Uberfluff

 
 

Ok, so it might not be the most revolutionary thing in the world to call Radiohead pretentious, since it only makes me the 179,326th person ever to do so.  But I can’t really see the argument that they’re not.  For goodness sakes, they seek it out, and they’re very good at it.  People like them because they’re pretentious.  Hell, anyone with any hope of being an “intellectual” or “thoughtful” as a rock star more or less has to do the Radiohead-thing with the obscure lyrics and claiming their songs and albums aren’t really what they seem to be about.  Otherwise, when you try to be edgy, you just end up being Greenday.  Now there’s a group that will never successfully be pretentious, no matter how hard they try.  And that’s not necessarily a good thing.  (Well, I suppose they could do some kind of Yoko thing on the next Greenday album and release a series of songs that sound like someone throwing frying pans down the stairs.  But I don’t really see that happening.  And even if they did, we wouldn’t think it’s pretentious.  We’d all just say, “Oh, Greenday.  You’re so silly,” and go about our business.)