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Engagements can be a whirlwind for everyone involved. Unless you’ve previously bought a ring for your partner you have little to no idea what size they wear and how exactly do you ask that question without tipping them off? This is exactly how buying the incorrect ring size happens but with all of the excitement and planning, you make do with what you have and hope it fits.

For David and Nicolette Koske, their engagement got a little interesting in the most hilarious way when the ring David bought didn’t fit. The couple was out with Nicolette’s best friend, Isa Haiti and her partner for a totally normal not at all secret engagement outing in what appears to be the woods. At least that’s what Nicolette likely thought until the diamond was whipped out and being …not placed on her ring finger.

The ring didn’t fit. But the photographer was right there waiting to catch the shot of the newly engaged couple and it’s a rule that you have to give the photographer the best shot possible. That’s when Haiti steps in.

Haiti slips the ring on to make sure the moment was captured for her bestie. How would anyone know it’s not her hand when it’s clearly only multiple shades darker than the rest of her body. Maybe that hand just really likes sunlight or she fell asleep with only that hand in the tanning bed. You don’t know her life. At least those are some of the comments amused viewers are leaving.

“Not me thinking your hand was changing color because the ring was too small and cutting off circulation,” one person admits.

“Apparently your hand went on vacation to the beach!! Your friends are hilarious! Congratulations on your engagement,” someone says.

“Not me thinking you borrowed a friend’s ring before realizing you borrowed the whole hand,” a commenter laughs.

@nicive289

No one will know 🤫#fyp #bestie #engagement

There was some confusion in the comments with people thinking she borrowed her friend’s hand because the diamond was too small, not the ring. This misunderstanding even had people calling her materialistic so she came out with a follow up video to explain.

“I was not even close to talking about the diamond size. My boyfriend could’ve gotten me a Ring Pop with glitter on it and I would’ve been ecstatic,” Nicolette retorts.

She assures people she’s not materialistic and has been laughing at some of the people’s explanations on what they thought was happening in the picture. There was no real context to the video, just the still photo with Bruno Mars “Marry You” in the background, and a text overlay that said “when get engaged but the ring is too small so you’re bestie comes in clutch.” This allowed for people’s imaginations to go wild in the most amusing way possible.

What do you get when you mix a 127-year college football rivalry with highly competitive and talented musicians? The Best Damn Band in the Land, that’s what.

Ohio State’s marching band, which unjokingly refers to itself The Best Damn Band in the Land—or TBDBITL for short—even has the acronym for the nickname included in its website URL.

The rivalry between The Ohio State University and University of Michigan football teams is legendary, and so is the back-and-forth between their marching bands. Ohio State just keeps upping its delightfully petty game of trolling Michigan in its pregame and halftime shows, much to the delight of Ohio State fans.

In one performance, the Ohio State marching band members form two ships, one bearing the Michigan flag and one bearing Ohio State, and the Ohio State ship “sinks” the Michigan one. In another, the create a car race between the two teams with Ohio State hitting the “finish line” first. In another, the band storms a Michigan castle and replaces its banners with Ohio State flags.

Michigan’s flag has been thrown away, donkey kicked, smashed with sledge hammers, stomped on, sliced with scissors and more as the TBDBITL members pull off impressive feats of choreography, all while playing their instruments.

Even if you don’t give a rip about college football or either of these teams, you gotta admit this is unbelievably cool:

— (@)

Marching bands don’t often get the respect they deserve, especially in the shadow of the big football programs they support. But what these folks do is not easy. They work hard—in fact, one study found that “the physical challenges and demands of participating in competitive marching band is similar to athletes who compete in sports.”

Add in the skill of playing a musical instrument and the coordination it takes to do both in a highly choreographed performance, and phew. Seriously, give these kids some accolades.

And in case you were wondering, yes, Michigan’s marching band does similar trash-walking in their performances, such as this 2021 game in which they made Ohio State lose a game of beer pong:

Michigan marching band just performed a beer pong skit with an Ohio State ping pong ball missing the cup and a Michigan ball going in the cup.

— (@)

People can root for whatever team they want, but I think we should all root for the marching bands, whatever side they’re on. They certainly deserve it.

After the usual months of speculation, Coachella has officially released its lineup for 2024. Headlined by Doja Cat, Lana Del Rey, and Tyler The Creator (with a special appearance by No Doubt), the two-weekend festival will also feature breakout acts like Peso Pluma, Blur, J Balvin, Lil Uzi Vert, Ice Spice, Jhené Aiko, and many, many more. Set for the weekends of April 12-14 and 19-21, Coachella 2024 figures to be yet another landmark yer for the long-running festival.

As Coachella is one of the most popular festivals in the world, it attracts the interest of a wide range of fans — some of whom might wonder whether they are too young to attend. After all, the fest also has a reputation for being a place where folks can imbibe all sorts of substances (unofficially, of course), and many of the acts on the bill certainly have a certain degree of risque content. So…

Does Coachella 2024 Have An Age Limit?

Fortunately for all those teens and pre-teens who love them some Doja and Ice Spice, Coachella does not have an age limit. From my own personal experience, I’ve definitely seen a few middle schoolers boogeying down at the fest (at Nile Rodgers’ set, weirdly enough. Credit the parents, I guess). There have even been a few babies (with those adorable massive headphones to protect their little ears). So, as long as everybody is being responsible (seriously, kids, if you insist on doing drugs, which I know some of you are going to do no matter what anyone says, DRINK WATER — more than you think you need), all ages are welcome.

