Thom Yorke on High and Dry: “That Particular One I Wish I Hadn’t”
Harry Styles went into his Rolling Stone conversation with Thom Yorke carrying a fan's argument. He floated the idea that Yorke treats his voice as one instrument in the production. Fine, said Styles, but go back to The Bends, to "High and Dry," and "that is a song." Yorke's answer started generously: "Yeah, a guy with an acoustic guitar. Singing his song." Then he winced.
The exchange ran in Rolling Stone's "Musicians on Musicians" series, and Stereogum and NME picked it up last Thursday and Friday, October 8 and 9. Yorke did not stop at the one song. He told Harry Styles he does not listen to many singer-songwriters, prefers folk, film and electronic music, and only rarely gets much from guitar-driven rock.
The case against the song
Yorke has been consistent, at least. Wikipedia's history of the single records that the band dismissed the 1993 demo as "too Rod Stewart," that it was later remastered for The Bends, and that in 2006 Yorke called it "very bad" and said the label, EMI, had pressured the band into releasing it. Stereogum notes Radiohead have not played it live since 1998. This is a long, quiet divorce, and last week he finally said so to a pop star's face.
It is also his song, and he is allowed to dislike it. Writers outgrow their early work all the time.
Why he is wrong anyway
The song is better than its author's memory of it. "High and Dry" is a plain thing: a strummed guitar, a chorus that keeps reaching, and a lyric Yorke once said began as a song about "some loony girl I was going out with" before it drifted toward triumph and defeat. That drift is the whole appeal. It sounds like a young band being told it could be enormous and hearing that as a threat.
Pitchfork later credited it, along with "Fake Plastic Trees," with shaping the airbrushed post-Britpop sound that Coldplay and Travis built careers on. That influence may be part of what Yorke hears and flinches at. Blaming a song for its imitators is still unfair to the people who heard it first, on the record that made Radiohead more than the "Creep" band. For plenty of listeners, this was the door in. Yorke's own answer, to his credit, left it open: "there's nothing wrong with that." He would just rather not be the one who built it.
The listening route
If you love "High and Dry," you do not need its writer's permission, and you do not have to choose between that song and the band that came after it. Start a step back with Pablo Honey, to hear what The Bends grew out of. Then play The Bends straight through. Go next to OK Computer, which, NME reports, Yorke was already sick of by the time it came out. Kid A is where the strummed song mostly leaves the room. In Rainbows and A Moon Shaped Pool are where it comes back, changed.
Styles makes an honest companion piece. He presented Yorke with an Ivor Novello Fellowship earlier this year, and Stereogum reports he has cited Radiohead's 2025 live shows as an inspiration for his new album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. His earlier records, from Harry Styles through Fine Line to Harry's House, run on the craft he was defending at that table: the song as a song.
