It really gets me upset when people tell me this. That Radiohead is a cheap version of Coldplay. I don’t understand it. In fact, it makes my blood boil.

No, they are obviously not as iconic as Coldplay. I will give you that. They will never fill a stadium like Chris Martin. But not everyone needs to fill stadiums. If we only had bands that filled stadiums, what would the medium to small size venues do? We need bands like Radiohead to ensure those venue owners have a steady stream of income. Everyone has a right to make a decent living.

Will Radiohead ever record a song like: Viva la Vida? Probably not. The title is Long Live Life written in Mexican. It’s a song about seizing the day, following your heart, the sky’s the limit and all that great life-affirming stuff. And it’s really hard to compete with that. But Radiohead has done some okay tunes. I always thought that Airbag song was pretty good. Road safety is an important issue, and sometimes we need to be reminded about it. Radiohead is that kind of band, safe. And they are not just looking out for the safety of drivers, but also divers. See that, it rhymes, drivers, divers, another tick in their creativity box. But yes, divers. The bends. Serious stuff. Come up too quick and you are dead. So it is good to see people like Thom Yorke singing about it. Other people want to sing about sex and stuff, but Thom, he’s more of a straight-laced guy. He doesn’t have a hot/sexy/famous wife like Chris Martin, so why would he be bothered with all that sexy-time music?

His music is more what you would call “lifestyle music”. You’re in a lift, a song is playing, you hum along, and you think: What is that song? It’s 2+2=5 by Radiohead. Shame, Thom could never add, but let’s not talk about that now. You’re in a lift, you’re humming. It’s 9.30am and what you want is unchallenging (non-challenging?) music. You don’t want the heady complexity of a song like Yellow. You don’t want to be confronted with lyrics like: “Look at the stars, how they shine for you.” Lord knows; you’ve got a day job to get to. So clearly there is a place out there for a band like Radiohead.

Maybe they aren’t the musician’s musicians, but they have a place in the mainstream. Not everyone can be a pioneer, out there, forging a path through the jungle. Some people have to stay back and pave the road, to make it safe for everyone. And that’s Radiohead. So next time, you want to disrespect them, put them down, or call them a poor man’s Coldplay, think again. Radiohead, not top shelf, but not the bottom, sort of lower middle.

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  • David Smith is a world famous artist and a British Olympic hammer thrower. He is a curler for Scotland and Manitoba. A pro wrestler fondly known as the British Bulldog. A Canadian economist and a Mormon missionary they call the Sweet Singer of Israel. He is a British historian and a bishop. David Smith is the biographer of HG Wells, a professor of physics, a composer and a music teacher at Yale. He played rugby for Samoa, England and New Zealand. He created the Melissa worm, a deadly computer virus. He is the Guardian's man in Africa, he starred in a reality TV show and shot his way to silver in the 600m military rifle prone position at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. But this isn't that David Smith. This is the blog of the other David Smith. David J Smith. The one from Durban by the Sea. The one who lives in Amsterdam. Yes, him. The David Smith who likes to write about himself in the third person. To learn about all the other David Smiths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Smith To contact this David Smith: [email protected]

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David J Smith

David Smith is a world famous artist and a British Olympic hammer thrower. He is a curler for Scotland and Manitoba. A pro wrestler fondly known as the British Bulldog. A Canadian economist and a Mormon...

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