Here's why a classic Radiohead song is back in the charts again – and our pick of their best test tracks
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If you're the sort of backwards cap-wearing whippersnapper who spends more time than they'd like to admit trawling the endless swathes of short-form content on popular social media platform TikTok, you may have already run into Radiohead's Let Down without even realising it.
The jury's still out on TikTok and its impact on the still-forming brains of our society's youth, but for exposing audiences to new (and old) music that's often outside of the mainstream, it's performing a surprisingly valuable service.
Let Down is just one of the many tracks enjoying a major resurgence thanks to its popularity on short-form social media.
According to Forbes, the fifth track from Radiohead's seminal 1997 behemoth OK Computer has enjoyed such a revival that it's in danger of troubling the official US Hot 100 chart ranking, and it's not the only tune to have enjoyed such a retroactive bump.
The likes of Alphaville's Forever Young, Coldplay's Everything's Not Lost and Modern Talking's Cheri Cheri Lady have become reborn colossi across the likes of YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, accompanying everything from Premier League goals compilations to in-depth makeup tutorials. I'll let you decide which of those I watch more often.
Long may this continue. If TikTok gets more people listening to Radiohead and OK Computer, so much the better. That said, much as I appreciate the love for Let Down, it wouldn't be my go-to for testing anything from headphones to hi-fi.
Instead, I'd direct audiences, be they teen TikTok trawlers or grizzled fellow Millennials, to the delights of another masterwork, this time taken from 2000's equally acclaimed masterwork Kid A. Let Down is great, but Everything In Its Right Place is the one to go for if you're serious about giving a product a chance to flex its muscles.
We, as a What Hi-Fi? collective, have been using it since before TikTok was even a thing, and while it's another track enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to social media, we can't take much of the credit for the revival.
Everything In Its Right Place represents, if such a thing exists, the definitive essence of Radiohead. It's an ethereal concoction, blending woozy, otherworldly synth sounds and warm, fuzzy keyboards with the unsettling glitches and twitches of a malfunctioning motherboard, pulling together seemingly contrary elements into a composition that feels both reassuringly warm and enveloping yet disturbingly fractured and bizarre.
Perhaps the track's title would be best served by the inclusion of a question mark at its tail: Everything In Its Right Place?
It's a sublime tester for anything you feel needs a test room challenge, but we particularly like the track for testing a pair of speakers. Those glitchy effects flit from one speaker to the other, elucidating how well a pair can handle organisation and separation, while Thom Yorke's arcing vocals should have both solidity and depth between your chosen pair of contenders. A great test of stereo imaging, then.
We listen to a good deal of dear old Thom and his Oxford-born buddies, so we know which idiosyncrasies and vocal textures to seek out from that instantly recognisable falsetto.
Yorke's voice should soar to appropriate heights, of course, but it's those oft-hidden elements, be they a slight hesitancy at the beginning of a line or the peaks and swells when singing words such as "everything" or "place" that should be tracked with absolute precision.
We always come back to the same question: does he sound like he's singing at a pre-show rehearsal, or is this a man trying to communicate something with real emotional power?
The longer it goes on, the more the intensity rises. Everything In Its Right Place might start off at a creeping pace, but it's the increasing sense of urgency as both tempo and volume build which creates, if you have the equipment, that paralysing sense of drama and heft.
Once you're past the 1:30 mark, you should sense an active shift as the track changes gears from languid scene-setting to a clamorous and incessant climax in which layers upon layers pile upon one another, creating a dramatic denouement which should instil both panic and awe in equal measure.
If you don't feel that change in tone, however, you may be dealing with hi-fi that doesn't have enough flexibility or sense of drama to take things to the next level.
This being Radiohead, it's all about playing with your emotions. Do you feel unsettled yet intrigued by the track's moody, ambient opening, or just bored and uninvolved? Do you feel adrenalised yet slightly overwhelmed as it builds to its climax, or do you sense that the track, or the gear you're using to play it, is holding back?
It's been something of a thrill to see social media reinvigorate the fortunes of various unexpected tunes, or else introduce a new generation of fans to music that isn't throwaway pop or a YouTube star's latest generic cash-in. If you're new to the world of Radiohead and want a truly mind-altering experience, I'd urge you to seek out Everything In Its Right Place.
And if you want that experience to be genuinely life-altering, I'd urge you even more strongly to find headphones or hi-fi that can do it proper justice.
MORE:
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7 tracks we've been enjoying in our test rooms over the past month
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