Radiohead Members' Favorite Songs: 10 Surprising Picks

The Playlist That Started It All

Somewhere on Ekşi Sözlük, a Turkish community forum, a user who goes by the handle "Holden Vitamin Caulfield" has spent years doing something quietly obsessive: collecting every song Radiohead members have ever liked, played, or shared. The result is a playlist called "Radiohead liked this," and it reportedly contains more than 1,300 tracks, drawing from hundreds of artists, genres, and nationalities. The author says they began following Radiohead's "Office Chart" playlists back in 2015, and that habit eventually turned into this sprawling archive.

The playlist is still growing, and honestly, nobody could listen to all of it. The author says so directly, admitting that no one has the time, not even them. So instead of trying to cover everything, they picked the ten most interesting songs from the list and beyond, publishing the selection on January 24, 2025.

What makes it worth digging into is the range. This is not a tidy collection of sad guitar songs. It runs from ambient and industrial to reggae, dub, and hip-hop. There are two-hour ambient pieces sitting next to Nicki Minaj. There is Turkish psychedelic rock from the 1970s. There is a mashup that never made it to Spotify. The whole thing reads less like a curated best-of and more like a portrait of what the Radiohead members' favorite songs actually sound like when you stop guessing and start listening.

The author's advice is simple: grab a coffee, and if you are short on time, just skip to number one. The list that follows is a walk through the strange, wide-ranging taste of one of rock's most famously serious bands, and it turns out they are not nearly as gloomy as their reputation suggests.

Noah Yorke's Lullaby and the Nepotism Question

Thom Yorke has a son named Noah, born in 2001 to Thom and Rachel Owen. That single fact is enough to make some listeners prick up their ears the moment his name appears in a playlist of Radiohead members' favorite songs. Noah is a musician in his own right, and his father added his material to the running collection. According to the original account, that material includes tracks titled "Trying Too Hard (Lullaby)," "It's Been a Long Time," and "Cerebral Key," though those specific titles could not be reliably confirmed.

What the account does preserve is how Noah reportedly answered the nepotism charge. When a commenter on Instagram criticized him for trading on his family name, he reportedly pointed out that he plays small underground gigs rather than stadium shows, and said something along the lines of: "I don't play Wembley. I'm sorry for making music as the child of someone who makes music." The exact wording is reported but not verified, so treat the quote as the shape of his response rather than a transcript.

Nepotism child or not, the verdict is yours to give.

Here is the part that is not up for debate: the songwriting stands on its own. Whatever door opened for him, the songs have to hold up once the door closes, and they do. Listen and decide for yourself.

Thom Yorke Prefers the Reggae Version of "Let Down"

In 2006, the Easy Star All-Stars released Radiodread, a full reggae and dub reimagining of Radiohead's OK Computer. The New York collective had already made a name for itself doing this to other people's masterpieces, and this time they turned their attention to "Let Down," stretching its melancholy into something slow, warm, and unexpectedly joyful.

What happened next is the part that keeps turning up in fan conversations. According to the original account, Thom Yorke said in an interview that the Easy Star All-Stars version of "Let Down" is much better than the original. Reportedly, Ed O'Brien chimed in too, calling the cover "stunning." Neither quote has been confirmed, so treat them as the story goes rather than established fact. Still, if you have ever heard the reggae "Let Down," the reaction makes a strange kind of sense. The horns, the offbeat skank, and the way the vocal floats instead of pleading all reframe a song you thought you knew.

This is where the Radiohead members' favorite songs thread gets genuinely interesting. The band has never been precious about its own catalog, and the members have spent years pointing fans toward music that sits nowhere near their own sound. A reggae cover of their most beloved album landing in that conversation is exactly the kind of curveball that fits.

And the album itself holds up. It is a genuinely enjoyable listen from start to finish, not a novelty you play once and forget. If you came to Radiohead through the sad, rain-soaked version, hearing "Let Down" bounce might be the most disorienting pleasure you have all year.

