Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is certainly loving his current job in The Smile, a side project composed of Yorke, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner.
Thom Yorke talks about Radiohead
When asked by Australian outlet Double J whether he’s paying attention to fans clamoring about Radiohead’s future, Yorke replied, “I am not aware of it and don’t really give a flying f***.”
The Smile returned this month with Cutouts, the trio’s second album of 2024 and their third in three years. The band has been rather prolific in terms of their output, leading many Radiohead fans to believe that the beloved group would be put on indefinite hiatus so that Yorke and Greenwood could continue focusing on The Smile.
This idea was cemented as Greenwood recently revealed that Radiohead had “no plans” for 2025, citing “lots of individual projects going on at the moment.”
Speaking to Double J, Yorke noted that Radiohead isn’t a major priority for him at the moment, and reckoned that he and the band have earned a bit of space and freedom to work on their respective projects.
“No offence to anyone and err, thanks for caring. But I think we’ve earned the right to do what makes sense to us without having to explain ourselves or be answerable to anyone else’s historical idea of what we should be doing,” Yorke said.
The Smile is just one of several side ventures Radiohead members have kept busy with since the release of their most recent album, A Moon Shaped Pool, in 2016. Jonny Greenwood has been busy scoring films and racking up Oscar nominations, while bassist Colin Greenwood released a new photography book called How to Disappear: A Photographic Portrait of Radiohead this month and is touring with Nick Cave.
Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway both released solo albums, while Yorke has also worked on numerous solo projects, including the score for the Italian drama film Confidenza this year.
