Thom Yorke facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Thom Yorke
Yorke in 2022
Background information
Birth name	Thomas Edward Yorke
Also known as	Sisi Bakbak Tchock The White Chocolate Farm Zachariah Wildwood Thmx
Born	(1968-10-07) 7 October 1968 (age 56) Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England
Genres	Rock electronica experimental rock
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter composer
Instruments	Vocals guitar keyboards bass
Years active	1985–present
Labels	XL

Thomas Edward Yorke (born 7 October 1968) is an English musician who is the main vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Radiohead. A multi-instrumentalist, he mainly plays guitar and keyboards and is noted for his falsetto. He has been described by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest and most influential singers of his generation.

Yorke formed Radiohead with schoolmates at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire. Their 1992 debut single, "Creep", made Yorke a celebrity, and Radiohead went on to achieve critical acclaim and sales of more than 30 million albums. Yorke's early influences included alternative rock acts such as Pixies and R.E.M. With Radiohead's fourth album, Kid A (2000), Yorke moved into electronic music, influenced by Warp acts such as Aphex Twin. With the artist Stanley Donwood, Yorke creates artwork for Radiohead albums and his other projects. He often incorporates "erratic" dancing into his performances.

Yorke's solo work comprises mainly electronic music. His debut solo album, The Eraser, was released in 2006. To perform it live, in 2009, he formed a new band, Atoms for Peace, with musicians including the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea and the Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. They released an album, Amok, in 2013. Yorke's second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, was released in 2014, followed by Anima in 2019. In 2021, Yorke debuted a new band, the Smile, with the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and the jazz drummer Tom Skinner. Yorke has collaborated with artists including PJ Harvey, Björk, Flying Lotus and Modeselektor, and has composed for film and theatre. His first feature film soundtrack, Suspiria, was released in October 2018.

Yorke is an activist on behalf of human rights, animal rights, environmental and anti-war causes, and his lyrics incorporate political themes. He has been critical of the music industry, particularly of major labels and streaming services such as Spotify. With Radiohead and his solo work, he has employed alternative release platforms such as pay-what-you-want and BitTorrent. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead in 2019.

Early life

Yorke was born on 7 October 1968 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. He was born with a paralysed left eye, and underwent five eye operations by the age of six. According to Yorke, the last surgery was "botched", giving him a drooping eyelid. He decided against further surgery: "I decided I liked the fact that it wasn't the same, and I've liked it ever since. And when people say stuff I kind of thought it was a badge of pride, and still do."

The family moved frequently. Shortly after Yorke's birth, his father, a nuclear physicist and later a chemical equipment salesman, was hired by a firm in Scotland. The family lived in Lundin Links until Yorke was seven, and he moved from school to school. The family settled in Oxfordshire in 1978, where Yorke attended Standlake Primary School.

Yorke said he knew he would become a rock star after seeing the Queen guitarist Brian May on television for the first time at the age of eight. He received his first guitar as a child; at 10, he made his own guitar, inspired by May's homemade Red Special. By 11, he had joined his first band and written his first song. Seeing Siouxsie Sioux in concert at the Apollo in 1985 inspired him to become a performer, saying he had never seen anyone "captivate an audience like she did".

Yorke attended the boys' public school Abingdon in Oxfordshire. He felt out of place, and got into physical fights with other students. He found sanctuary in the music and art departments, and wrote music for a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Terence Gilmore-James, the Abingdon director of music, recalled Yorke as "forlorn and a little isolated" thanks to his unusual appearance, but talkative and opinionated. He said Yorke was "not a great musician", unlike his future bandmate Jonny Greenwood, but a "thinker and experimenter". Yorke later credited the support of Gilmore-James and the head of the art department for his success.

1985—1991: On a Friday

Abingdon School, Oxfordshire, where Yorke formed Radiohead with classmates

At Abingdon, Yorke met Ed O'Brien, Philip Selway and brothers Colin and Jonny Greenwood. In 1985, they formed a band, On a Friday, named after the only day they were allowed to practise.

After leaving school, Yorke took a gap year and tried to become a professional musician. He held several jobs, including a period selling suits, and made a demo tape. He was also involved in a serious car accident that influenced the lyrics of later songs, including the Bends B-side "Killer Cars" (1995) and "Airbag" from OK Computer (1997). In the late 1980s, Yorke made a solo album, Dearest, which O'Brien described as similar to the Jesus and Mary Chain, with delay and reverb effects.

