It was only a matter of time before someone committed to writing a musical-theoretical account of the music of Radiohead. Perhaps no other band has enjoyed such commercial and critical success since The Beatles, yet almost nothing has been published about Radiohead in the academic literature from the standpoint of music theory and/or cognitive studies. It is frankly a bold move, as Radiohead has one of the most engaged, knowledgeable and intelligent fan bases out there; the group is also followed and studied by numerous classical and jazz musicians, as well as musicologists, music theorists and sociologists. As a serious fan and academic myself, the discovery of this work was exciting and a little anxiety-producing: will the curtain on the Great Oz be drawn back, revealing in plain sight the magic and mystery that is Radiohead, robbing us of our joys and sense of personal connection? Just the opposite.
On the surface of it, the structure of the book is relatively straightforward. After a Preface and introductory chapter, Osborn focuses on four central musical parameters: form (Chapter 2), rhythm and meter (Chapter 3), timbre (Chapter 4) and harmony and voice leading (Chapter 5). The book concludes with an in-depth analysis of one of Radiohead's most famous and enigmatic songs, ‘Pyramid song’ (Chapter 6), drawing on the previous chapters’ theories and analytical methods. Osborn concentrates his analytical lens on Radiohead's ‘mature period’, spanning the albums OK Computer (1997) through The King of Limbs (2011). This choice makes sense: as Thom Yorke's long-time confidant Michael Stipe (of R.E.M.) observed in the cover story on Radiohead in the June 2017 issue of Rolling Stone, with OK Computer (and since), ‘They reimagined and decontextualized what it was to be a [rock] band’ (Greene Reference Greene2017). As I write this review, Radiohead is poised to re-release OK Computer in honour of its 20th anniversary (something they did not do with their first two albums).
What will entice and challenge readers are the two pillars of Osborn's analytical framework that inform the entire work. The first is the idea of salience, a concept drawn from semiotics and neuroscience referring to those moments when a listener is confronted with a passage that balances predictability and surprise. As Osborn notes: ‘Particularly important to this perceptual process are moments in Radiohead's music where a certain expectation – formal, rhythmic, timbral, or harmonic – is strongly cued through recognizable musical stimuli only to be violated by an unexpected realization’ (p. viii). The second is a worldview drawn from music psychology known as ecological perception, a companion approach to salience that attempts to answer why and how such music engages a listener the way it does: ‘Expanding on recent work in perception, this book approaches Radiohead's recorded music as a sonic ecosystem in which listeners participate, react, and adapt in order to search for meaning’ (p. viii; emphasis in original).
Osborn's book is exemplary, both for the depth of his knowledge and for the detail and sophistication with which he analyses Radiohead's oeuvre. There is too much to mention in the space allowed here; two aspects in particular will have to suffice. The chapter on form helped me identify two reasons I find Radiohead's music so satisfying on a broader structural level. I have always loved the songs that end with what feels like an extended C section or outro. This practice is actually a common salient formal design employed by Radiohead, what Osborn has labelled a ‘terminally climactic form’ (by which he means an expected final chorus is replaced by brand new climactic material). He also provides a bird's eye view of the variety and frequency of formal types found in Radiohead's songs (of which there are many) in Table 2.6, confirming for me why as a listener I am not lulled to sleep within or across albums by a single form. Table 2.6 also answered why I never found Kid A to be a difficult listen, even with the unfamiliar sounds and instrumentation. As Osborn astutely observes: ‘[There is] a significant inverse correlation between experimental formal structures (e.g., terminally climactic, through-composed) and albums in which we hear more experimental timbres and rhythms’ (p. 39), such that 90% of this ‘experimental’ album is actually in more conventional strophic or verse/chorus form.
This leads smoothly to a brief discussion of the chapter on timbre. One of the most serious and insightful discussions of the topic in pop music to date, Osborn identifies two of Radiohead's most salient timbres: source-deformation, when electronic processing masks or obscures the material origins of the sound; and synthesis, which also involves electronic processing, but refers to when various sources are synthesized, with varying degrees to which a listener can recognize human action or agency in producing those sounds. A parameter of pop-rock music still overlooked in much of the literature, this chapter is great for anyone from the mildly curious to the inner gearhead in many of us. Table 4.2, for example, shows a number of source-deforming guitar pedals used, while Tables 4.3 and 4.4 show the settings, sonic possibilities and uses of Jonny Greenwood's go-to electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot.
True to the dedicated fan and analyst in me, it is inevitable that I will have a few minor bones to pick – how could it be otherwise? – with the caveat that I do not feel this takes anything away from the excellence of this work. The scope of Osborn's analysis beginning with OK Computer is appropriate for his emphasis on salience and ecological perception, although not everyone will characterize Radiohead's first two albums as he has (‘generic “Brit pop” and “Alternative Rock”’ respectively, p. vii). I personally find a number of salient and Radiohead-specific traits in this early work, and I see OK Computer more as an organic outgrowth of the first two albums rather than a completely new direction. I also noticed that most of the musical examples in the book that made comparisons did so between Radiohead and classical music. While this makes sense for some listeners, Osborn did identify a rock listener readership as his target audience (p. 13), and so I feel that more excerpts from the rock music canon could have been more effective (something Osborn is tremendously well qualified to do).
Clearly written and reasoned, this book will appeal not only to the obvious audience of music theorists and composers, but also to musicologists and those in sociology and cultural studies because of Osborn's search for meaning and listener engagement. Readers will be rewarded by a close listening to the analysed examples with book in hand, as well as taking the little extra effort to search out the lyrics, as well as listeners’ opinions about them. Osborn is careful to point out that his work is about ‘uncovering possible conclusions a listener might come to in processing these moments of meaning’ (p. 9) in Radiohead's music; this is the approach any book about analysis must take, with emphasis on possible. This is why so many musicology and music theory books on popular music analysis disappoint, because they speak from or assume a single perspective listener that does not change over time. With Everything in its Right Place, Osborn shows us a rich and thought-provoking way forward.
