“Let Down” by Radiohead

"Let Down" sits on OK Computer, Radiohead's third album, from 1997, and it was cut at three in the morning in the ballroom of St Catherine's Court in Bath, Somerset, with Nigel Godrich producing alongside the band. You can hear the hour in it. Layer after layer of arpeggiated guitars and electric piano chime against each other, with Jonny Greenwood playing his part in a different time signature so the lines drift in and out of phase, a trick borrowed from Steve Reich, and there's a Phil Spector-sized swell behind it all. Thom Yorke's lyric is about feeling cut off from your own emotions, and he threw out two extra verses because neither fit.

It went out as a promotional single that September, and in 2025, after TikTok got hold of it, it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's first appearance there since "Nude" in 2008.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.