hanging out the fifteenth floor. You’ve changed the locks three times. He still comes reeling through the door. One day I’ll get to you. Teach you how to get to purest hell.
So, yes, Radiohead is important to me personally. That’s fine. That’s hardly a reason to justify such anger toward some dude who doesn’t connect with Radiohead and decides to write a snarky article about it (in the year 2014, might I add).
Mocking people for liking certain art—art that it appears they are parading around for appearances—is hardly a new thing. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, for instance, is known just as well for being a book that insecure guys who have American Traditional tattoos and drink mushroom coffee pretend to read, as it is known for being the epic magnum opus of a complicated writer. Ozzi claims that Radiohead listeners “have to spend 10% of their time listening to Radiohead albums and 90% trying to convince themselves that they understand what the fuck they’re about."
Herein, I believe, is my core issue.
People who look down on lovers of pop music are losers. This, in 2023, is pretty well accepted. In large part, that’s due to a massive misunderstanding on the part of haters. They assume people enjoy pop music because it’s the highest level of artistic profundity that they can access. If only pop lovers were a little smarter, then maybe they’d listen to something more complex. Anyone who has met someone who loves Lady Gaga, for instance, knows this is not true. People engage with art for all sorts of reasons. To look down on somebody for bopping their ass off to “Marry the Night” is a lame move.
But to hate music for seeming “inaccessible” is just as loserish. “If you’re a Radiohead fan reading this,” Ozzi continues, "first of all, congrats on being way, way smarter than the rest of us simpletons who just want to listen to a song with a goddamn hook or a beat that isn’t in some weirdo 179/4.26 time signature.” I love Radiohead because I just do. Their music is beautiful (to me). Their lyrics are awesome (to me!). Something about the way those two things mush together makes my brain go “cool!” Now, even if he believes Radiohead is too smart for their own good, Ozzi is not an anti-intellectual. He is a writer who seems to think a great deal about art. And so, he hates Radiohead because he has never stopped to understand why people like it. I can say, “I don’t like Wes Anderson because I do not find the over-stylized aesthetics appealing,” while in the same breath respecting that many other people have brains configured slightly differently than mine, brains that say “cool!” when they see a perfectly symmetrical shot of a yurt, or a wise fox, or Jason Schwartzman wearing a lovable bow tie.
Ozzi’s problem is a failure to attempt to understand the fans of Radiohead. At one point Ozzi admits, “Yes, I just generalized that all Radiohead fans are guys, but let’s be real here.” It seems he is taking a type of person and reverse engineering until he reaches a satisfying intersection between a band he dislikes and a person he dislikes. Sure, it’s fun to generalize music fans. Fans of The Cure wear very tiny glasses and drink natural wines. Fans of The Talking Heads went to Bard and are addicted to Nitrous. Fans of The Arctic Monkeys were almost killed by a stranger they met on Tumblr in 2014. All people who listen to Miley Cyrus once got arrested for buying minors 4Loko. The reality, though, is obviously not that simple. All sorts of people like all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. My twin sister very privately (sorry) loves Dostoevsky and Nabokov, two writers who many assume are poser-ish to consume in 2023. She also loves Dr. Pimple Popper (especially the Christmas Special—yum!), and the SAW franchise. It’s true that there are people out there who pretend to like things to gain social capital, to impress a girl, impress a guy, whatever. But pseudo-intellectualism, in my estimation, is not nearly as pervasive as some think—and it’s certainly not as pervasive as the phenomenon of dismissing somebody’s interests as pseudo-intellectual or fake, merely because you can’t wrap your head around why they may actually like it.
My brother and father were driving cross-country many years ago when my father jokingly put on a country radio station.
“No,” said my brother with uncharacteristic intensity. “Don’t play that!”
“Why not?” asked my dad.
“Because we might end up liking it.”
Years later, my brother does listen to country pretty regularly. He also listens to Greta Van Fleet, whom I have mocked relentlessly for being Led Zeppelin rip-offs. Who I’ve always thought seemed sort of like kids playing dress-up, pretending to be rockstars. Who, when you shut your eyes and just listen… are pretty great.