Radiohead is one of the most historically respected bands of all time. Their influence across rock, pop, and even hip-hop shows up through sampling and by emulating their songwriting. The last thing you might initially expect is to hear Kanye West, Pharrell, and Lupe Fiasco rap over one of their songs on “Us Placers“.

However, that influence wasn’t just one way. Though it might not be immediately evident, they’re on the record for admiring arguably the greatest underground rap star of all time, MF DOOM. Back in January 2021, Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke paid tribute to the late icon. Above all else, he marveled at how incredible he was at stitching words together. In hip-hop and all of music, he hadn’t heard anything so transformative before. Then, he linked the 2009 track “Gazzillion Ear“. Both Yorke and bandmate Jonny Greenwood worked with him on the remix and for the 2011 record “Retarded Fren“.

“I am so sad to hear MF Doom’s passing. He was a massive inspiration to so many of us, changed things,” Yorke tweeted. “For me the way he put words was often shocking in it’s genius, using stream of consciousness in a way i’d never heard before.”

How MF Doom Inspired Radiohead and So Many Other Influential Artists of the 21st Century

Additionally, back in 2013, Thom Yorke told Dazed that DOOM was his favorite rapper. “Ultimately to me it’s not rapping at all, it’s poetry. The way he freeforms his verses and puts it all together, I don’t think anyone else quite does it like that,” the Radiohead frontman shared.

“I don’t necessarily like a lot of the beats, but he’s always amazing. ‘Guvnor’ was my single of 2012. It’s genius, that tune.

On the other side of the spectrum from Radiohead is Playboi Carti. Though he may not be the lyrical marvel that MF DOOM was, he raps with a lot of the same color and imagination stylistically. Still, when he made a reference to him on Whole Lotta Red in 2020, it threw a lot of people by surprise, his friends included.

That fact made Carti extremely giddy to share with his friends. As he told MARVIN Magazine in 2021, he was anxiously waiting to see if DOOM ever heard the lyric.

“I was more hype than anything. He’s alive to hear this s**t boy. I couldn’t wait for DOOM to pop out his shell and shout out Playboi Carti. I ain’t even do it for him to shout me out, I just did it to show older people who hear me. Yeah, I f**k with Doom, feel me. I love Doom,” he told journalist Yoh Phillips.

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Radiohead’s 2025 reunion tour was a huge deal for fans across the world. It almost took frontman Thom Yorke out, though, as he suffered a “self-confidence crash” afterward.

Last year, the band set out on a trek across Europe—their first in seven years—with stops in cities like Berlin, Bologna, Copenhagen, London, and Madrid. Speaking in a Rolling Stone interview, Yorke reflected on the tour, saying it was “fun” but took him “months” to recover.

“After the [2025] Radiohead tour,” he said, “even though in the middle of it, it was really fun, my response to it afterwards was to crash, like massively crash, in terms of self-confidence.”

Once he started working on his next solo project, he started doing better. “It took me months,” he said. “It took me starting on my own record again two months later to go: ‘Oh, OK. I’m good now. I’m fine.’ I just have a really odd relationship with it. And I’ve just grown used to that.”

Thom Yorke was inducted into the Fellowship of the Ivors Academy in 2026

Yorke also confessed that it was “deeply confusing” for him to be inducted into the Fellowship of the Ivors Academy in May, at the Ivor Novello Awards. “I’m in a slightly better place nowadays,” he said of the honor. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that something like getting an Ivor Novello fellowship was not deeply confusing for me.”

“I admire a lot of the people that they’ve given those awards to. Some of these people are my heroes. But I have a very, very strange relationship to,” Yorke paused before continuing. “God, this is really hard to explain. I have a very strange relationship to that element of my work.”

He admitted that he was “quite numb” while receiving the prize, even though his family was thrilled. “You probably saw Agnes and Noah [his children] at the Ivors,” Yorke said. “They were very emotional about it, and Dajana, my wife, was as well.”

“I do it for them, because if they’re emotional about it,” he added. “OK, that’s why I’m here. Because for me, I feel quite numb about it.”

Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

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When Radiohead made it big with “Creep” in 1993, there was a push to recreate that success. Their label had them touring extensively to capitalize on the song’s popularity, but that ultimately soured the band on the whole experience. They almost became a one-hit wonder because of it, too burnt out and paranoid about making a successful follow-up.

So it makes sense that Thom Yorke has gone on to become an artistic chameleon. He frequently steps outside of previous comfort zones, instead of worrying about repeating the same success. That’s a lesson he had to learn the hard way after many years, as he told Harry Styles in an October 2026 Rolling Stone interview.

Styles is also considered somewhat of a chameleon. He’s dabbled in different sounds, looks, themes, and compositions since the end of his boy band days. Different media as well, taking on several acting roles in recent years. But in speaking with Yorke, the two discussed how they manage to avoid repetition. Specifically, the commercialization that comes after success.

Thom Yorke on the Enjoyment of ‘Starting Over From Scratch’ When Writing New Music

When asked how they avoid repeating themselves, Thom Yorke answered, “I can’t, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t do it again.” He added, “If you write ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ [from Kid A], do you think, ‘Yeah, I’ll write another one of them’? It doesn’t make sense. You can’t. I’ve tried.”

“I think if you have something that’s very successful, there’s a lot of pressure to repeat that,” Yorke continued. “It doesn’t go anywhere, because that’s like working to commission … It’s a commercial art form, so you’re always going to get people asking you to do that.”

Harry Styles then noted the “interesting cycle” of releasing a successful song. “You make something that connects with people, because you’ve captured something about the human experience, whether it’s a vulnerability or a sensitivity that comes with being human,” he said. “And then any kind of success around that thing makes it take on this life of its own. Then everything around you makes your experience incredibly not human.”

He added that what he finds interesting about Yorke’s work is that he’s still “looking at what’s under the fingernails” in his songwriting. That is, showing the ugly, gritty, and extremely human parts of life. And yet, people consider him “in this kind of godlike status,” said Styles.

“I think the reason for that was having to learn quite a difficult lesson,” Yorke replied. “Around Kid A, Amnesiac, before that, I really struggled every time I had to try to do something new. I was explaining it to myself while I was doing it, literally. It’s like a form of madness, and I couldn’t get out of it. I felt I needed to justify it somehow—not apologize, but justify it in an intellectual way.”

He admitted that the reason for this “madness” was that he “needed to get out of it.” Literally, he explained, he would leave the studio and go for walks. Then, as time goes on and life changes, “the choice to carry on doing this kind of work, you have to enjoy it,” said Yorke. “And the enjoyment comes from having to start again from scratch every time. Whatever you learn, you’ve got to unlearn.”

Harry Styles on the Imposter Syndrome That Comes With Commercial Success

Essentially, a lot of those successful songs—that aren’t specifically manufactured to go viral—happen by accident. Songwriters, poets, artists, any creative person can understand this phenomenon. Sometimes, the success is unexplainable, because the artist has no idea where it comes from.

“You can’t be savvy about [songwriting],” said Thom Yorke. “You can work really hard on it—but the good stuff just happens, and you don’t know why. And you’ve got to be honest with yourself that you don’t know why. When stuff forms that you like, you just grab onto it, and you don’t let go.”

Harry Styles then wondered if that’s why “the impostor syndrome that can come with that commercial success exists.” He continued, “If you write in that way, it almost feels like you’re not responsible for it. So then if people are like, ‘Oh, you’ve made this thing, and that means that you’re this,’ there’s something in there that feels like, ‘Oh, I can’t take credit for it. It just happened to me.'”

Anyone who has experienced imposter syndrome will know exactly what Styles is talking about. He reiterated Yorke’s theory, saying, “The best things tend to just happen.”

For Styles, that type of songwriting seems to produce his favorite songs. “I’ve always found the things that I end up liking the most, or have been the most special things to me, are the ones where you write it, and then as you’re listening back, you’re learning something about yourself,” he said. “You’re realizing that you’ve said something, rather than, ‘I’m going to sit down—I’m going to say this.'”

Photo by Naomi Rahim/WireImage

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