On the strength of their first demo, On a Friday were offered a record deal by Island Records, but the members decided they were not ready and wanted to go to university first. Yorke had wanted to apply to St John's to read English at the University of Oxford, but, he said, "I was told I couldn't even apply – I was too thick. Oxford University would have eaten me up and spat me out. It's too rigorous."

In late 1988, Yorke left Oxford to study English and fine arts at the University of Exeter, which put On a Friday on hiatus aside from rehearsals during breaks. At Exeter, Yorke performed experimental music with a classical ensemble, played in a techno group called Flickernoise, and played with the band Headless Chickens, performing songs including future Radiohead material. He also met the artist Stanley Donwood, who went on to produce artwork for Radiohead and Yorke's solo releases, and the printmaker Rachel Owen, Yorke's future wife. Yorke credited his art school education for preparing him creatively for his later work.

On a Friday resumed activity in 1991 as most of the members were finishing their degrees. Ronan Munro, editor of the Oxford music magazine Curfew, gave the band their first interview while they were sharing a house in Oxford. He recalled that "Thom wasn't like anyone I'd interviewed before ... He was like 'This is going to happen… failure is not an option' ... He wasn't some ranting diva or a megalomaniac, but he was so focused on what he wanted to do."

Career

1991–1993: "Creep" and rise to fame

In 1991, when Yorke was 22, On a Friday signed to EMI and changed their name to Radiohead. They gained notice with their debut single, "Creep", which appeared on their 1993 debut album, Pablo Honey. Yorke grew tired of "Creep" after it became a hit, and told Rolling Stone in 1993: "It's like it's not our song any more ... It feels like we're doing a cover."

1994–1997: The Bends

Paul Q Kolderie, the co-producer of Pablo Honey, observed that Yorke's songwriting improved dramatically after Pablo Honey. O'Brien later said: "After all that touring on Pablo Honey ... the songs that Thom was writing were so much better. Over a period of a year and a half, suddenly, bang."

Recording Radiohead's second album, The Bends (1995), was stressful, as they felt pressured to release a follow-up to "Creep". Yorke in particular struggled. According to the band's co-manager, Chris Hufford, "Thom became totally confused about what he wanted to do, what he was doing in a band and in his life, and that turned into a mistrust of everybody else." The Bends was engineered by Nigel Godrich, who became one of Yorke's longest-running collaborators.

The Bends received critical acclaim and brought Radiohead wider international attention. It influenced a generation of British and Irish alternative rock acts; The Observer wrote that it popularised an "angst-laden falsetto" which "eventually coalesced into an entire decade of sound". The American rock band R.E.M., a major influence on Radiohead, picked them as their support act for their European tour. Yorke befriended the R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who gave him advice about how to deal with fame. Yorke joined R.E.M. to perform their song "E-Bow the Letter" on several occasions from 1998 to 2004.

1997–1998: OK Computer

Yorke in 1998

During the production of Radiohead's third album, OK Computer (1997), the members had differing opinions and equal production roles, with Yorke having "the loudest voice", according to O'Brien. OK Computer achieved acclaim and strong sales, establishing Radiohead as one of the leading rock acts of the 1990s.

Yorke struggled with the attention the success brought him, and the stress of the OK Computer tour. Colin Greenwood described the "hundred-yard stare" in Yorke's eyes when performing, and said "he absolutely did not want to be there... You hate having to put your friend through that experience." Yorke said later:

When I was a kid, I always assumed that [fame] was going to answer something – fill a gap. And it does the absolute opposite. It happens with everybody. I was so driven for so long, like an animal, and then I woke up one day and someone had given me a little gold plate for OK Computer and I couldn't deal with it for ages.

In 1997, Yorke provided backing vocals for a cover of the 1975 Pink Floyd song "Wish You Were Here" with Sparklehorse. The following year, he duetted on "El President" with Isabel Monteiro of Drugstore, and sang on the Unkle track "Rabbit in Your Headlights", a collaboration with DJ Shadow. Pitchfork cited "Rabbit in Your Headlights" as a "turning point" for Yorke, foreshadowing his work in experimental electronic music.

