“I fought tooth and nail for it not to be on the record, but Ed was like, ’If it’s not, I’m leaving”: Thom Yorke reflects on the viral Radiohead smash that nearly broke up the band

Ahead of Radiohead’s long-awaited reunion tour, the band’s music is once again coming to the fore of the music public’s consciousness – and, naturally, that means it’s been picked up by a few new fans.

Specifically, the melancholic arpeggio-heavy Let Down – from 1997’s OK Computer – has been doing the rounds on social media, and has hit the popularity milestone that only a select few modern mainstream artists achieve: TikTok virality.

To the casual listener, it might not be that much of a surprise. Let Down is, after all, a great song. However, at the time of its writing, it wasn’t equally appreciated by all members of the band.

Speaking to The Times, Thom Yorke, Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood reflect on the origins of Let Down, which almost spelled an end for the UK alt-rock icons during the making of their third studio record.

“I find that especially bizarre,” Yorke notes of the song’s skyrocketing popularity. “Because I fought tooth and nail for it not to be on the record, but Ed was, like, ‘If it’s not, I’m leaving.’”

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O’Brien himself was keen on Let Down. He saw it as the “emotional heart” of OK Computer, a record whose other standout tracks include No Surprises, Karma Police and Paranoid Android. Still, Let Down’s contemporary success took him by surprise.

“I was astonished,” he says in the same interview. “So I told my kids, who are 18 and 21, and they said, ‘What do you expect? Teenagers are depressed. It’s depressing music!’”

In a 1997 interview with Guitar World, Radiohead’s guitar triumvirate discussed the making of OK Computer and the far-flung influences that shaped the guitar parts of each song – Let Down included.

“We do try to be diverse,” O’Brien said. “The guitar sound on No Surprises was supposed to hark back to [the Beach Boys’] Pet Sounds, Let Down was a nod to Phil Spector, Exit Music had a [composer Ennio] Morricone atmosphere, Airbag was an attempt to do something like DJ Shadow.

“But because we haven’t paid the dues, if you like, to play those types of music, we fail to get what we hope to achieve. But by going down that route, we find our own thing.”

In that same interview, O’Brien and co looked back on how their debut album changed the way they thought about recording guitars, and set them up for two landmark albums.

OK Computer, which catapulted Radiohead from alt-rock outcasts to true rock royalty, was just one of a number of hugely influential records from Radiohead. In 2000, the band ripped up the guitar rulebook to create OK Computer’s follow-up, Kid A.