Radiohead has returned, and the Earth’s frequency just shifted a few clicks to the left.
After seven long years away from the stage — during which the rest of the music industry tried (and mostly failed) to be interesting — Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and the rest of Earth’s favorite beautiful weirdos opened their new European tour in Madrid on Tuesday night. And yes, it was everything: hypnotic, emotional, disorienting in the best way, and somehow even more Radiohead than Radiohead remembered how to be.
The show at Movistar Arena marked the band’s first live performance together since 2018. That’s A Moon Shaped Pool era for those keeping score — the album that hit No. 1 in the UK, No. 3 in the U.S., and gave every indie kid the emotional vocabulary to say, “I’m fine,” while clearly not being fine.
According to drummer Philip Selway, the band casually got back together “just for fun” last year — which is the kind of sentence that only applies to a group whose “fun” sounds like orchestrated cosmic enlightenment.
“It felt really good to play the songs again,” he said.
Translation: We remembered we are Radiohead.
The opening track? “Let Down.”
If you didn’t immediately disassociate into the ceiling lights, check your pulse.
The setlist dove into every era — OK Computer, In Rainbows, Kid A, The Bends, Hail to the Thief, A Moon Shaped Pool. You know… just the albums that rewrote rock music and influenced literally every band with a guitar and a feeling.
They didn’t play “Creep.”
And thank God. Radiohead is too good for their own mainstream entry meme-song. Let it stay in Hot Topic where it belongs.
We also have to say it:
Radiohead might be the most underrated band of all time while also being one of the most critically celebrated bands of all time.
Yes, they are weird. Yes, some of their songs sound like a haunted fax machine dissolving into a dream.
But the emotional range? The innovation? The staying power?
Timeless. Untouchable. Inevitable.
And speaking of live music—if you’re looking for shows closer to home (as in Florida, not a dystopian digital anxiety landscape), the Static Live Music Calendar app has everything happening across Daytona, Ormond, NSB, Flagler and soon… more cities.
Because not all of us can fly to Madrid to have existential crises under stage lighting.