For the soundtrack of the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine, Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Andy Mackay of Roxy Music and Bernard Butler of Suede formed a band, the Venus in Furs, to cover Roxy Music songs. In 2016, Pitchfork wrote that Yorke "weirdly comes off as the weak link", with understated vocals that did not resemble the Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry.

1999–2004: Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief

Yorke in 2001

Following the OK Computer tour, Yorke suffered a mental breakdown and found it impossible to write new music. He experienced imposter syndrome, and became self-critical and over-analytical. He was approached to score the 1999 film Fight Club, but declined as he was recovering from stress.

Around this period, acts influenced by Radiohead emerged, such as Travis and Coldplay. Yorke resented them, feeling they had copied him. He said in 2006: "I was really, really upset about it, and I tried my absolute best not to be, but yeah, it was kind of like— that sort of thing of missing the point completely." Godrich felt Yorke was oversensitive and told him he did not invent "guys singing in falsetto with an acoustic guitar". He saw Yorke's resentment as "a byproduct of being so focused on what he wanted to do that he figures he's the only person that's ever had that idea".

To recuperate, Yorke moved to Cornwall and spent time walking the cliffs, writing and drawing. He restricted his songwriting to piano; the first song he wrote was "Everything in Its Right Place". During this period, Yorke listened almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre, saying: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." Yorke gradually relaxed and came to enjoy his work again.

Radiohead took Yorke's electronic influences to their next albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), processing vocals, obscuring lyrics, and using electronic instruments such as synthesisers, drum machines and samplers. The albums divided listeners, but were commercially successful and later attracted wide acclaim. At the turn of the decade, Kid A was named the best album of the 2000s by Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.

In 2000, Yorke contributed vocals to three tracks on the PJ Harvey album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, and duetted with Björk on her song "I've Seen It All" from her soundtrack album Selmasongs. Radiohead released their sixth album, Hail to the Thief, a blend of rock and electronic music, in 2003. Yorke wrote many of its lyrics in response to the war on terror and the resurgence of right-wing politics in the west after the turn of the millennium, and his shifting worldview after becoming a father. Yorke and Jonny Greenwood contributed to the 2004 Band Aid 20 single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", produced by Godrich.

2004–2008: The Eraser and In Rainbows

Yorke recorded his debut solo album, The Eraser, during Radiohead's 2004 hiatus. It comprises electronics songs recorded and edited with computers. Yorke, who formed Radiohead while the members were in school, said he was curious to try working alone. He stressed that Radiohead were not splitting up and that the album was made "with their blessing". According to Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead were happy for Yorke to make the album: "He'd go mad if every time he wrote a song it had to go through the Radiohead consensus." Godrich said that working with Yorke on The Eraser was easier than working with Radiohead, as "when we were in a room when it's with Radiohead ... I'm trying to manage a relationship between [Yorke] and the band and it's me butting heads with him and trying to work on behalf of the band."

The Eraser was released in 2006 on the independent label XL Recordings, backed by the singles "Harrowdown Hill", which reached number 23 in the UK Singles Chart, and "Analyse". It reached the top ten in the UK, Ireland, United States, Canada and Australia, and was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Prize and the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. It was followed by a B-sides compilation, Spitting Feathers, and a remix album by various artists, The Eraser Rmxs.

In 2007, Radiohead independently released their seventh album, In Rainbows, as a pay-what-you-want download, the first for a major act. The release made headlines worldwide and sparked debate about the implications for the music industry. Yorke described it as a statement of Radiohead's belief in the value of music and a "contract of faith" between musicians and audiences.

In the same year, Yorke sang on the Modeselektor track "The White Flash" from the album Happy Birthday!. Pitchfork likened it to The Eraser and wrote that Yorke's vocals "work so perfectly that it feels like this is his band". Yorke also sang backing vocals on Björk's 2008 charity single "Náttúra".

2009–2010: Atoms for Peace

Yorke performing at Glastonbury Festival 2010

In 2009, Yorke released a cover of the Miracle Legion song "All for the Best" with his brother, Andy, for the compilation Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy. In July, Yorke performed solo at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk and released a double-A-side single, "FeelingPulledApartByHorses/TheHollowEarth". He also contributed the track "Hearing Damage" to the Twilight Saga: New Moon film soundtrack.