Reacher returned like a reliable force of nature to the Amazon streaming waves and has been kicking baddies’ booties over the past two months again. However, it’s almost time for Alan Ritchson’s leading brick wall to hop back on the road and prepare to turn up in Somewhere, U.S.A. for Season 3. (Don’t worry, it’s already filming, and Ritchson can always stop real-life robberies in between airdates to stay on his beefy toes.)

Yep, it’s season finale time. “Fly Boy” happens to be the name of this episode, and now, I’m imagining Ritchson leaping into this dance from In Living Color in a sketch that featured Jennifer Lopez. Someone get these two in a Netflix movie together already.

When does Season 2, Episode 8 arrive?

“Fly Boy” will surface on Friday, January 19. Neagley, Dixon, and O’Donnell are still helping Reacher fight for their lives at the beginning of the episode, but who’s to say what will happen before the credits roll? Also, someone needs to terminate Robert Patrick’s character, stat.

Additionally, the finale’s episode description (and it is a nail biter of an episode, my friends) suggests that those bodies will continue to hit the floor:

Reacher finally comes face-to-face with Langston as we learn the brutal truth about Swan. An all-out war between our heroes and Langston culminates in a violent climax where blood is shed and bodies fall — some from the sky.

It’s almost pie time again. Reacher streams on Amazon Prime.

Green Day is launching The Saviors Tour this summer, and what the band’s Mike Dirnt just said about it should make longtime fans’ ears perk up: In a new Rolling Stone interview, he declared on every night of the tour, the band will perform two of their classic albums, Dookie and American Idiot, in full.

He said, “What a f*ckin’ moment it’s going to be. We’ve never done anything like this before. And there’s a really good chance we’ll never do it again.”

Dirnt estimated it’ll take about 90 minutes to perform both albums, adding, “We’ll then have about 35 to 45 minutes to throw down on other stuff. And production-wise, doing these albums lends itself to some amazing possibilities.”

As for how this will look — specifically, if the band will start with Dookie or American Idiot — the band hasn’t quite figured that out yet. Dirnt said, “We still need to put our heads down and do real work to figure that out. Before every tour, we do a lot of pre-production, a lot of thinking about how it should look and feel and sound, because it really matters to us. That’s the fun, but it also really keeps us on our toes.”

Saviors is out 1/19/2024 via Reprise Records. Find more information here.

After wrapping up the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been reluctant to talk about their time on the hit HBO series that consumed a decade of their lives. (Did the finale being universally panned help? Probably not.)

However, the two have a new show to promote, 3 Body Problem for Netflix, so the topic of Thrones is going to be a hard one to avoid. Not only did Benioff and Weiss cast actors from the fantasy series, most notably The Onion Knight himself Liam Cunningham, but the marketing material for 3 Body Problem has heavily touted that, hey, this is the new series from the Game of Thrones guys.

So with all of that in mind, The Hollywood Reporter managed to get Benioff and Weiss to share one of the changes they wish they made to the iconic dragon series, but it’s not one anyone would’ve expected. In fact, it involves a bit character from season one who had an exchange with Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister:

“It was a mistake not bringing Mord the Jailer back into it,” Weiss says. “We always talked about doing it.”

“And we had the scene for it,” Benioff says. “There’s a scene set in a tavern…”

“Was it Brienne or The Hound?” Weiss says. “But we realized too late that Mord could have owned the tavern. We could have had that actor in the background acting exactly the way he did as a jailer, except now as a small business owner. It was just such an obvious, no-brainer, day-after idea.”

There you have it. Benioff and Weiss’ biggest regret from Game of Thrones is not bringing back Mord the Jailer. That’s the creative decision that keeps them up at night. Did not see that one coming.

3 Body Problem premieres on March 21st on Netflix.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Baja Beach Fest is coming back for 2024, as the festival announced that it will be returning to Mexico’s Rosarito Beach from August 9 to August 11. The official lineup is still TBA, but last year’s was filled with talented Latin performers, including Feid, Ozuna, and many more. Because of this, there’s a high chance Baja Beach will be securing some fun acts that will make interested attendees want to act fast when it comes to buying tickets.

Here’s what to know about how much you might need to save.

How Much Are Tickets For Baja Beach 2024?

Baja Beach Fest is offering four different types of tickets for 2024. All of the passes will run on a tiered system too, so the prices will increase as time goes on. The standard 3-day General Admission starts at $299 before eventually increasing to $489 by Tier 4.

The GA+ pass starts at $459. This includes access to premium bathrooms and the chance to attend Bombay’s pre-party and afterparty events.

Baja Beach’s VIP ticket starts at $679 and will increase to $959. Those who purchase this gain access to VIP areas on the festival grounds, along with access to Papas&Beer’s pre-party on Friday and afterparties each night.

The final ticket level is the La Playa pass, which starts at $1,329. This includes all-you-can-eat food and drink, deck access, prime stage viewing, and many more exclusive benefits.

For more information, visit Baja Beach Fest’s official website.

Earlier this month, I watched a familiar debate rage on social media: What is the best Radiohead album? Some said In Rainbows. Some said Kid A. Some (not many) even said The King Of Limbs. The debate rages on because Radiohead is the rare band with multiple masterpieces that appeal to different constituencies. They have put out great records in three different decades, and your personal favorite likely hinges on when you came on board as a fan.

I did not chime in on this debate. Because I am a list-making professional, and I only make lists when I am guaranteed immense riches for my services. But the question is also a bit basic, don’t you think? Amateurs worry themselves with determining which of Radiohead’s nine studio albums is the best. Professionals meanwhile also include Radiohead solo albums and side projects.

