After taking on warhorses like the Beatles, the Stones, and Springsteen on the music site JamsBio Magazine, we've chosen Radiohead as the first modern band to warrant a worst-to-first countdown of their music, and the inaugural ranking on CultureMap. Check back each week as our obsessive list-maker Jbev counts down all of the band’s album cuts and gives his reasons for the rankings, and also be prepared to tell him why he’s wrong in the comments section. It’s "Everything In Its Right Place: The Ultimate Radiohead Countdown."

Today's countdown looks at the rankings from #70-61. Tune in each Saturday as JBev continues his countdown to number 1!

Song 70: “Stop Whispering”

Album: "Pablo Honey"

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The company line is that this song off "Pablo Honey" was a tribute the the Pixies, but the end result ended up sounding like the band doing U2. Ironic, of course, because U2 would later claim that they were partly inspired to get out of their late '90s rut by the challenge of taking on Radiohead for the unofficial title of the world’s best band.

Thom Yorke’s wails in the chorus certainly sound like the countless cries to the heavens by Bono, and Colin Greenwood’s bassline even has an Adam Clayton-esque feel to it. The song itself seems to be the strangled cry of a frustrated adolescent who wants the adult world to hear his voice, although you could also read it as a metaphor for an entire generation yearning to bust out of their shackles. Either way, the soaring refrains and those big Yorke bellows drive the point home awful hard, tipping their hand a bit too heavily.

Things get much better in the closing minutes of the song, when the band goes on one of the extended freakouts that they do so well. As a matter of fact, since this was the first album, you might say it was a precursor to the instrumental ruckuses to come. Jonny Greenwood tears at Ed O’Brien’s unyielding arpeggios, while Phil Selway kicks the beat into another gear. After about a minute or so, Yorke comes back in with the refrain, but he’s buffeted about by the din and has to serrate his own voice to get back into the sonic picture.

That unhinged outro quite ingeniously reveals the message that the first part of the song works overtime to convey. Radiohead would take a lesson from this, and apply it often in years to come.

Song 69: "Sulk"

Album: "The Bends"

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Radiohead improved so drastically between albums one and two that it’s hard to find any evidence of the band that made "Pablo Honey" on "The Bends." “Sulk” is the one song that feels like a bit of a hangover, and, as such, is probably the weakest song on the sophomore effort.

What it does have going for it is some of Yorke’s most acrobatic singing. Because, especially in recent work, he tends to use studio manipulation to make that voice sound like anything other than it actually does, it’s easy to forget what a hauntingly beautiful instrument it can be. The chorus of “Sulk” is an example of that; you can get lost following him into the rarefied air to the point that it doesn’t really matter what the words are. You believe they’re the truth on faith.

Kudos also goes to the rhythm section of Selway and Colin Greenwood for giving this one a little bounce that veers it away from the pedestrian. The song itself falls into the category of relatively unmemorable, however. It was apparently written by Yorke at a tender age and inspired by a one-man killing spree in England in 1987, but little of that makes it through in the finished song.

The overall sound is very reminiscent of "Pablo Honey." Only the guitar sound in the instrumental break, that lyrical yet grinding sound that the band locked onto during "The Bends" and "OK Computer," gives this song the punch necessary to keep it from feeling like too much of a leftover.

Song 68: “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors”

Album: "Amnesiac"

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An experimental song that’s fascinating if not lovable, this track off "Amnesiac" gives away its bizarre intentions as soon as you read the title. You have to give the band credit though; the song does sound like some crazed fever dream where you can imagine yourself in an endless hallway surrounded by doors of every shape and size. That dream becomes nightmarish when you realize, as Thom squeaks out in the last lines with his voice pounded by the rhythm beyond all recognition, “And there are trap doors/That you can’t come back from.”

That’s pretty eerie stuff. The rhythm, part hip-hop and part industrial accident, sounds like a film projector come to life and running amok. Indeed there is a chase scene vibe to the whole song; at times the beat drops away, leaving just some computer squiggles subtly ascending heavenward, only to be put in jeopardy when that thunderous clamor returns.

This is the challenge that the band presents audiences. They have the nerve to present music that’s downright ugly if it serves a greater purpose. The trust that their audience will follow them through such uncharted territory eventually pays off for all. Those that get scared away by songs like “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors,” well, it’s their loss.

