Thom Yorke’s First Moon Shaped Pool Interview Reveals He Was Surprised People Still Cared About Radiohead

Thom Yorke has spoken out for the first time about Radiohead’s album A Moon Shaped Pool, in a new interview with Q Magazine. He says he was surprised by the positive reaction the album received. “We expected the opposite. I cherish the band, but I don’t expect anyone else to,” Yorke told Q’s Niall Doherty. “He wondered if people would care, given how long it had been since The King Of Limbs,” Doherty writes. “There were times when he wasn’t sure if there would ever be another Radiohead LP, but he says that he thinks that every time.”  

Yorke revealed that “Daydreaming” is his favorite song on the album, and that it was finished early in the recording process. “It was the equivalent of when we did ‘Everything In Its Right Place.’ We got that and then we were, ‘Right, OK, this is it…’”

The process behind how Radiohead chose to add “Creep” to their recent setlists was also revealed. Doherty writes:

Yorke says that the idea to play “Creep” came up two nights ago in Amsterdam when someone in the crowd spent the majority of the gig shouting for it. “I kind of wound him up by starting to play it, which was a bad idea as it was like lighting a fire.” The band decided they would perform it during the encore only for their crew to veto it because they weren’t prepared. But the idea had been planted -“Creep” was back on the rota. “We just said, ‘Let’s see what the reaction is, just to see how it feels.’”

Yorke continues: “Like we played ‘No Surprises’ just to see if it feels alright. Songs go into phases where they don’t feel right and then they come back. ‘No Surprises’ was out for ages. We didn’t play it once on the whole of The King Of Limbs tour. … If you play it right, it is fucking dark. But it’s like acting. It’s on the edge of totally hamming it up but you’re not. it’s just the words are so dark. When we play it, we have to play it so slow. It only sounds good if it’s really fragile.” 

In the same Q piece, Colin Greenwood also revealed that he gave Kate Bush a tour of Radiohead’s studio recently, and that Bush came to one of Radiohead’s London shows on this tour.

Read our feature “Internet Explorers: The Curious Case of Radiohead’s Online Fandom.”

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