This is where things start to get really interesting. It’s one thing to pit In Rainbows vs. Kid A. But what if you also include Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood and Thom Yorke’s solo debut The Eraser? What if you make it about the entire Radiohead Cinematic Universe?

Let’s find out! Below you will find my overview of Radiohead’s career that takes into account the many Radiohead-adjacent records, including the most recent addition to the family, The Smile’s forthcoming sophomore release Wall Of Eyes, due January 26. For the sake of my sanity, I did not include EPs, live albums, remix records, or collaborative works. (Other than The Smile, of course.)

That means fans of Junun, Jonny Greenwood’s joint record with Shy Ben Tzur and the Rajasthan Express, might be disappointed. For the rest of you, let’s dive into this moon-shaped pool!

30. Philip Selway, Let Me Go (2017)

29. Philip Selway, Familial (2010)

28. Philip Selway, Strange Dance (2023)

27. Philip Selway, Weatherhouse (2014)

I feel bad about this. I mean no disrespect to Philip Selway or drummers or solo albums recorded by drummers. I interviewed Philip in 2023, and he was a very nice and gentle man. A very nice and very gentle gentleman, if you will. I think he might be the most laidback British rock drummer of all time. He is, I imagine, the Keith Moon of sitting serenely in a quiet garden and sipping tea.

The official topic of conversation was the No. 28 album on this list. My first question was about how Philip did not play drums on the record. I thought this was interesting because it was sort of like Thom Yorke hiring a studio singer to do his parts on a Thom Yorke album. But I mainly found it interesting because of how it related to the unofficial (i.e. much more important to me personally) conversation topic — the current state and possible future of Radiohead. Philip admitted to me that he was out of practice as a drummer. The last Radiohead tour was five years prior, and apparently he hadn’t been slamming the kit in his free time since then. This, he insisted, contributed greatly to the musical texture of Strange Dance. The drummer he hired, Italian percussionist/composer Valentina Magaletti, “breathed this whole life into the record,” he said. I think I made a sound to indicate that I found this fascinating. But in my mind I was really thinking, Philip isn’t playing drums anymore? What does this say about Radiohead’s future

I’ve thought a lot about this question in the past several years. The preponderance of circumstantial evidence suggesting the dreaded unspoken “indefinite hiatus” is too voluminous to not at least consider the possibility of a Radiohead-free world. They haven’t put out an album in eight years. And that album, A Moon Shaped Pool, sounded a lot like a swan song. And the band members are in their 50s now. And all of them with the exception of Colin Greenwood have put out solo work. And the two most famous guys in the band started a whole other band with a drummer who is not Philip Selway. (One could say that Tom Skinner also “breathed this whole new life” into The Smile.)

After a respectful number of questions about Strange Dance, I started posing more direct inquiries about Radiohead. This did not dim Philip’s nice and gentle demeanor. He must have expected it, I’m sure. The most compelling thing he said came after I more or less asked if he was sure that Radiohead was ever going to work together again. This is what he said:

With all the other projects that we do, I look at it and think that it all falls under the umbrella of Radiohead. That’s the richness of what we do. And I still very much identify as a member of Radiohead.

The umbrella of Radiohead. That phrase has stuck with me. What it suggests is that the members of Radiohead currently regard the Radiohead brand as a protective shield — in a financial sense, surely, but also in terms of their artistic reputations — under which they can “stay dry,” as it were, while doing whatever it is that they want. Radiohead can exist even if the people who compose Radiohead are doing things totally unrelated to Radiohead. They can be a band without being a band. You can disappear completely without seeming like it. It’s like if the Beatles had decided to not do the rooftop concert or issue a press release saying they were finished, and instead just set about making solo records while maintaining their group identity as The Beatles. How long could they have kept that up? Because the guys in Radiohead have reached their Liverpool Oratorio era. Surely in this alternate timeline where The Beatles never officially break up, they would have been compelled by the early ’90s to suck it up and at least record some Buddy Holly covers or something with producer Jeff Lynne.

But I digress. The point is that Philip Selway was implicitly arguing for the solo albums and side projects to be considered as part of Radiohead’s body of work. So that is what I am doing here.

Thank you for the idea, Philip. I have repaid you by putting your four solo albums last. Again: I feel bad about this. I’m not saying these are bad albums! Familial is sleepy and Strange Dance is stodgy, but they aren’t “bad,” exactly. I actually think Weatherhouse works as a very low-key, norm-core Radiohead record. The sort of music Thom might make if he were wearing the softest robe while laying on the softest bed after eating a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. (I know Thom is vegetarian so imagine in this scenario that he ate a soy turkey inserted with enough tryptophan to fell a Clydesdale.) That’s the Weatherhouse vibe. It sounds like Radiohead, only without Thom Yorke’s voice and intense mania and Jonny Greenwood’s mad-scientist musical flourishes. Turns out that’s a lot to miss.

26. Jonny Greenwood, Bodysong (2003)

The cliché about solo records is that people in famous bands make them because (1) they want to open a creative avenue not presently accessible in their main group or (2) they want to make music that sounds nothing like their main group. The first one clearly applies to Selway. Here’s another cliché: The last thing a drummer says before he gets fired is, “Hey, do you guys want to play one of my songs?” I’m not saying Thom Yorke literally threatened to fire Philip Selway because Philip pulled out an acoustic guitar and started strumming “By Some Miracle.” Just that being in close proximity to a guy like Thom Yorke tends to discourage other songwriters from stepping forward.