That year, Yorke formed a new band, Atoms for Peace, to perform songs from The Eraser. Alongside Yorke, the band comprises Godrich on keyboards and guitar, the bassist Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the drummer Joey Waronker and the percussionist Mauro Refosco of Forro in the Dark. Yorke said: "God love 'em but I've been playing with [Radiohead] since I was 16, and to do this was quite a trip ... It felt like we'd knocked a hole in a wall, and we should just go through it." Atoms for Peace performed eight North American shows in 2010. They went unnamed for early performances, billed as "Thom Yorke" or "??????". In June, Yorke performed a surprise set at Glastonbury Festival with Jonny Greenwood, performing Eraser and Radiohead songs.

In the same year, Yorke provided vocals for "...And the World Laughs with You" from the Flying Lotus album Cosmogramma, and for "Shipwreck" and "This" on the Modeselektor album Monkeytown. Along with Damien Rice and Philip Glass, he contributed to the soundtrack for the 2010 documentary When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun.

2011–2013: The King of Limbs and Amok

Yorke performing with Atoms for Peace in 2013

In 2011, Radiohead released their eighth album, The King of Limbs, which Yorke described as "an expression of physical movements and wildness". Yorke sought to move further from conventional recording methods. The music video for "Lotus Flower", featuring Yorke's erratic dancing, became an internet meme. By 2011, Radiohead had sold more than 30 million albums.

In the same year, Yorke collaborated with the electronic artists Burial and Four Tet on "Ego" and "Mirror", and collaborated with Greenwood and the American rapper MF Doom on "Retarded Fren". In 2012, Yorke provided vocals for "Electric Candyman" on the Flying Lotus album Until the Quiet Comes. He also remixed the single "Hold On" by the electronic musician Sbtrkt, under the name Sisi BakBak. His identity was not confirmed until September 2014.

In February 2013, Atoms for Peace released an album, Amok, followed by a tour of Europe, the US and Japan. Amok received generally positive reviews, though some critics felt it was too similar to Yorke's solo work. That year, Yorke and Jonny Greenwood contributed music to The UK Gold, a documentary about tax avoidance. The soundtrack, described by Rolling Stone as a series of "minimalist soundscapes", was released free in February 2015 through the online music platform SoundCloud.

2014–2017: Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

Yorke released his second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, via BitTorrent on 26 September 2014. It became the most torrented album of 2014 (excluding piracy), with more than a million downloads in its first six days. Yorke and Godrich hoped to use the BitTorrent release to hand "some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work". In December 2014, Yorke released the album on the online music platform Bandcamp along with a new track, "Youwouldn'tlikemewhenI'mangry".

In 2015, Yorke contributed a soundtrack, Subterranea, to an installation of Radiohead artwork, The Panic Office, in Sydney, Australia. The soundtrack was composed of field recordings made in the English countryside and played on speakers at different heights with different frequency ranges. The radio station Triple J described it as similar to the ambient sections of Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, with some digitally spoken sections similar to "Fitter Happier" from OK Computer. The music was not released. In July 2015, Yorke joined the band Portishead at the Latitude Festival to perform their song "The Rip".

Yorke composed music for a 2015 production of Harold Pinter's 1971 play Old Times by the Roundabout Theater Company in New York City. The director described the music as "primeval, unusual ... the sort of neurosis within [Yorke's] music certainly has elucidated elements of the compulsive repetition of the play." That year, Yorke performed with Godrich and the audiovisual artist Tarik Barri at the Latitude Festival in the UK and the Summer Sonic Festival in Japan. Radiohead released their ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, on 8 May 2016. Yorke contributed vocals and appeared in the video for "Beautiful People" on Mark Pritchard's 2016 album Under the Sun.

2018–2019: Suspiria

Yorke's first feature film soundtrack, Suspiria, composed for the 2018 horror film, was released on 26 October 2018 by XL. It was the first Yorke project since The Bends not to feature production from his longtime collaborator Nigel Godrich; Instead, it was produced by Yorke and Sam Petts-Davies. Suspiria features the London Contemporary Orchestra and Choir, and Yorke's son, Noah, on drums. Yorke cited inspiration from the 1982 Blade Runner soundtrack and music from Suspiria's 1977 Berlin setting, such as krautrock. The lyrics do not follow the film narrative and were influenced by discourse surrounding President Donald Trump and Brexit. "Suspirium" was nominated for Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 2020 Grammy Awards.

