The Radiohead recap: part one

If you're a fan of music, you'll be aware that Radiohead have recently released a new album called In Rainbows. You'll also know that Radiohead are definitely the best band in the world at doing music. True to form, In Rainbows is so good that it cannot physically be transferred to standard musical formats, such as CDs and records, since the sheer quality of the songwriting and musicianship would cause these feeble discs to erupt into their subatomic component parts, releasing enough energy in the process to destroy the entire solar system. This would be at odds with Radiohead's strict anti-explosion policy, and so the new album is being made available only as a digital download.

In a visionary transfer of power to the consumer, you decide how much you want to pay for it. Obviously, no price can be put on an artistic treasure of this calibre, but I suggest paying whatever the upper limit of your credit card will allow. We must financially demonstrate our appreciation of Thom Yorke and his crew of multi-instrumentalist wunderkinds, lest they should be offended by our miserly ways and scamper permanently back beneath the rock they've been huddled under for the last four years. You'll obviously want to order the £40 super-reinforced-vinyl box set version, too. Perhaps you could sell some non-essential body parts (your own, or - ideally - those of a disliked family member) to raise the funds.

But, in our rapturous appreciation of the new, let us not forget that Radiohead also have a flawless back-catalogue of undisputed genius to call upon. I humbly present part one of a resumé of some of their superlative musical endeavours.

- The first album: Pablo Honey

In 1992, five likely lads from Oxford, led by traumatised bullying victim Thom E. Yorke, released a four-track EP called The Drill. Tony Blackburn thought it was great, and roughly seven people agreed with him. Record shops couldn't give the damn thing away (now, of course, copies of The Drill EP change hands for the price of a small Caribbean island, leading to the unlikely, but unavoidable, conclusion that everybody in the UK except for Tony Blackburn is an idiot). After this initial disappointment, Radiohead rallied to produce the most astonishing debut album of all time, Pablo Honey.

Creep (1993) - The best song ever. Four chords (G, B, C, Cm, budding guitarists) have never been used to weave a patchwork of such dazzling emotional nuance. It's so complex, in fact, that when American R&B girl-group TLC tried to perform a cover version of it, they got both the words and the music completely wrong. Only the title remained intact.

TLC were beautiful, intelligent women with remarkable singing voices and an independent attitude, and were therefore completely unmarketable. Cynical record company attempts to boost their popularity by covering Radiohead's smash-hit, however, were disastrous.

You (1993) - Before this, songs came in one of two varieties: workmanlike 4/4 and waltzy old 3/4. Here, Radiohead invent several new time signatures involving fives and eights, then audaciously chop and change between them. And that's just in the intro. Beethoven rolled over jealously in his grave.

- The second album: The Bends

How do you follow the best debut album ever? With the best second album ever, of course. Inspired by guitarist Johnny Greenwood's contortionist girlfriend ('My baby's got the bends'), The Bends ushered in an era of widescreen, nuclear bomb-scorched rock music that made U2 cry into their giant lemon.

Just (1995) - The best song ever. Also features the best guitar solo ever: a wiry, bendy electro-strop that takes down everything in its wake with a petulant bombardment of white-hot audio-meteors. The chorus ('You do it to yourself, just you') probably isn't about onanism, but few clues to its meaning are provided by the arty black-and-white video, which depicts legions of pedestrians collapsing into the foetal position on the pavement in response to a cryptic whisper. Rest assured that whatever it means, it's really, really clever.

Helpfully, Parlophone reissued all of Radiohead's post-1994 singles, thus rendering the originals worthless and annoying legions of devoted Radiohead collectors. That'll serve them right, the soulless capitalist swine.

Killer Cars (1995) - Never ones to take their social responsibilities lightly, the band penned this stadium-rock anthem to promote considerate road use amongst drivers ('What if the car loses control? What if there's someone overtaking?'). Sadly, the Highways Agency considered it too hypnotically brilliant to be used in their radio advertising campaign, fearing that it would have the undesirable effect of sending listeners into a psychedelic reverie behind the wheel. The song was subsequently classified by John Major's government as a class C hallucinogenic, and was banished to the b-side of High & Dry (which is, incidentally, the best song ever).