As for Jonny Greenwood, the second cliché just as obviously applies. His solo work is the least Radiohead-like of any non-Radiohead music made by the dudes in Radiohead. And that starts with his first solo record, a soundtrack to an unorthodox British documentary about the arc of human life, which came out shortly after the Kid A/Amnesiac era and sounds like an epilogue to those records. A grab-bag of experimental sketches rooted in jazz and electronic music forms, Bodysong unfolds more like a series of intriguing ideas than coherent songs. Though Greenwood’s ingenious musicality makes even the most esoteric bits highly listenable and absorbing.

25. Jonny Greenwood, Spencer (2021)

24. Jonny Greenwood, Norwegian Wood (2010)

When I interviewed Selway, I brought up a theory about why the members of Radiohead have worked more apart than together for the past 15 years. Here is the theory: Radiohead fans are insane. The level of scrutiny applied to each record is immense, and the expectation that everything they do must be a masterpiece has to be daunting. Working separately (or in two-person clusters) immediately alleviates the pressure. Suddenly, a record can just be a record and not a potential life-changing paradigm-shifter that alters the course of music.

I have personal experience with scrutiny from Radiohead fans. Three years ago, I published a book about Kid A called This Isn’t Happening. Of all the books I have written, this one is easily the most polarizing. There are people who love this book. There are people who loathe this book. You can look me up on Reddit right now and find people who are convinced that I am the biggest moron on the planet. And you will also find people — wise, right-thinking people — who think I’m witty and insightful. This is the first fanbase I have encountered where a fan might get mad at you for not reading their academic dissertation. (This really happened to me — the fan in question subsequently wrote a mean review of my book on Amazon.)

I’m merely a lowly adjunct to Radiohead’s public-facing persona, and even I find these people to be tiresome. I can’t imagine being one of the five individuals in the eye of the storm. But when I brought this up, Selway (of course) gracefully brushed it aside. “I mean, God, that’s a massive presence in your life,” he said. “One I’m quite happy to have.”

Jonny Greenwood addressed this topic from a different angle in a 2018 interview. “I’m the most impatient of everybody in Radiohead,” he told the NME. “I’ve always said I’d much rather the records were 90 percent as good, but come out twice as often, or whatever the maths works out on that.”

In other words, in Jonny’s view, making music outside of Radiohead is easier for internal reasons (related to the band’s relentless perfectionism) rather than external reasons (the nonstop chatter from batshit Radiohead fans). But I still think there’s something to working in a relatively low-stakes environment that must be refreshing for these guys. For instance, these are two perfectly good film scores for two relatively obscure and very different movies — one is a historical drama about Princess Diana, and the other is a Japanese period piece set in the 1960s.

23. Jonny Greenwood, Inherent Vice (2015)

Norwegian Wood mixes Jonny’s mesmerizing orchestrations with several tracks by Can, in case you thought Paul Thomas Anderson did that first with Inherent Vice. (Radiohead also did this in a spiritual/figurative sense on Kid A.) Anyway, this score would be higher if there were more Jonny compositions on it — as it is, it’s partly score and partly oldies soundtrack. Though I do love Jonny channeling his inner Robby Krieger (with Joanna Newsom playing The Lizard King via the voiceover) on “Spooks.”

22. Jonny Greenwood, The Master (2012)

PTA started working with Jonny after he saw Bodysong and found the movie to be “moving, scary, and hypnotic.” And that effect was created at least in part by Jonny’s moving, scary, and hypnotic music, which he brought to PTA’s next project, There Will Be Blood. (That score repurposes the Bodysong track “Convergence”; because of an Academy technicality, this prevented the score from being nominated for an Oscar.) This created the other long-standing creative partnership in Jonny’s life. Jonny himself has likened his collaboration with PTA to a band, and it has been arguably more central to his creative life in the past 17 years than Radiohead has. In Anderson, Jonny found another visionary curmudgeon whose preoccupations include the corrupting influence of capitalism, the inevitable self-destruction of human communities, and the unlikely appeal of people who feel they don’t belong here. Jonny had Kid A, and then he had Kid PTA.

But if there is an “an intense and crazy fan pressure” center outside of Radiohead, it would be the union of Paul Thomas Anderson and Jonny Greenwood. Every time they work together, we expect Paul to make a masterpiece and we expect Jonny to reinvent the modern film score. All of his scores for PTA films are worth hearing as stand-alone albums, though The Master feels like a transitional work situated between the innovative strangeness of There Will Be Blood and the brilliant formalism of Phantom Thread. (The exact midpoint is the mind-shredding “Baton Sparks.”) A lesser but still worthy way station between career-defining peaks, The Master is the Hail To The Thief of Jonny’s PTA scores.

21. Thom Yorke, Suspiria (2018)

An argument could be made that Jonny Greenwood has had the most notable career outside of Radiohead, given that he’s established as a genuine composer of film music as good as anyone working today. And those scores veer farthest from the Radiohead template. Jonny Greenwood has successfully reinvented himself outside of the band as an artist whose relevance in his chosen field is no longer reliant on the status afforded by being the multi-instrumentalist in the world’s most respected art-rock band.