Yorke performed two shows in 2017, and toured Europe and the US in 2018. That year, Yorke and the artist Tarik Barri created an audiovisual exhibition, "City Rats", commissioned by the Institute for Sound and Music in Berlin. Yorke contributed music to the 2018 short films Why Can't We Get Along? and Time of Day for the fashion label Rag & Bone.

Yorke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead on 29 March 2019. He did not attend the induction ceremony, citing cultural differences between the UK and America and his negative experience of the Brit Awards, "which is like this sort of drunken car crash that you don't want to get involved with".

2019–2020: Anima

Yorke's third solo album, Anima, was released on 27 June 2019, accompanied by a short film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Anima became Yorke's first number-one album on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart. At the 2020 Grammy Awards, it was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package; the Anima film was nominated for the Grammy for Best Music Film. The album was followed by Not the News Rmx EP, comprising an extended version of the track "Not the News" plus remixes by various artists. A solo tour set to begin in March 2020 was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the 2019 film Motherless Brooklyn, Yorke wrote "Daily Battles", with horns by his Atoms for Peace bandmate Flea. The director, Edward Norton, enlisted the jazz musician Wynton Marsalis to rearrange the song as a ballad reminiscent of 1950s Miles Davis. It was shortlisted for Best Original Song at the 92nd Academy Awards. Yorke's first classical composition, "Don't Fear the Light", written for the piano duo Katia and Marielle Labeque, debuted in April 2019.

In April 2020, Yorke performed a new song from his home, "Plasticine Figures", for The Tonight Show. In the same year, he collaborated with Four Tet and Burial again on "Her Revolution" and "His Rope", and remixed "Isolation Theme" by the electronic musician Clark. Yorke said his remix mirrored the COVID-19 lockdowns, "entering a new type of silence".

2021–present: the Smile

Yorke performing with the Smile in 2022

In March 2021, Yorke contributed music to shows by the Japanese fashion designer Jun Takahashi, including a remixed version of "Creep". That August, he contributed two remixes of "Gazzillion Ear" by the rapper MF Doom.

In May, Yorke debuted a new band, the Smile, with Jonny Greenwood and the jazz drummer Tom Skinner, produced by Godrich. Greenwood said the project was a way for him and Yorke to work together during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The Smile made their surprise debut in a performance streamed by Glastonbury Festival on May 22, with Yorke singing and playing guitar, bass, Moog synthesiser and Rhodes piano. The Guardian critic Alexis Petridis said the Smile "sound like a simultaneously more skeletal and knottier version of Radiohead", exploring more progressive rock influences with unusual time signatures and complex riffs.

In October 2021, Yorke performed a Smile song, "Free in the Knowledge", at the Letters Live event at the Royal Albert Hall, London. In the same month, Yorke and the Radiohead cover artist Stanley Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork and lyrics at Christie's headquarters in London, ahead of reissued package of the Kid A and Amnesia albums, Kid A Mnesia. The pair also contributed lyrics and artwork to Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, a free digital experience for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.

On 9 April 2022, Yorke performed a solo concert at the Zeltbühne festival in Zermatt, Switzerland, playing songs from his work with Radiohead, the Smile and Unkle, and his solo records. In May 2022, the Smile released their debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention, and began a European tour. Yorke wrote two songs, "5.17" and "That's How Horses Are", for the sixth series of the television drama Peaky Blinders, broadcast in 2022. He executive-produced Sus Dog (2023), the tenth album by Clark. Yorke acted as a mentor for Clark's vocals and contributed vocals and bass.

In September 2023, Yorke and Donwood exhibited a selection of artwork, The Crow Flies, in London. The paintings, based on Islamic pirate maps and 1960s US military topographic charts, began as work for A Light For Attracting Attention. The second Smile album, Wall of Eyes, is scheduled for January 2024, with a European tour to follow in March.

Artistry

Yorke performing in 2013

Yorke writes the first versions of most Radiohead songs, after which they are developed harmonically by Jonny Greenwood before the other band members develop their parts. He said the nature of being a creative person was "to retain a beginner's mind. The search is the point. The flailing around is the point. The process is the point."

Yorke's solo work comprises mainly electronic music. Stereogum characterised it as "largely interior", "frigid" and "beat-driven", unlike the "wide-open horizons" of Radiohead songs. Most of Yorke's solo work is produced by the Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich.