Maquiladora (1995) - A maquiladora is a type of factory, popular in Mexico, which imports parts, assembles them, then exports the finished product (thanks, Wikipedia). Typically socio-economic subject matter for this incendiary b-side, then, which would have been included on The Bends had busybody scientists not pointed out that it contained more simultaneous guitar riffs than the human brain is capable of comprehending. 'I can feel the hills/Exploding!' claimed Yorke, excitably.

CD1 is red. I like the blue best. The artwork was produced by Sally Noble, age 6, from Dudley.

Talk Show Host (1996) - Another b-side, better known for its inclusion in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Appropriately, given the Shakespearean context, the lyrics demonstrate a facility for prosaic juxtaposition never before witnessed in any field of linguistic endeavour: 'I'll be waiting/With a gun and a pack of sandwiches/And nothing.' Pedants attempted to argue that it would be difficult to be carrying a gun and a pack of sandwiches at the same time as carrying nothing, but were silenced by drummer Phil Selway's elegant set-theoretic argument: "The empty set contains nothing by definition, and is a trivial subset of all other sets. It follows axiomatically that everybody is always in possession of nothing, regardless of any other objects they may have upon their person. Ha!" Take that, doubting wretches.

- The third album: OK Computer

How do you follow the best second album ever, which followed the best first album ever? With the best album of any type ever, obviously. In a pre-millennial age of technological uncertainty, where traditional values were being eroded, Radiohead's bleak, windswept, washed-out soundscape captured the zeitgeist perfectly.

Paranoid Android (1997) - In the nineties, conventional wisdom suggested that songs intended to be played by radio stations should be roughly three minutes long. Not for the last time, Radiohead snapped conventional wisdom in half, jumped up and down on it, and tossed in the bin. Paranoid Android was six-and-a-half minute prog-rock rhapsody dealing with existential philosophy in an age of rampant consumerism, and still managed to get to number two in the singles charts. This was the first solid evidence that the band had become gods among men.

The reverse of the sleeve gives handy instructions on how to "kill a demon made of wet sawdust". No, really ("cover its face with wet bread and karate chop its head off", for future reference).

No Surprises (1997) - Plink, plonk, plink, plonk, plink, plonk, pling-pling-pling-pling... Amongst other achievements, No Surprises rescued the glockenspiel from musical obscurity, and was the best song ever. The one-continuous-shot, helmet-filling-with-water video clearly shows that Thom Yorke is capable of breathing sub-aquatically, lending credence to the claims that he had evolved superhuman abilities/was a witch.

Karma Police (1997) - Proving that the piano could rock as hard as the guitar and the glockenspiel, this Orwellian thunderbolt awoke the complacent public to the insidious nature of authority. The closing line ('Phew! For a minute there, I lost myself') was written by the pint-sized Yorke after an incident in which he fell down the side of the sofa whilst watching Countdown, and had to be rescued by specially trained guinea pigs.

Bah. The old 'live b-side' gyp. I would have preferred an Abba cover version, myself.

Pearly* (1997) - Ennio Morricone devoted much of his career to composing memorable music for films from the (Spaghetti) Western genre. With this song, Radiohead perfected the idiom, rendering his life's work irrelevant at a stroke. While the ominous twanging of the guitars and hoofbeat drums evoke the dusty plains of Monument Valley, Yorke rasps a vitriolic riposte to shallow materialism (a theme was developing) and meaningless artificial beauty. The asterisk attached to the title left many fans scouring the packaging for days in search of a non-existent footnote.

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That concludes the first part of our edited Radiohead highlights tour. In the years following the wildly successful OK Computer, the five pals were to strike out in daring new directions. Exciting, eh? Stay tuned for part two at some point in the indeterminate future.