This isn’t true for Thom Yorke. At least not when it comes to film scores. Whereas Jonny is a rock guy who is also a film score guy, Suspiria sounds like the work of a rock guy making a film score. The distinction is subtle but definitive — this album could pass for a collection of Radiohead instrumentals from the unreleased follow-up to A Moon Shaped Pool. And then there are the songs that Thom sings on, over fluttery piano chords and mournful choirs, like the saddest man at the horror show. You can forget that the guy who composed the music for The Master also played the “ka-chunk” guitar part on “Creep.” But you will never confuse the man on the Suspiria soundtrack for anyone other than Thom Yorke.

Listening to Suspiria reminds me of the soundtrack work done by Pink Floyd in the late ’60 and late ’70s for Barbet Schroeder (More, La Vallée), and not only because Yorke is working in a consciously retro milieu. Schroeder connected with Pink Floyd’s ability to evoke the menacing underbelly of the counterculture with spooky soundscapes whose simple beauty hinted at the dark, unknowable mysteries of the universe as they were perceived by the most stoned individuals in human history. Radiohead’s own preference for soundscapes over conventional songs in their post-In Rainbows era has naturally attracted contemporary filmmakers interested in conjuring similar psycho-mystical vibes. It’s the most Pink Floyd-like thing about the Gen X band most often compared to Pink Floyd.

20. EOB, Earth (2020)

I am overrating this. I know I am. If I were more objective, I would slot this record in the Selway zone. Believe me, I am self-aware about my biases. But they are still my biases. I can’t move past them. And my most blatant Radiohead bias is that I love Ed O’Brien. He’s my favorite. He’s definitely the one I would most want to hang out with. Because he seems like the best hang! And he is the glue that has kept the band together. Only Radiohead is not together at the moment, which is why Ed finally made a solo record.

The reason why Ed is so vital to Radiohead is also the central weakness of this album. In the band, he plays a complementary role. He does what is asked of him without complaint. You need some guitar? He’ll give you some guitar. You need him to not play guitar? He’ll give you no guitar. You need him to replicate Thom’s backing vocals for “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” on stage? His voice will haunt you deeply. You want to stop making albums that sound like The Bends and start making albums that sound like Aphex Twin? He might not get it right away but he’ll go along with it. You need him to simply be a super tall and very handsome man on stage? He’ll be 6-foot-5 and sport an impressive jawline. But what does the complementary role guy do when he’s the one in charge? That’s the issue that Ed never quite resolves.

On Earth, O’Brien reimagines Radiohead in the mold of an aughts-era U2 album. Many read will that as an insult, but I happen to like aughts-era U2 albums. (Like I said: Ed and I would be compatible in a hangout situation.) But there’s no question that Earth sounds like a more basic version of the mothership band. As with the Selway records, it presents Radiohead’s sonic signatures — the mix of acoustic and electric guitars, the electronic flourishes, the swelling choruses, the orchestral grandiosity — in the straightest possible fashion. And that is wholly intentional. When I interviewed O’Brien — he was also a very nice and gentle man! — he explicitly described the album as “not impressionistic” and “very direct.” And that’s what it is. So in that respect, Earth is a resounding success.

19. Jonny Greenwood, You Were Never Really Here (2018)

18. Jonny Greenwood, The Power Of The Dog (2021)

The best of his non-PTA film scores. Also, if you were to mash up these albums, it would almost sound like Radiohead. You get the wigged-out electronic stuff from You Were Never Really Here, and you get the jagged acoustic-orchestral prog stuff from The Power Of The Dog. Put it together, and you practically have Amnesiac.

17. Thom Yorke, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes (2014)

Here begins the “grower” portion of this column. The next three albums all come from the same period, and I didn’t like any of them at first. In the early 2010s, I lost interest in new Radiohead and Radiohead-adjacent music. In my teens and twenties, Radiohead albums felt like major events. I marked my life with each new record. Pablo Honey was the definitive middle school album. The Bends was the definitive high school album. OK Computer dominated by college years. Kid A and Amnesiac marked my post-college years. A major romantic relationship ended around the time of Hail To The Thief, and a different major romantic relationship (with the woman I eventually married) blossomed around the time of In Rainbows. And then The King Of Limbs dropped, and for the first time it seemed like Radiohead transitioned to that inevitable “late” period when new albums feel significantly less urgent. And that was doubly true for the solo records and side projects. So my attention slipped. I cared less. I saw Radiohead on the King Of Limbs tour and thought it was just decent. I wrote a thinkpiece where I made fun of Thom Yorke’s ponytail. And I rolled my eyes when I read that he was now hanging out Flea. (There was also the Rolling Stone profile where Yorke was described as wearing “a bleached denim jacket with the collar popped up, a thin white T-shirt and what appear to be leather pants,” the most middle-aged rock-star attire imaginable.)

This is where Radiohead and I part ways, I thought.

That’s what I thought then. I have since come around on those early 2010s albums, starting with Thom’s second solo record. Though he did himself no favors with the blah album title (these boxes are modern, and they are from tomorrow) or the release strategy (via a paid-for-BitTorrent bundle, which played to the worst stereotypes about Radiohead fans being tech-obsessed poindexters). At the time I dismissed it as a lesser (and more boring) version of The Eraser. But now I praise it as a lesser (but still quite good!) version of The Eraser.

16. Radiohead, The King Of Limbs (2011)

Let’s return for a moment to the Radiohead book I wrote. One thing that people who hate the book always complain about is that I refer to The King Of Limbs as the worst Radiohead album. Even people who love the book complain about this to me. It is, by far, the comment I hear the most whenever my Radiohead book comes up. And whenever it comes up, I give the same two-part response.

