Radiohead - The Best Of

As David Berman told us this month, this generation has chosen Radiohead as its biggest rock band. Anyone with a passing interest in rock music already has an opinion on Radiohead, and it's probably a variant of either "they've been rubbish since after OK Computer", or "they were rubbish before Creep and everything since has been brilliant." EMI's cash-in Best Of release is for the supermarket shoppers who haven't already dismissed Radiohead as 'depressing'; that's a small market, surely. Predictably it kicks off with their six biggest pre-98 hits - from Just to High & Dry via Creep - and only five of the 16 tracks are from the last decade, when they deliberately got weirder and jettisoned their uncommitted middle-ground fanbase. Pyramid Song is here, and that was a top five hit, but only because the loyal fanatics wanted to see a Top of the Pops crowd try to dance to it. But really, what's the point? Bands don't get crowned like Radiohead have been on the basis of 16 tracks, however they're arranged. Studio albums, not songs, are rock's preferred currency; so get the dollars, don't settle for the cents. [Ally Brown]