“Street Spirit (Fade Out)” by Radiohead

"Street Spirit (Fade Out)" comes from Radiohead's second album, The Bends, and it's the song the band themselves came to see as a breakthrough in their writing. Parlophone released it as a single on 22 January 1996, and it gave them their highest UK chart placing yet, number five, which settled any lingering talk that they were one-hit wonders riding on the fumes of "Creep".

John Leckie produced it, and the sound is a slow spiral: a circling guitar figure that keeps turning over on itself, Colin Greenwood's bass and Philip Selway's drums moving underneath like a tide, and Jonny Greenwood adding organ, piano and synthesizer shading. Guests Caroline Lavelle on cello and John Matthias on violin and viola deepen the gloom. Thom Yorke wrote the words and sings them in a fragile, drifting voice, with Ed O'Brien on backing vocals, and the whole thing feels like watching headlights sweep across a ceiling at four in the morning.

The songwriting credit goes to all five of them, and Jonathan Glazer directed the video, a piece of work as haunting as the song.

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