For the first 7 pages, you guys had a great argument going here. I'm a "Radiohead fan" and I found it impressive. There wasn't necessarily a point, and you should probably stop now because no one is convincing anyone and the arguments are getting lazier and more boring. But it was fun. Radiohead forums are too hung up on Radiohead's self-evident brilliance to get at some of these things.
Of course, Layton is wrong. If only because he has changed his argument over the course of the thread as he realized what he originally proposed was laughable-- so at this point all his argument boils down to is "Radiohead is too intellectual and I don't like their fans." But later on he did hit on some good points in spite of himself and I didn't see Cujo refute them. No hard feelings, he's right, that's what arguments are for. It's his opinion. Putting it out there for us to refute it makes the world more interesting, but we're still gonna refute it.
Now at first there was the "no rhythm" thing. That was rightfully swept under the rug when you realized how lame it was. They don't always have a lot of it as you define it, but U2 doesn't either, and apparently they can still rate at the A level-- soul and funk and blues musicians as influences is different from a soul and funk and blues outcome, as you'd know if you followed Radiohead enough to know Colin Greenwood (bassist) lives for Booker T & the MGs, all of them are reggae addicts, Thom favors Prince and Gilberto Gil and even called Outkast's "Hey Ya" one of the greatest things ever long before that was what every white guy thought, actually, maybe before the record was even out. It was early summer 2003.
There's tons of jazz going into the last few albums, especially Amnesiac. I don't know if jazz has the kind of rhythm you're thinking of. Probably not jazz by Mingus, Alice Coltrane, or late Miles Davis. You probably think that stuff is too intellectual. There's some hidden racism in that "rockist" critique of Radiohead you make at the beginning. The idea that pasty people can only be fully in touch with themselves when they steal a conga line and a blues riff and a gospel choir from primitive Negroes. I guess black people stopped being black around the '60s and '70s and '80s when they started developing nontraditional forms of music, the types Radiohead mostly draws from.
But anyway, if it matters, Radiohead have stolen plenty from "primitive" black people as well, and occasionally it even shows up in their music. You would be hard pressed to find anything by any current white band that's as funky as the b-side "Paperbag Writer."
But really, it's all about "There There." They call it a Can homage, but if you'd ever heard the live version (try the original performance, from Portugal, July 2002), I think you might have not made this thread in the first place. It fulfills all the cliches anyone could want of an A list rockist rock band-- gospel, blues, soul, rawwwk, and still distinctively Radiohead, so just different enough from the cliches. It sounds sexy till it gets all distorted, and it could even be ABOUT sex.
Yeah, there are a lot of rhythmic or soul-influenced Radiohead songs besides that, which the good people here have pointed out (the b-side "Bishop's Robes" even) but "There There" was the first one that indisputably sounds that way. The studio version is typical, clinical, controlled-chaos Radiohead style-- still brilliant, but not what I'm talking about. Download that mp3, or see them live next time (all the band members play drums on it), and if you still believe in that original stupid argument right now, you no longer will. I admit, hearing "There There" felt great maybe for some of the reasons you said. We could use more songs like that from Radiohead.
And that brings me to your other points, the surprisingly good ones you made when you stopped with the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame crap. See, I agree with you: I'm not sure I would want to jump to any conclusions before their next record, but Hail to the Thief was unexciting, at best. A couple songs aside, it did absolutely nothing to advance Radiohead's right to be included among the great fearless pioneers-- that's your angle. That doesn't matter to me since I'm not a list maker for Rolling Stone, although I agree. But my angle is, it did absolutely nothing to advance its own sociopolitical arguments, or much more importantly, move listeners, that the earlier two albums hadn't done far better. Radiohead makes albums for themselves. U2 doesn't. Cujo has to be applauded for pointing this out on a U2 site-- the difference is, no matter how stale HTTT may be, and it IS stale, it does not sell itself out except by having weaker songs than usual. If anyone is calculating everything today it's U2, or nu-U2 as I like to call them, for their lack of resemblance to the great band that existed last millennium. Radiohead are in a bit of a rut right now, judging by their last effort, and Layton is correct-- a new approach is needed. But their reputation is in less danger than U2's. There's an expression in Christianity which I'm sure U2 fans would be familiar with-- "searching." Radiohead is doing it no matter how redundant that last album was, and U2 has stopped. Even if their music still sounded good, that would be a very bad thing.
Listened to Passengers for the first time today. I have to say, this is quite f*cking amazing. AND, yes, for once, it actually is Radioheadish. I always thought U2 had been more of a career than musical influence on RH, showing them which ways to go (and not to go). There was a lot of U2 in their very, very early music, under the name On a Friday (check out "Jerusalem / Mr. B," "Give It Up" or "What is that You Say"), but since then the only similarity I heard was both bands were melodic and anthemic. Pop addresses very similar concerns as Kid A, from a Christian perspective. But musically-- at the other end of "electronica."
This Passengers thing might change my mind. It's a lot more subtle than anything else U2 has ever done, and some of it's slightly dissonant and jazzy. Calling Radiohead subtle seems wrong, but Kid A and Amnesiac are, in a way that Zooropa and Pop aren't. Passengers is that way too. The problem is I don't think it means anything.
I mean, Zooropa and Pop are great, but they feel like unfinished masterpieces. Problem is, the type of "finishing" U2 would have applied to them would have been the wrong kind. Take the best half of Zooropa and merge it with Passengers, you would have U2's best album, easily. What they should have done is written music like "Passengers" for those songs on Pop, to do them justice. Now you rhythm obsessives who buy into the laughable Springsteen quote have all gotten your wish: they're the new old Stones. No less, and no more. In commercial terms, of course.
So that's U2's greatest weakness: underestimating their audience. Save the real experiments for the fake band with the throwaway lyrics, and produce every track you care about until you feel it's ready for acceptance by every single human on earth. This is usually called "pandering" and "watering down" (or "selling out") but somehow U2 have gotten around the term. I want to believe in their artistic sincerity and desire for things other than money, but really at some point, they've gotta be ranked against everyone else. The last album was that point. If they are out of it enough to believe such enforced blandness is necessary because no one will hear of them otherwise, that's delusional enough to not be an excuse. Every time they come out with an album the press has to act like the last multimillion-seller was a failure just to justify the hype. U2 wants their music heard no matter what, and at least now, always makes it with that in mind. Radiohead wants to make whatever music they want and getting it heard is the bonus. Both bands could stand to learn a little from the other's approach, but there's no doubt which is worth more. The song "I Forgot More than You'll Ever Know" comes to mind when comparing the bands. Ultimately, does it really matter what U2 supposedly did first? They've disavowed any of their innovations by making it look like that was all just about securing a "Respectable" berth in rock history. After a decade of brilliantly blurring the line between art and commerce, they simply embraced commerce, laughing in our faces. It's Radiohead that has kept up the legacy of what U2 supposedly did, but maybe never did after all, who knows. And we know they won't laugh in our faces. Even when their music is dull, they don't even care what we think, and that's really refreshing.