Song 67: "Ripcord"

Album: "Pablo Honey"

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It’s a testament to a good set of lyrics that they can take on many meanings other than their intended one. I, for one, was flummoxed when, in doing research for this project, I found out that this song was about the band’s feeling of helplessness in dealing with record companies.

Normally, you’d get a bunch of more-money-more-problems clichés to illustrate that point, but there is an almost existential feel to the malaise on display here. Indeed, the “politics of power” could be flexed by just about any giant industry with a stranglehold on the individuals that make their business work. Favorite line: “The answer to your prayers/We’ll drop you anywhere.”

This is some of the toughest straightforward rock that the band has ever recorded. Phil Selway, in particular, shines here, thumping his way through all of the big guitars and giving the song a beating heart amidst the din.

Alas, the quiet/loud dynamic is way too overdone in the verses, producing a jarring effect. The production lapse provides enough of a blemish to knock this otherwise underrated offering from "Pablo Honey" to a spot further down this list than it might have attained otherwise.

Song 66: "Reckoner"

Album: "In Rainbows"

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I have a feeling I’ll take some heat for this one. “Reckoner” is at times beautiful, at times inscrutable, and always interesting. But I always have the feeling listening to it as if I’ve been dropped into the middle of some unfamiliar place without my bearings. While that can be exhilarating for a short while, it can turn maddening after too long.

The trancelike repetition of the track is by no means a deal breaker, especially since the groove onto which the band locks is so alluring. It’s like the sound of the funky drummer being nibbled at by meddlesome guitars. Every time you feel the urge to shake your hips, a sudden mood swing in the music stops you in your tracks.

Yorke’s singing is at his most ethereal here, and it’s one of those songs where the lyrics (mostly abstract wordplay like “bittersweet distractor”) are irrelevant compared to the way he’s singing it. If anything, he ultimately controls the mood of the song as much as the music.

To me, “Reckoner” never quite delivers the payoff that its beautiful music promises. Maybe it wasn’t meant to. Maybe my wanting more from it is my own hangup. But I do, and that means, beauty and all, it’s a almost-but-not-quite moment in the band’s catalog to me.

Song 65: “Dollars and Cents”

Album: "Amnesiac"

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Ominous yet seductive, “Dollars And Cents” insinuates itself into your brain and leaves some unsettling vibes once it’s there. The groove is insistent yet ever-changing, thanks to some hiccups in the beat now and then and the subtle adding and subtracting of musical layers along the way.

At one point, everything drops away except the bass, drums and vocal, and the song achieves a hypnotic simplicity amidst all the trickiness. It’s impossible to wrap your ahead around everything that’s going on here, even with a thousand listens, which could be a selling point or a negative depending on how you look at it.

Thom Yorke’s lyrics, meant to be a depiction of an average individual’s being manipulated by global economic powers, are no easy read either. The point of view seems to be always shifting between lonely cries for help and a Big Brother-like power that alternates sloganeering with vague threats, culminating with the ultimate power trip: “We are the dollars and cents/And the pounds and pence...We are going to crack your little souls.”

Throw in the fact that the song basically eschews verses and choruses for a shapeshifting structure, and you begin to understand that the band was operating at a pretty high degree of difficulty here, as they were on most of "Amnesiac," for that matter. Points for ambition, no doubt, even if the end result is more elusive than elucidating.

Song 64: "Bodysnatchers"

Album: "In Rainbows"

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Can I start this write-up off with a rant? I can? Thanks. Who in the wide, wide world of sports came up with the CD packaging for "In Rainbows"? Whatever its artistic merit may be, it’s impracticality is staggering. Once I turn the thing nine different ways to find the latch to open it, 37 different leaflets fall out, like when you try to open a magazine in a store and the subscription cards all come floating down. And don’t get me started on getting this whole menagerie back together once I’ve completed listening. It’s a full-scale travesty, folks. Who’s with me? Anyone?

OK, I promise not to hold that against “Bodysnatchers,” one of the most propulsive and bruising tracks the band has ever given us. That fuzzed-up guitar riff is unhinged enough to keep the Krautrock backbeat from being too rigid, allowing for the emotion of the song to show itself. I also love the way that the riff disappears at one point, ratcheting up the tension before it comes barreling back in with even more reckless force. It’s a clinic in song structure, but it only works because the band has the chops to pull it off.