1) Worst in this instance is not synonymous with bad or even I don’t like this. If you are going to talk about any band’s catalog in a manner that places their albums in sequential order based on personal preference, you will start with best and end with worst. It’s just how gravity works. But not every band’s worst is the same. The worst Radiohead album is not comparable to the worst album by Five Finger Death Punch. The worst Radiohead album is better than the worst album by Five Finger Death Punch, and also better than the best album by Five Finger Death Punch. The worst Radiohead album is still pretty damn good.

2) I am generalizing, but what I have found to be generally true is that the people who most appreciate The King Of Limbs also were between the ages of 16 and 23 when it came out. Which means that The King Of Limbs was an important event for them in a way it was not for me. (I was 33 when TKOL dropped.) For a certain generation, The King Of Limbs is “their” Radiohead record. This also explains why, in recent years, it’s become popular to proclaim that In Rainbows is Radiohead’s best record. Radiohead is a multi-generational rock band, and the portion of the audience made up of millennial fans has come to outnumber their Generation X backers (i.e. the ones who came of age during the epochal The Bends/OK Computer/Kid A run). Radiohead’s peak has changed because the curators have also changed. (I’ll have more to say on this later in the column, obviously.)

I get why the people who love The King Of Limbs passionately insist that it doesn’t belong in the bottom quadrant of Radiohead records. I recognize the generational factors that inform my view of the album. I do not think that my opinion is more valid than anyone else’s. I am, however, the one making this list. So, The King Of Limbs goes at No. 16.

15. Atoms For Peace, Amok (2013)

No one is more surprised than I am to see Atoms For Peace ranked above The King Of Limbs. But over time, Amok has come to sound to my ears as a superior version of the Radiohead album that immediately precedes it. Like he did with TKOL, Yorke set out with Amok to make an album “where you [aren’t] quite sure where the human starts and the machine ends.” Only on Amok it sounds like this effect is created by a band whereas The King Of Limbs actively deconstructs the sound Radiohead achieves when the guys are playing together in a room. Amok picks up where Radiohead left off on the King Of Limbs tour, when they flirted with becoming a jam band by hiring a second drummer and putting an emphasis on danceable grooves over more typical guitar-band dynamics. “Sounds kind of like Phish” was not a vibe I was ready to embrace in 2013, but these days my body particles are more geared for peace.

14. Thom Yorke, Anima (2019)

Remain In Light is one of Thom Yorke’s favorite albums, and Amok is the closest he’s come to approximating that record’s ecstatic Side 1. Most of his solo work hews closer to that record’s downbeat and spooky Side 2, with Anima venturing the farthest in that direction. I find it to be an almost unbearably sad record about loss and growing older, and when it hits — I’m thinking about “Dawn Chorus,” probably my favorite Radiohead-related song of the 2010s — it’s some of the most powerful music of the post-In Rainbows years.

13. The Smile, Wall Of Eyes (2024)

Thom and Jonny’s forthcoming sophomore effort isn’t as groovy as the first. On A Light For Attracting Attention, they strutted like a British art-rock redux of Booker T. And The MG’s, with Thom and Jonny clearly vibing on Tom Skinner’s relentless syncopations. Wall Of Eyes is rockier and, well, more Radiohead-esque. The eight-minute “Bending Hectic” is their most twist-turn-y epic since “Paranoid Android,” while tracks like “Read The Room” and “Friend Of A Friend” could pass for OK Computer B-sides. Above all, Wall Of Eyes is an album designed for luxuriating in the plush velvet that is Thom Yorke’s remarkably well-preserved voice and Jonny Greenwood’s elastic guitar playing. I listened to it on a recent frigid Saturday morning while drinking coffee, and it felt cozier than The Holdovers. I understand “Cozy” might not seem like a positive adjective in the context of a Radiohead-adjacent record, but the warmth of Wall Of Eyes hits like an invigorating balm given how chilly it has been under the Radiohead umbrella for much of the 15-plus years.

12. Radiohead, A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

Along with Anima, this is some of the saddest music under the Radiohead umbrella. Which is saying a lot! The bar for sadness is awfully high for this band! (Whereas the bar for “wackiness” or “ska-inspired” is terribly low.) Yorke’s ex-wife died of cancer not long after it came out, and that context naturally informs how the album is perceived, particularly since it ends with a studio recording of the beloved heartbreaker “True Love Waits.” But Nigel Godrich’s father also passed during the record. And there was the death of drum technician Scott Johnson in a horrific stage collapse before a show on The King Of Limbs tour. Death pervades this album. It’s a heavy listen. And yet there’s also a lightness to Pool, like it’s slowly drifting into the ether as you’re listening to it.

11. The Smile, A Light F0r Attracting Attention (2022)

A common view of A Moon Shaped Pool is that it’s also a record about the end of Radiohead. By all accounts it was difficult to make, given the amount of tragedy in the band’s camp at the time. But also because all Radiohead albums are difficult to make. Going back to at least Kid A, the repetitive narrative for every Radiohead album has been We can’t be satisfied with sounding like Radiohead, so we will torture ourselves for months until we finally come to our senses. Whereas every other band on the planet would be thrilled to make a Radiohead album, the one band best equipped to make a Radiohead album has resisted the option of sounding like themselves.

What’s unclear is where this resistance comes from. Because one might assume that it would derive from the singer-songwriter and his main musical lieutenant. But Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have complained the loudest over how slowly Radiohead works. And as The Smile, they have already put out as many albums in three years as Radiohead has in 13. It’s a strange development and I don’t really understand it. Is Colin Greenwood the secret dictator of Radiohead? Does Philip Selway somehow turn into an exacting task master behind the scenes?