Musicianship

Yorke is a multi-instrumentalist, and plays instruments including guitar, piano, bass and drums. He played drums for performances of the 2007 Radiohead song "Bangers and Mash". With the Smile, Yorke has used a Fender Mustang bass with a fingerstyle technique.

Yorke uses electronic instruments such as synthesisers, drum machines and sequencers, and electronic techniques including programming, sampling and looping. In 2015, he said: "Really I just enjoy writing words sitting at a piano. I tend to lose interest in the drum machine." According to Godrich, "Thom will sit down and make some crazy, fractured cheese-grater-on-head mayhem on a computer, but at some point he always gets his guitar out to check he can actually play it."

Unlike Greenwood, Yorke does not read sheet music; he said: "You can't express the rhythms properly like that. It's a very ineffective way of doing it, so I've never really bothered picking it up." Explaining why he turned down a request to play piano on the song "Mr. Bellamy" on Paul McCartney's album Memory Almost Full (2007), Yorke said: "The piano playing involved two hands doing things separately. I don't have that skill available. I said to him, 'I strum piano, that's it.'"

Vocals

Yorke has one of the widest vocal ranges in popular music. He is known for his falsetto, which Paste described as "sweet", "cautious" and "haunting". Rolling Stone described his voice as a "broad, emotive sweep" with a "high, keening sound". The Guardian described it as "instrument-like" and "spectral", and wrote that it "transcends the egocentric posturing of the indie rock singer stereotype". The music journalist Robert Christgau wrote that Yorke's voice has "a pained, transported intensity, pure up top with hints of hysterical grit below ... Fraught and self-involved with no time for jokes, not asexual but otherwise occupied, and never ever common, this is the idealised voice of a pretentious college boy ... Like it or not the voice is remarkable."

Yorke often manipulates his voice with software and effects, transforming it into a "disembodied instrument". For example, on "Everything in Its Right Place" (2000), his vocals are treated to create a "glitching, stuttering collage". Pitchfork wrote in 2016 that, over the decades, Yorke's voice had evolved from "semi-interesting alt-rocker" to "left-field art-rock demigod" to "electronic grand wizard". In 2006, Yorke said: "It annoys me how pretty my voice is. That sounds incredibly immodest, but it annoys me how polite it can sound when perhaps what I'm singing is deeply acidic." He said he keeps vocals in mind whenever he builds music, no matter the genre: "It's almost impossible for me to listen to a dance tune from beginning to end without picturing a voice."

In 2005, readers of Blender and MTV2 voted Yorke the 18th greatest singer of all time. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the 66th and wrote that he was one of the most influential singers of his generation, influencing bands including Muse, Coldplay, Travis and Elbow.

Lyrics

Though Yorke's early lyrics were personal, from Kid A he experimented with cutting up words and phrases and assembling them at random. He deliberately uses cliches, idioms and other common expressions, suggesting "a mind consumed by meaningless data". For example, according to the Pitchfork writer Rob Mitchum, the Kid A lyrics feature "hum-drum observations twisted into panic attacks". The New Republic writer Ryan Kearney speculated that Yorke's use of common expressions, which he described as "Radioheadisms", was an attempt "to sap our common tongue of meaning and expose the vapidity of everyday discourse". A 2021 study found that Yorke had among the largest vocabularies of pop singers, based on the number of different words used in each song.

Yorke's lyrics express paranoia; the Guardian critic Alexis Petridis described "what you might call the Yorke worldview: that life is a waking nightmare and everything is completely and perhaps irreparably screwed". According to Yorke, many of his lyrics are motivated by anger, expressing his political and environmental concerns and written as "a constant response to doublethink". The lyrics of the 2003 Radiohead album Hail to the Thief dealt with what Yorke called the "ignorance and intolerance and panic and stupidity" following the 2000 election of US President George W. Bush and the unfolding War on Terror. Yorke wrote his 2006 single "Harrowdown Hill" about David Kelly, the British weapons expert and whistleblower. In a 2008 television performance of "House of Cards", Yorke dedicated the "denial, denial" refrain to Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases. The 2011 single "The Daily Mail" attacks the right-wing Daily Mail newspaper.