Paranoia spreads through the lyrics, which makes the hell-bent force of the music even more affecting, as if it’s trying to bust through all the unseen constraints that Thom Yorke feels. Yorke claims to have been inspired by old ghost stories for this song, but, in a way, his narrative is even more sinister because the threat appears to be no apparition. “I’m a lie,” he sings, a moment of self-revelation made chilling by the fact that, as the lyric implies, he seems to have become this way through no fault of his own.

As he wails, “I’ve seen it coming” over and over at song’s end, we know that he was still helpless to stop all of it. The song might have worked a tad more if there was something more concrete behind all of the terror, if we knew the force Yorke thought was behind all of this soul-eradicating. We might not know exactly who the “Bodysnatchers” are, but the song that tells of their exploits certainly packs a hell of a wallop.

Song 63: “We Suck Young Blood”

Album: "Hail to the Thief"

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This track deserves special mention because it might be the creepiest song in the band’s repertoire. That’s saying something, because Radiohead has released more than their fair share of dark and disturbing tracks. “We Suck Young Blood,” with it’s dirge-like beat that sounds like a chain-gang in hell and Jonny Greenwood’s Ondes Martenot conjuring up spirits best left in the underworld, is so studiedly spooky that it could make John Carpenter flinch.

What does it say then about the band’s thoughts on Hollywood that the inspiration for this song is apparently the way that La-La Land fetishizes young talent at the expense of all else, only to discard that talent once the past-due date has been reached. It admittedly is a story that’s been told many times before, albeit rarely in such an aggressively macabre manner.

Might the song have worked at a different pace with Yorke pitching out his producer-like one-liners with a bit more pep and panache, instead of drawling them out like he’s getting a throat exam? Perhaps, but then it wouldn’t be Radiohead, now would it? Perhaps it’s not for all tastes, but “We Suck Young Blood” is ballsy in its unfettered weirdness.

Song 62: "House of Cards"

Album: "In Rainbows"

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When "In Rainbows" was released, there was a lot of talk about it being a kinder, gentler Radiohead. I suppose that was because the ratio of slow-to-fast songs was a bit higher than usual, but, looking back, it seems like a facile yet inaccurate assessment. Slow songs they may be, but they’re still spiced up with enough out-of-left-field eccentricity to make them seem anything but kind and gentle. I mean, we ain’t exactly talkin’ about Jack Johnson material here.

Nor do I think their fans would ever truly want a kinder, gentler Radiohead, because it somehow implies that they’ve been defanged somewhat. “House Of Cards” is certainly gentler in that it has a mellow vibe, what with the delicately plucked guitar and the ticking beat. But then squalls of sound make their way into the mix, throwing everything a bit off-kilter.

And while the melody that Thom Yorke sings is pretty in an ambling sort of way, the lyrics he sings aren’t so neatly categorized. For one thing, it’s bracing to hear him sing something as bluesy and blunt as the opening lines: “I don’t want to be your friend/I just want to be your lover.” That’s as direct a couplet as he’s ever uttered.

But the lyrics also speak somewhat to the darker themes that walk hand-in-hand with sexual longing, like betrayal and self-deception. Yorke exhorts his lover to “Fall off the table/And get swept under.” But his closing cries of “Denial” hint at the consequences such behavior might bring forth.

So even if “House Of Cards” seems like a quiet and unassuming change of pace from a band more associated with making a racket, the song still roils up quite an upheaval in its wake. Don’t look for Radiohead in the Easy Listening section anytime soon.

Song 61: “How Do You Do?”

Album: "Pablo Honey"

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This blast off "Pablo Honey" is a fascinating glimpse into a road not taken by the band. What if Radiohead’s members had come of age during the late '70s, when punk was the music of choice for so many teens that were looking for answers they weren’t finding in school or at home or in their own head? “How Do You?” is the sound of Radiohead as an incipient punk band, and, no surprise, it turns out they would have been damn good at that too.

Thom Yorke gives the lyrics his best Johnny Rotten sneer, but the dead-on portraiture in the lyrics of a rich kid who’s been given the world but deserves so much less, combined with the shambolic guitar crunch, suggests none other than The Replacements. Only a brief guitar beheading at song’s end suggests the more avant-garde path the band eventually followed.

Because punk wasn’t quite as lived-in by the band as the music with which they were most familiar, “How Do You?” sounds more like a loving imitation than the band filtering the influences through their own sensibilities and coming up with an original animal. But it is a spirited imitation nonetheless, Radiohead playing with a vigor and abandon that’s truly hard to find elsewhere in their songbook.

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