I go back to Jonny’s “90 percent as good” quote that I mentioned earlier. The Smile is 90 percent as good as Radiohead, but they feel slightly more satisfying at this point because whatever baggage prevents these guys from making music in Radiohead efficiently goes away under a different moniker and backed with a different drummer.

I can’t explain this. But I know that it is true.

10. Radiohead, Pablo Honey (1993)

The Radiohead album that people who are not me most often classify as their worst. I can’t do that. Because I got in with Radiohead on the ground floor. I was a 15-year-old kid who saw the video for “Creep” on MTV and immediately connected with it because that song was made for 15-year-old kids. And then I bought the CD and loved it immediately. I loved it because it was loud and dumb with loud spiky guitars and dumb wailing vocals. I loved it because it was perfect 15-year-old kid music.

None of the adjectives I used in the previous sentence would apply to Radiohead by the end of the ’90s. But just because Radiohead was retconned as esoteric music for intellectuals does not mean that their past as a loud and dumb alt-rock band did not happen. It did happen, and it’s a crucial part of their history. On Pablo Honey, Thom Yorke screams about wanting to be Jim Morrison and he’s not being ironic. (Well, maybe he’s 15 percent ironic.) Even if this is the version of Radiohead that all subsequent versions of Radiohead reacted against, I don’t think that it invalidates what initially drew listeners to them. If you can appreciate Pablo Honey, you will understand that Radiohead’s superpower isn’t thinking better than other bands. Their superpower is feeling harder and deeper. Their music is artful, yes, but Radiohead play arenas because they are super duper emo. They appeal to the mind but they speak to the heart. And on Pablo Honey, they wail directly into your aortic valve.

9. Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood (2007)

8. Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread (2017)

How do I justify putting two Jonny Greenwood film scores in the Top 10? Because There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread are the OK Computer and Kid A of Jonny Greenwood film scores. They represent his greatest solo work, and they are among the best film scores by anyone in the modern era. Of all the Radiohead-adjacent albums, they feel the most consequential. More than anything, they are what put Jonny on the map as an all-time film composer. And they also function as satisfying stand-alone albums.

My favorite Jonny film score keeps changing but right now here’s my verdict: There Will Be Blood is the more bracing, knock-you-over-the-head-with-a-bowling-pin listen, but over time I’ve come to love Phantom Thread just a little bit more. It is the most flat-out beautiful music Jonny has ever made, fully deserving of the sumptuous treatment he gives it. The achievement here really can’t be overstated: Before Jonny Greenwood, a British rock musician working with a symphony orchestra was a Spinal Tap joke. It was a sign of extreme pretension reserved for the shame-free denizens of Emerson Lake And Palmer. Jonny changed that. This is his genius.

7. Thom Yorke, The Eraser (2006)

The highest-ranking solo record, though it does feel partly like a Radiohead album. Thom assembled The Eraser from the spare parts of unused Radiohead instrumentals laid down in the early aughts — you can hear Jonny’s reconfigured piano chords on the title track, a rhythm track recorded by Ed and Philip on “Black Swan,” and a revamped sample of Hail To The Thief‘s “The Gloaming” in the murk of “And It Rained All Night.” Thom fished these parts and others from his laptop and finished up The Eraser as Radiohead endured yet another difficult album gestation, this time for In Rainbows. The final result sounds like a more direct and less misanthropic sequel to Kid A, in which Yorke takes his late ’90s fascination with Warp Records to its logical extreme. While not technically a group effort, The Eraser does belong in Radiohead’s creative arc because it extends from their most creative period and points toward a future in which Radiohead music is more plentiful outside the band than within.

6. Radiohead, Hail To The Thief (2003)

The best tracks — “There, There,” “Where I End And You Begin,” “2+2=5,” “Go To Sleep” — are as good as anything in the Top 5. And I love that the “live in the studio” looseness of HTTT makes it an anomaly in Radiohead’s catalogue. I think it’s absolutely one of the Top 5 best albums of 2003. But we are now entering the part of this column where we are comparing masterpieces against masterpieces. And I am forced to become what I have feared and mocked — the highly critical Radiohead fan. I have lived long enough to become the villain. Therefore, I am forced to concede with a heavy heart that this album is a little too padded with filler to qualify for one of the most prestigious rings of honor in music, the Radiohead Top 5.

A Special Note Before We Enter The Radiohead Top 5

Let’s remember that no matter what ends up at No. 1, we’re all winners. Also, remember that time when Thom Yorke jumped in the pool at the MTV Beach House and almost drowned? In that horrible timeline where Thom doesn’t make it out of the MTV Beach House pool, none of the following albums exist. Keep that in mind and try to be grateful that we don’t live in that timeline.

5. Radiohead, In Rainbows (2007)

Great album? Absolutely. Classic? Uh-huh. The best Radiohead album? Pump the brakes, millennials. Look, I’m technically an xennial, so I get where the In Rainbows people are coming from. In Rainbows caps Radiohead’s golden era. You can listen to it 57 times in a row without getting sick of it. The pay-what-you-want release model was the last good moment in music retail on the internet. It’s the album that ensured that Radiohead would not go down in history as a “’90s band” but as a group that put out beloved musical watersheds in multiple decades. It’s also the Radiohead LP that sounds best coming out of laptop speakers, because it’s a laidback “vibes” record in the manner of so much popular music in the 21st century. Whereas the more bombastic ’90s records might hit contemporary ears as “a little much.”

