Worrywort MUST be chosen.

if fucking creep acoustic gets picked i will boycott this website. creep was the worst thing to happen to radiohead. and acoustic? jesus!

Debate the aesthetic merits of Creep all you want, but to say that was the worst thing that happened to Radiohead is antipodean to the truth.

1) it exposed them to the masses, which led them becoming the next big thing. Pablo Honey was not very spectacular otherwise, and, while the Bends would have still been made, it may have been one of those albums that not enough people heard.

2) said brush with fame likely held some sway on their rejection of mainstream celebrity and led the band to their darker/abstract work.

Or am I crazy here?

crazy like a fox.

Phil Spector Crazy.

I'm going to need more than a celebrity name insult to retract my statement. Someone needs to explain why Creep was the worst thing to happen to R'head.

I'm not sure that's an insult. Phil Spector is a hair style pioneer who will not be appreciated in his time. In twenty years his famed "Wall of Hair" will be as ubiquitous in indie pop as the "bum-ba-bum..chink" drum kick.

re: crazy keith

save it for the game.

i wasn't sure if you would get the allusion...i was taking the stand that "phil spector crazy" is feigned insanity..not really crazy at all..in fact i agree with your statement regarding creep whole heartedly. wall of hair...still chuckling.

I'm getting over the disappointment of the non-inclusion of "motion picture soundtrack"... sigh. How could you?

It's on the already in list, guy.

i think if we made a list of the best to worst radiohead albums, we all know which would be the worst. that single song created a population of fans who could claim, "yeah, i listen to radiohead. i love creep!". i have had to listen to these people for the last 10 years tell me that they love radiohead. most of these people probably havn't heard ok computer or even the rest of pablo honey, for that matter. how many of those people rushed out to buy the bends because they liked creep?

also, my complaint was directed against the acoustic version of a song i already hate. what in God's name induced the band to tack this boring tacky rerun of the same song onto the end of that album? in my mind, except for maybe in the case of nirvana, going acoustic rarely makes a song any better than it was in the first place. at best this version was a b side on the second single. oh wait? was there a second single after creep? thought so.

don't get me wrong. all bands start somewhere. i hate the beatles first couple of albums. bubble gum pop doesn't really reveal the geniuses they were. and i am sure for the members of radiohead, having a radio hit was a great phone call to mom and dad (wait, this is england, right? mum and dad). but to imply that the success of creep (and hatred of said success) had anything to do with future artistic breakthroughs is a bit of a stretch, isn't it? for all i know, maybe thom has put out album after album trying to duplicate pablo honey and cries each and every time he fails. as far as i am concerned, i have just as much proof that that is the case as your arguement has.

i realize i come accross a bit strong at times. if offence is taken, my apologies.

-dan

Dan, Never apologize for your commentary. You are right about that subsection of "fans."

I am very curious to see how Creep does.

well, i was new to this particular site, recommended by randy monty, and felt like being a prick wasn't the best approach for first contact.

i take back the phil spector simile- the dude is batshit crazy.

Bands like Radiohead and, yes, the Beatles make huge artistic breakthroughs, but why does it follow that their early stuff, from which they make their quantum leap, is something to be dismissed and get all haughty about? The artistic process you purport to value so much doesn't emerge from a vacuum. If you truly appreciate a great artistic statement, how can you dismiss the path the artist took in getting there? And as for "bubblegum," if you took a real look at what's going on in those early songs melodically, and really listened with unbiased ears to the voices, you wouldn't, you couldn't, dismiss it. What's the point in being so jaded? Let's slam the early Beach Boys because "Surfin' Safari" wasn't as accomplished as Pet Sounds. And while we're at it, let's throw out our copy of "Bleach" because it was no Nevermind.

agreed. let's toss out shitty albums that happened to be made by great bands. all the ones you mentioned are inferior to other work by those same bands. just because michael jordan was captain badass for the bulls doesn't make him the same with the wizards or, god forbid, the white sox. great works by bands should be recognized and honored. average or subpar work should be acknolededged for what it is: average or subpar.

dan

Surfin' Sarari, With the Beatles, Bleach....you're comparing those with an athlete's bad years? You must have like, six albums in your collection. But at least they're "the best." It's just silly. It's like saying, I only eat at 4-star restaurants.

I am thoroughly confused by Anonymous's post. Sometimes Anonymous provides insightful commentary, other times it's just mean-spirited babble. Where's the consistency?

But to the point at hand, I don't think it's to anybody's benefit to carte blanche disavow a band's earlier work because they went on to make better songs, albums. Continuing the sports analogy, consider LeBron James's rookie year, a very good 21/6/6. But compared to his third season, 31/7/7, it looks rather pale. Does this new evidence mean that LeBron's rookie season wasn't as good as we thought? Of course not. All it means is that he would later go on to do better work.

And, I'll take "Twist and Shout" and "Little Honda" over half the stuff in your or my collection.

Randall,
I didn't mean to sign off as Anonymous--and sorry if you find it mean-spirited. That was not my intention. To my mind, putting down the early Beach Boys and Beatles records, trashing Radiohead's early work--that's mean-spirited. I was just defending these bands, pointing out the fact that the true appreciation of the finer things in life doesn't mean a priori putting down things that don't measure up to the apex in a band (or an athlete's) career, and countering the logic of Dan's post with the customary vitriol I find on this site. I do think it's a silly unnecessarily divisive way of looking at music .
Oddly enough, at least as regards the Beatles and Beach Boys, it sounds like we agree here.

my point isn't that those albums don't have merit in their own way. i'm saying that those albums shouldn't be lumped under the "genius" or "well-crafted" tags simply because of who made them. many artists produce piles of shit that no one is into until they create a masterpiece. restrospectively putting an album on a pedestal, in my mind, is an insult to the new and better product.

I don't think anyone is "retroactively" praising these things, rather people, critics, robots, whomever, appreciate them for what they are: finely crafted, catchy pop songs. As song doesn't have to be artistically groundbreaking to be good. The only genius of the Ramones was their marketing, when you get right down to it, their songs are simple, three-minute pop songs - Joey Ramone said as much! Does that make their music crap? I think that part of what marks the Beach Boys, Beatles and Radiohead as geniuses is their ability to not only create picture perfect pop masterpieces, but to later evolve into artists that could create Sgt. Pepper, Smile and Kid A. Most artists will kill to fall into one of those categories, how many can claim both?

Do we really have "customary vitriol I find on this site"?

I'm sad

my personal scale when it comes to rating albums is:

one song worth listening to: waste of money
two songs: closer, but don't fool yourself
three songs: got your money's worth
four songs or more: great purchase
all: top 20. all time.

only one album that i have purchased from my era has the all tag. weezer's blue album. no other album has hit it. some have come close. pablo honey falls in the waste of money category. one song. that's it. one song. i own it because it was made by radiohead. much the same reason why i bought the elliot smith tribute album, for one decemberist song. pablo honey is a bad album, not a pop masterpiece.

Well, there you go. I don't think we're saying that Pablo Honey is a great album, only that Creep is a great song. Worth doling out a full-albums price for? Maybe not today, but when I was in 8th grade, sure it was.