Radiohead Pablo Honey The Bends: How Creep Almost Destroyed the Greatest Band of Their Generation
About this episode
David Leisten begins a series on Radiohead by reviewing their first two albums, discussing the impact of 'Creep' and the underrated nature of 'The Bends'.
DL kicks off the Verse Chorus Verse Radiohead series with the first two albums — solo, no Evil, no Rachel, just a man and his favorite band. Pablo Honey (1992) gets a 7/10. It's a gateway drug, not a masterpiece — a Brit rock album from the early 90s that happens to contain one of the most important songs ever recorded. The story behind Creep: recorded in one take, initially hated by the band, ignored until Arsenio Hall found the tape in his car, made enormous by a Beavis and Butt-Head segment. Top songs: Creep, Rip Chord, You. The Bends (1995) gets a 9/10 and a full reassessment — DL argues this album is massively underrated and better than he'd ever given it credit for. Jonny Greenwood's octatonic guitar work on "Just" (inspired by an obscure French composer), the story of EMI threatening to drop them after Pablo Honey, Tom York's stage breakdown and the NME calling it a "temper tantrum," and why Fake Plastic Trees is great even if it's not a personal favorite. Top songs: Just, My Iron Lung, Bulletproof I Wish I Was. Part 1 of a 6-episode Radiohead dissection series. OK Computer with Rachel and Evil is next.
More episodes of Verse Chorus Verse
- 1989 in Music part II
- 1989 in Music part I
- Radiohead III | Kid A\Amnesia
- Radiohead II | Ok Computer
- New Music 2026 IV
- New Albums 2026 III
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