Jonny Greenwood's Reggae and Dub Obsession

If you assumed the guitarist known for Radiohead's intricate guitar work spends his evenings with hour-long ambient drones, the playlist says otherwise. Jonny Greenwood is a full-blown reggae and dub fanatic, and his habit stretches back to the late 1990s.

By 2021 he wasn't hiding it. When someone on Twitter asked which artists had inspired The Smile, the band he formed with Thom Yorke and drummer Tom Skinner, Greenwood's answer was two words: "UK dub." That is the whole answer. No hedging, no list of singer-songwriters, just the bass-heavy Jamaican tradition and its British descendants.

Digging through the collection of Radiohead members' favorite songs, the pattern jumps out fast. After jazz, reggae and dub may be the most represented style in the entire thing. Barrington Levy's "Here I Come" sits right there in the mix, a track built on a groove so relaxed it practically reclines. So the image of the band slumped on the floor of their headquarters in despair needs an update. Apparently they were pulling up their socks and moving their hips.

What did Jonny Greenwood say inspired The Smile?

Asked on Twitter in 2021 about the artists behind The Smile, Jonny Greenwood answered simply "UK dub." The guitarist's reggae and dub obsession reaches back to the late 1990s, and after jazz it may be the most represented genre in the playlist of songs Radiohead members have shared.

Listen to the Levy track once and the logic of it makes sense. Dub strips a song down to bass, drums and echo, then rebuilds it. Greenwood has spent his whole career treating the studio the same way.

Thom Yorke's Pre-Show Humming Ritual

Before Radiohead launches into "Everything in Its Right Place," Thom Yorke sometimes hums something else entirely. According to the original account, at a 2009 Leeds performance the song he slipped into that intro was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps," the same track that later became a TikTok phenomenon through the "wait! they don't love you like i love you" dance trend. Whether that specific Leeds moment happened exactly as described is hard to confirm, but the pattern it points to is worth sitting with.

Reportedly, Yorke has also hummed R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" and Björk's "Unravel" in the same spot, right before "Everything in Its Right Place" begins. The author of the original list treats this habit as a quiet form of showing affection. Not a shout-out, not a cover, just a few bars of someone else's melody threaded into the intro of his own song. It reads like a musician tipping his hat to the music he loves without needing anyone to notice.

Think about what that says about the songs Radiohead members carry around with them. The list that inspired this piece exists precisely because fans kept noticing these small gestures, these crumbs of taste dropped in radio appearances and social media posts over the years. Yorke's humming is the most intimate version of that impulse. No playlist, no tweet, just his voice, alone, borrowing someone else's tune for a few seconds before the real song starts.

The Portishead Connection: Drums, Covers, and Charity Soccer

Thom Yorke did not just admire Portishead from a distance. He hired their drummer. Clive Deamer, the Bristol band's live percussionist, joined Radiohead as an additional live drummer from around 2011, which means the man who had been driving Portishead's rhythms was suddenly sharing a stage with Radiohead members on tour. Two drummers, one of them borrowed from a band Yorke openly reveres.

That admiration runs deeper than personnel. According to the original account, Yorke and Jonny Greenwood once performed a cover of Portishead's "The Rip" together, though this particular performance is reported rather than confirmed. As the story goes, Yorke also turned up as a guest at Portishead's 2015 Latitude Festival set and sang "The Rip" with them, a moment that would fit neatly with everything else we know about his taste. Treat both of those with a raised eyebrow until someone digs up the footage.

The friendship between the two bands reportedly spilled into something more unusual. Radiohead and Portishead members are said to have joined forces under the name "Heads United" for a charity event, a dinner and football festival raising funds for a school for the deaf. No reliable record of that event has surfaced, so hold it loosely. Still, it is a lovely image: two of Britain's most melancholic bands lacing up boots for a good cause.

If you have been following Radiohead members' favorite songs over the years, the Portishead thread is one of the clearest throughlines. Yorke does not just collect influences. He recruits them.

