Reviewing Radiohead - Stupid Car (and Pop is Dead)
Radiohead released Pablo Honey to not much fanfare until Creep was discovered by some Israeli DJ and suddenly the band were massive - even if only as the Creep band. However, they had released music before Pablo - the Drill EP.
As you can tell, the band weren't particularly great at cover art just yet. They weren't even called Radiohead for that long at this time; the band were known as On a Friday, a reference to when they did practice at school, and only switched their name at EMI's request.
Three songs on Drill were rerecorded and put on Pablo, which I have already reviewed in a separate blogpost here. There is, however, one song which didn't get this honour - Stupid Car.
Ever since I realised this, I have wondered what the band thought of the song. It seems like they don't have an opinion, and have willingly cast it into the memory hole. Though that can't be true, surely - the EP is available for streaming, which is why I'm even reviewing the song, and that fact alone suggests to me that the band prefer Stupid Car to another early release, Pop is Dead (the only Radiohead song not available on Spotify!) - therefore, I think the band merely don't care about it.
The song itself is a rather acoustic number, with lovely guitar strumming and softer vocals by Thom Yorke eventually building up into a controlled frenzy and then inexplicably stopping as it was getting excellent. It annoys me because they could have added a sudden guitar line, incorporated more feedback, even have Philip Selway join in (the song has no drums)...and yet they simply let the song last a paltry 145 seconds. Yet I'd still choose it over countless other tracks on Pablo Honey.
It's a shame because it's a rather sweet song. Every article on Stupid Car mentions how the lyrics foreshadow Yorke's obsession with cars going wrong, like on Airbag, and it seems like that's all the curious context, at least until the band speak out about it, that we will get.
I know it's unlikely that Thom Yorke will be reading this blogpost, but if you are Thom, what do you actually think of Stupid Car?
Out of curiosity, I listened to Pop is Dead (which was actually a single) and it's a rather bouncy song with lovely guitar work, yet admittedly doesn't do much more. It's an extremely straightforward song which veers into unintentional hilarity at times [like seriously, what does "another line of coke to jack him off" mean?]. I can see why the band don't want to include it on Spotify because there's nothing special to it, it's not good as a single but it's somewhat okay as a song.