I get all that. I love In Rainbows. But it doesn’t murder me quite as hard as the next four records. For me, “a little much” is just the right amount of Radiohead.

4. Radiohead, Amnesiac (2001)

I put this at No. 4 because that is the minimum-level rank required by law for any album that includes “Pyramid Song.” Also, anyone who thinks Radiohead lacks a sense of humor does not appreciate the comedy of spending 313 hours on a song as breezy and simple as “Knives Out.”

3. Radiohead, The Bends (1995)

Speaking of albums that are “a little much,” this is my all-time “romantically traumatized teenager wallowing” record. I once walked home from school in the rain while listening to “High And Dry” on repeat on my Discman. (This was partly by design and partly because the disc kept skipping — the Discman was not an OK computer.) At the risk of making myself sound like one of the unexceptional and out-of-focus characters lurking behind James Van Der Beek on Dawson’s Creek, I will never tire of this record’s relentless melodrama and overwhelming self-pity, no matter if Thom has publicly disavowed “High And Dry.” This is Radiohead in peak “feeling harder and deeper” mode. Yes, it’s embarrassing in places but feeling embarrassed by feelings you had 30 years ago while listening to an album you still love is one of life’s greatest and most profound pleasures. I can’t thank you enough for this, The Bends.

2. Radiohead, Kid A (2000)

Over the years it has unfairly earned a reputation for being the “eat your vegetables” Radiohead record. And maybe that’s because those of us who were young at the time that Kid A came out and had our minds blown won’t shut up about it. Praise an album enough and it starts to discourage younger audiences from finding their own space for discovery. And I have, unfortunately, contributed to this. So I’m going to shut my mouth and simply suggest that you watch this video and try to imagine anyone doing what they’re doing on national television in 2024.

1. Radiohead, OK Computer (1997)

It blew my head off 27 years ago. For at least two years afterward, I wanted every new album I heard to sound like it. I still think that it’s better than every record that has come out since — not Radiohead record, I mean record by anybody. I could write a 6,000-word column ranking all of the “Oh Shit, My Arms And Legs Feel Like They’re Glowing!” moments just from this album.

Actually, that’s a good idea. Here are the Top 5 “Oh Shit, My Arms And Legs Feel Like They’re Glowing!” moments from OK Computer:

5. The “such a pretty house, such a pret-taaaay garrrrrden” part from “No Surprises.”

4. When the rhythm section temporarily drops out at the 1:24-mark of “Airbag”

3. When the rhythm section comes in at the 2:48-mark of “Exit Music (For A Film).”

2. The “god sits in your room” part at the end of “Paranoid Android”

1. The final 88 seconds of “Let Down.”

I could go on. But this is the record. I wasn’t there when Pet Sounds came out, but I did buy OK Computer in 1997 at a MediaPlay store. I missed the initial run of The Dark Side Of The Moon, but I did watch my stoned friend Marc cry to “Subterranean Homesick Alien.” On this point, I can’t argue. OK Computer isn’t just a record. It is my musical Pearl Harbor. It wrecked me, it changed me, it is a landmark in my past. You couldn’t lodge it out of my heart with a surgeon’s scalpel.

At long last, Ariana Grande has announced her seventh album. Marking her first album in almost four years, Eternal Sunshine will arrive later this year.

Ahead of the album, Grande shared her groovy new single “Yes, And?,” on which she seemingly addresses the sensationalized headlines about her life, which she has been dealing with over the past few months. The song, produced by Ariana Grande, Max Martin, and Ilya Salmanzadeh, signals a new era for Grande, as she steps back into her pop bag.

Following Grande’s official announcement, the Arianators are excited to get their hands on the album.

When does Ariana Grande’s new album Eternal Sunshine come out?

Eternal Sunshine arrives March 8, via Republic Records. Grande revealed the news via Instagram, where she shared a carousel of new images. The images correspond to the different cover arts Grande has shared on her official website.

Three additional covers have been revealed on Grande’s website, including one featuring Grande covering her eyes, one with her hands over her head, and another with a 4×4 grid of images of her. Apparently, three more covers are to be revealed, as evidenced by placeholder images on her website.

You can see the Eternal Sunshine cover arts below.

Ariana Grande’s big return to music has had her fans filled with excitement. Just days after dropping her hit single “Yes, And?,” the pop star confirmed the theories that her new album would be pulling inspiration from the 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Here’s everything to know so far about Grande’s upcoming album, Eternal Sunshine.

Is Ariana Grande Releasing A New Album In 2024?

Yes. It will be Grande’s first new record since 2020.

Will Ariana Grande Release A Single For Her New Album?

So far, Grande has released one single from her new album. The pop star returned last week to share the lead single, “Yes, And?,” where she embraced her unapologetic side. She also released a music video for the track.

When Will Ariana Grande’s New Album Come Out?

Her new album, Eternal Sunshine, will be released on March 8 via Republic. Find more information here.

Does Ariana Grande’s New Album Have A Tracklist?

The tracklist to Grande’s Eternal Sunshine album has yet to be announced.

Will Ariana Grande’s New Album Have Features?

It is currently unclear if her album will have any features, but here’s hoping fans find out soon.

What Is The Album Cover For Ariana Grande’s New Album?

Check out the album cover for Eternal Sunshine below.

Will Ariana Grande Go On Tour For Her New Album?

It is unclear if she will be touring for the album. She has no current shows announced.