In a 2015 interview with the activist and writer George Monbiot, Yorke said: "In the 60s, you could write songs that were like calls to arms, and it would work. It's not like one song or one piece of art or one book is going to change someone's mind." Working on Radiohead's ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, Yorke worried that political songs alienated some listeners, but decided it was better than writing "another lovey-dovey song about nothing". Pitchfork wrote that Yorke's lyrics on A Moon Shaped Pool were less cynical, conveying wonder and amazement. Many critics felt the album's lyrics might address Yorke's separation from Rachel Owen, his partner of more than 20 years. However, in 2019, Yorke denied writing biographically, saying he instead writes "spasmodic" lyrics based on imagery.

Dance

Yorke often incorporates dance into his performances, described by the Times as his "on-stage signature". He began dancing on stage after Radiohead released Kid A in 2000, as "I suddenly didn't have a guitar around my neck". His dancing features in music videos for songs such as "Lotus Flower" and "Ingenue", and the short film Anima. Critics have described it as "erratic", "flailing" and unconventional. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers voted Yorke their 10th-favourite dancing musician.

Influences

As a child, Yorke's favourite artists included Queen. He said the acts that "changed his life" as a teenager were R.E.M., Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division and Bob Dylan. He also wrote that Mark Mulcahy of Miracle Legion had affected him "a great deal" at this time: "It was the voice of someone who was only truly happy when he was singing ... It changed the way I thought about songs and singing."

When he was 16, Yorke sent a demo to a music magazine, who wrote that he sounded like Neil Young. Unfamiliar with Young, Yorke purchased his 1970 album After the Gold Rush and "immediately fell in love with his music". Yorke said: "It was his attitude toward the way he laid songs down. It's always about laying down whatever is in your head at the time and staying completely true to that, no matter what it is." Yorke also credited Young as a major lyrical influence.

Yorke cited the Pixies, Björk and PJ Harvey as artists who "changed his life", and in 2006 he told Pitchfork that Radiohead had "ripped off R.E.M. blind for years". He said that Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is his favourite lyricist: "I loved the way he would take an emotion and then take a step back from it and in doing so make it so much more powerful." The chorus of "How to Disappear Completely" from Kid A was inspired by Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening." Yorke cited the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante as an influence on his guitar playing on In Rainbows, and Scott Walker as an influence on his vocals and lyrics.

After OK Computer, Yorke and Radiohead incorporated influences from electronic artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. I hated the Britpop thing and what was happening in America, but Aphex was totally beautiful."

Personal life

For 23 years, Yorke was in a relationship with the artist and lecturer Rachel Owen, whom he met while studying at the University of Exeter. In 2012, Rolling Stone reported that Owen and Yorke were not married. However, The Times later found that they had married in a secret ceremony in Oxfordshire in May 2003. Their son, Noah, was born in 2001, and their daughter, Agnes, in 2004.

On Yorke's 2018 soundtrack album Suspiria, Agnes collaborated on the artwork and Noah played drums on two tracks. In September 2021, Noah released a song, "Trying Too Hard (Lullaby)". NME likened its "ghostly" arrangement to Radiohead's album In Rainbows. Noah has since released several songs and is due to release an EP, Cerebral Key. He also performs with James Knott as the noise duo Hex Girlfriend.

In August 2015, Yorke and Owen announced that they had separated amicably. Owen died from cancer on 18 December 2016, aged 48. In September 2020, Yorke married the Italian actress Dajana Roncione in Bagheria, Sicily. Roncione appears in the video for the Radiohead song "Lift" and Yorke's short film Anima. They live in Oxford.

Yorke practises meditation. He has suffered from anxiety and depression, which he treats with exercise, yoga and reading. His only sibling, his younger brother Andy, was the singer of the band Unbelievable Truth from 1993 until 2000.

Awards and nominations

Legacy

In 2023, a species of fossil stingray from Italy was named Dasyomyliobatis thomyorkei in honor of Yorke.

Solo discography

Studio albums

• The Eraser (2006)
• Tomorrow's Modern Boxes (2014)
• Anima (2019)

Film soundtracks

• When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun (2010; additional music only)
• The UK Gold (2013; with Robert Del Naja)
• Why Can't We Get Along (2018; Rag & Bone short film)
• Time of Day (2018; Rag & Bone short film)
• Suspiria (2018)

Albums produced

• Suspiria (2018)
• Sus Dog by Clark (2023; executive produced)

See also

In Spanish: Thom Yorke para niños

• List of Old Abingdonians