It's too hard to rate Radiohead, too hard.
Yorke has said that Airbag and Lucky were meant to be happy songs. I agree with that, they're both very much: shit happened that almost fucked me up and I'm still alive and happy about it.
Airbag being apparently about that "wonderful feeling you get when you've just failed to have an accident" and Thom saying if this happens to run out onto the street, screaming "I'm alive!!" I think is a 'happy' thing. Lucky, whilst it sounds somewhat depressing is the opposite in the lyrics... but it's a different approach. Taking/turning a negative situation etc into an absolute positive.
Personally I find Radiohead's music somewhat cathartic. Like How to Disappear Completely. When I'm in a rut, I'll go and listen to it and feel better. It's just what you need sometimes. I think a lot of the 'happiness' is there, just in a more melancholy way. Like the end of Videotape, "no matter what happens now / you shouldn't be afraid / because I know / today has been the most perfect day / I've ever seen" shows it a bit.
This is why I also think some of the Floyd comparisons aren't that far off the mark; it may not be there in the music, or lyrics or whatever, but it's there in the muted hope in the lyrics and the way the songs balance music and lyrics. Take Dark Side of the Moon, there's some real heavy shit going on in the lyrics, but it's balanced by some more uplifting music. Brain Damage/Eclipse, there's nothing really happy going on there, but the music is incredibly uplifting. I find the same with Radiohead. A song like No Surprises, for example. Very heavy lyrics, but the tune is beguilingly pretty. The lyrics to Motion Picture Soundtrack don't paint a happy picture, but geez is it beautiful when those strings kick in.
I feel compelled to bump this, simply because I do not want to seem to have sunken the thread.
...and perhaps also to wonder why "Talk Show Host" was not included on The Bends instead of "Sulk."
Yeah, Sulk and My Iron Lung are the low points of The Bends.
Wrong, all wrong. Where's fitz?