The Kendrick Lamar Mashup That Radiohead Shared

Somewhere in the middle of the Kid A Mnesia promotional push, Radiohead's social media accounts did something strange: they shared a fan-made mashup that blended Kendrick Lamar with their own catalogue. A track called "Take Off Everything" had already been floating around the internet before the band touched it. By posting it, they effectively blessed it, turning a fan curiosity into something close to official.

According to the original account, that share reportedly happened on TikTok, though the specific post has not been independently confirmed. What is clear is the effect: the band's quiet nod to Kendrick Lamar sent a small jolt through the internet and the mashup went viral in the aftermath.

There is a practical problem for anyone trying to keep a tidy playlist of these moments. "Take Off Everything" is not on Spotify, so it never made it into the running collection of tracks that Radiohead members have liked, played or shared over the years. It exists in the wild, on YouTube and elsewhere, rather than on any streaming service.

The recommendation comes with a warning attached. The mashup is addictive in a way that can ruin the source material. Once you have heard the two songs fused together, the originals start to sound incomplete. That is the strange power of a good mashup: it rewires your ear, and there is no easy way back.

The Night Thom Yorke Reportedly Played Death Grips on BBC Radio 1

Picture the man who wrote "Fake Plastic Trees" sitting in a BBC Radio 1 studio in 2017, cueing up a track built on blown-out drums and a voice screaming "yuh." As the story goes, that is exactly what Thom Yorke did with Death Grips' "Guillotine," and the report alone sent music forums from 4chan to Reddit into a frenzy. Two weirdo universes, one soft-voiced art-rock elder and one Sacramento noise-rap trio, supposedly colliding on live air.

It is a lovely image, and it fits everything Yorke has ever said about loving abrasive, confrontational sound. Treat it as lore rather than documented fact, because the specific radio play has never been firmly pinned down by anyone. What is not in dispute is the appetite behind it. Yorke has spent decades publicly admiring artists who work the far edges of noise and rhythm, and a Death Grips record is not a strange destination for that curiosity. It is just a strange place to arrive by way of daytime radio.

If the broadcast really happened, the reaction is easy to imagine. Music nerds on 4chan and Reddit do not shrug at a collision like this. They dissect it, screenshot it, argue about it for three days. Pitchfork, so the account goes, kept its lights on all night covering the fallout. Whether or not every detail holds up, the story captures something true about Yorke: he listens like a fan, not like a curator protecting a legacy.

That instinct runs through the whole thread of Radiohead members' favorite songs, the loose catalog of tracks the band has liked, played, or passed around over the years. Death Grips sits at one extreme. The Turkish folk and psychedelic rock that Jonny Greenwood reportedly slipped into a BBC Radio 6 set sits at the other. Same restless curiosity, opposite ends of the dial.

Jonny Greenwood Introduces Turkish Music to Radiohead Fans

For years, the "Radiohead liked this" playlist had a hole in it. A listener who started tracking the band's office charts back in 2015 kept scrolling through songs from every corner of the world and wondering the same thing: where was Turkey? Then, in February 2024, The Smile, Jonny Greenwood's project with Thom Yorke and drummer Tom Skinner, reportedly guested on BBC Radio 6, and Greenwood reportedly played Neşe Karaböcek's "Yali Yali." That broadcast, as the story goes, finally closed the gap.

According to the original account, the same session went further. Greenwood reportedly followed Karaböcek with Selda Bağcan's "İnce İnce Bir Kar Yağar," a track whose 1976 recording date circulates with the song but has never been firmly pinned down. Two Turkish artists in one sitting, one of them a cornerstone of Anatolian psychedelic rock, felt less like a random pick and more like a nod.

Then came the detail that made it personal. Greenwood apparently tried to announce the song title in Turkish on air. The broadcast was later pulled, so the moment survives mainly in a screen recording the author captured that day, a small artifact of a DJ reaching for a language he does not speak.

Whether or not every second of that Radio 6 appearance can be verified, the impulse behind it is not hard to trace. Greenwood's taste has always run wide and strange, and when a British guitarist starts spinning Selda Bağcan for a late-night audience, the playlist becomes something more than a list. After years of scanning those office charts, the author got the one entry they had been waiting for since 2015.