Thom Yorke's Playlist

If there is one thing we know for sure about Thom Yorke, it is that he is an intentional artist. You can see it spread across Radiohead’s work, yes, even the stuff like The Gloaming that doesn’t get the recognition of, say, the Jeff Buckley-inspired Fake Plastic Trees. But that doesn’t mean these pieces were less intentional; it just means we didn’t get the intention. Or maybe we’re just used to High and Dry. Either way.

Artist playlists give us something that those algorithm-built ones don’t. We know the system is wired to give us a lot of "sounds like" this artist. But this is not that.

Playlists, when thoughtfully curated, aren’t designed just to fill the space that silence takes up. And when they come from artists we respect and admire, they hold a little more weight.

2025 Walk In was played for people attending their recent tour before the band got on stage. They released the track list this week.

Before listening to the playlist ourselves or even checking the tracklist properly, we expected something rich, something that would take you on a journey.

In this case, you managed to survive the many hoops to get a ticket in the first place; your journey is from your house to the venue, which becomes Thom’s house. It becomes Radiohead’s living room. The seat you make your way to was hard-won after years of waiting. The playlist encapsulates that. It is the start of the real experience.

But it still feels like more. For those who have listened to any amount of Radiohead’s work or Thom’s many, many side quests, you’ll know he pulls fine threads of inspiration from many places. We mentioned Fake Plastic Trees. As the story goes, Thom Yorke saw Jeff in his stripped-back, bullsh*t-free best at The Garage. When he left the gig, he went back, and Fake Plastic Trees, as we know it, was born.

2025 Walk In is unlikely to be a complete blueprint to Yorke and the rest of the band’s work and thought process, but you can, if you listen, find those subtle influences. And the overt ones.

Perhaps what is most interesting is that… you know what? Let’s just get into it.

Going back to where we said intentional: We’re going to get the scalpel and dissect this. Before we feast, a note: if you find yourself on the Spotify playlist (or any streaming site), you’ll be missing Radiohead’s Seattle Ambient Recording (from the Minidisks). This was played right before the doors opened, ahead of Leonard Cohen.

In terms of pacing, it’s fascinating. We’ve spoken before about the importance of guiding the listener somewhere, and this is kinda cool. We’ve got an average BPM of about 98, but that doesn’t really tell the story.

The front half of the playlist is slower, lacking rigid percussion or anything too taxing. It’s nice; the majority of people will be shuffling to their seats. The second half gets more interesting: the BPM increases, which coincides with how the audience feels, excited, closer to Radiohead coming on stage. We get interesting skitters, changing rhythms, and an increase in electronics.

You’re ready for that mix when Radiohead hit the stage.

Mark Pritchard’s Lock Off is one of Thom’s closest peers in terms of what they produce. Thom was featured on one of Pritchard’s tracks in 2016 called Beautiful People. Check it out.

Sakamoto’s stunning piano, glitch, and experimental ethereal work is always a joy to hear. A Moon Shaped Pool draws heavily on the textures and space that Ryuichi infused into his compositions. If you haven’t heard Async, go listen, and you’ll feel it.

You might be feeling like billy woods’ BLK XMAS comes out of nowhere, but Thom is a long-standing fan and friend of billy woods, having played him plenty of times on his radio shows. (We’re not being rude with no caps; that’s how it is). Both Thom and billy don’t care for standard writing; it can be obscure, it can be obtuse, it can be anything they want. They bend the words into the shapes they need.

Thom has always been a fan of "found sound," which is why it wasn’t at all surprising to find it on the playlist. The 1963 Smithsonian Folkways tape is exactly on brand, in this case, Greece: Kimísu yé mu.

As a playlist, it is designed to manipulate the room. Thom sets the entire space up ahead of even hitting his first note. You go between intimate and disarming, tension and increased speed, and disorientation with Ian William Craig and Pierre Henry.

There’s more, there always is. Have fun looking for the links you can find.

Without context, you might think the playlist is just… blah. Unless you like being thrown across multiple genres and speeds for fun (we do, so that’s alright).

But with the idea that this playlist is as intentional as we said at the start?

It’s purposeful, and indeed a masterclass in curation.

Or in other words: Everything in its right place.

Until next time,