Thom Yorke has spoken out about the impact of Nirvana to spur Radiohead on, as well as reflecting on the band’s 2025 comeback tour and sharing details of his “fucking different” new solo album.
Yorke was this week honoured with the Academy Fellowship award at the 71st Ivor Novello Awards, which celebrate the craft, cultural impact and enduring importance of songs and screen compositions.
After being introduced to the stage at London’s Grosvenor House by Harry Styles (who called Radiohead his “favourite band” and shared that he “lost [his] virginity to ‘Talk Show Host’”) Yorke gave an impassioned acceptance speech in which he spoke up for better treatment of artists by the industry, before he sat down for an interview with BBC 6 Music’s Matt Everitt.
Asked about Radiohead’s acclaimed 2025 tour dates – their first live shows since 2017 – the frontman described the experience as “overwhelming”.
“I’m really, really glad we did it, but if you’d have asked me beforehand then I wouldn’t have known,” said Yorke. “[I was thinking] ‘I’ve got to get in shape, dude. This is killing me! It’s hard work!’
“There were a few moments that really stuck in mind. We felt as much part of it as the audience. Honestly, honestly, honestly, honestly. The first night in Madrid, walking through the crowd was just extraordinary. The first night in Berlin, Monday nights are a kamikaze for everybody, but 20,000 Berlin hipsters losing their shit was like, ‘I will never forget this moment’. It was so cool, man.”
Asked if he’d tour again with the band soon – after guitarist Ed O’Brien shared that Radiohead were planning to “20 shows each year” on a different continent starting in 2027 – he coyly replied “yeah, maybe”, but he did give a lot more away about his incoming solo album, due later this year. The Ivors also saw him debut new song ‘Space Walk‘.
“I’m trying to finish some stuff,” shared Yorke. “It’s a solo thing. I’m trying to figure out what it is, I’m trying to mix it. I did it with Sam Petts-Davies [The Smile, Frank Ocean]. It’s been a really fun process and it’s pretty fucking different for me.
“I’m too close to it to know for certain. I get moments of going, ‘This is good, I like this’. That’s enough for me. What else can I say about it? There’s a song called ‘Arse-Kissers’.”
In the spirit of the Ivors, Yorke described songwriting as “a way to communicate when you don’t have other ways to communicate” and “like a worm in my brain burrowing a hole and I have to get it out otherwise the bastard is going to live there forever.”
Opening up about his acceptance speech, Yorke explained how the current state of the music industry is “very much similar to other landscapes where the era of the tech bro is coming to an end”.
“They’ve all made these billions and they now think that with technology they can somehow substitute the need for human interaction; that somehow there’s something better out there when clearly there isn’t,” he told Everitt.
“I think it’s really interesting that the same people who have done all that are now speculating these old catalogs as things of value, like Picasso paintings that just sit in a vault, without realising that their entire economic model will expire unless they do a little bit of the old redistribution. For really not a lot of money, you can back an artist you really care about and see them through the early days.”
Looking back on the band’s rise to fame back in the early ’90s, Yorke recalled first signing to EMI Records.
“One of the weird moments that sticks out in my odd life is meeting the guy who was head of EMI at the time,” re remembered. “He looked at me after we signed the contract, shook my hand and said, ‘You’re going to go a long way, I have absolutely no doubt about it. Anything you need you let me know, and I mean that’. I said, ‘Thank you. All we need is a van, some money for some gear and for you to leave us alone for a couple of years to figure our shit out’. And he went, ‘Fair enough’. So we did, and at the end of the two years we put ‘Creep’ out and we were off.
“Then it was, ‘OK, so now we need another ‘Creep’’ and actually it was, ‘No we don’t’. Then they were like ‘OK, so we need another ‘The Bends’, and we didn’t, then they said, ‘You need another ‘OK Computer’ and we were like, ‘OK, see ya’. They did cut us a lot of slack thanks to our management fighting our corner a lot of the time.”
He spoke of his son Noah being in the band Hex Girlfriend, and how he finds himself shocked by “how little foresight there seems to be” from the bigwigs running the industry.
“With not a lot of support, you can really let people grow and find their way,” said Yorke. “To be fair, the Ivors was full of people who are really interesting; Jacob [Alon] especially. I’m happy to be proved wrong, but I do know that the way that the industry is structured right now is very myopic. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. The truth of the matter is that you only learn through your mistakes. Nowadays you make one mistake and you’re toast.
He continued: “That was kind of my point. This is a thing you learn. It’s like what Elton [John] was saying: he gets excited about new things. I do too. I think I cast my net in a weirder way, but I agree. I don’t want my son’s generation to be copying what we did. It’s like, ‘Mate, no, you don’t need to do that. You can do better’.
The frontman, solo star and artist said that he remained “proud” of all that Radiohead did, but that the music world should be thinking more about what’s now and what’s next rather than obsessing over the past.
“In the real world, people need to feel that an artist comes along every couple of years and goes, ‘Oh shit’,” he admitted. “Like I remember when I first heard [Nirvana’s] ‘Nevermind’ and I was like, ‘OK, it’s on’. Every now and again you get that. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Yorke added: “The Ivors is an interesting testament to how important people find music. To me that’s shocking on two levels: Number One that people want to give me an award, and Number Two that people feel like that. That’s great.
“To me, I guess I really think that each generation needs to find its own language. The people who are hoarding all this cash should have to have the sense to realise that they should be supporting that, if they really genuinely care about music. No more lip service. Transparent accounting. Pay the artist. Don’t give me any more of your bullshit.”
Radiohead haven’t released an album since 2016’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool‘, while Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have since released three albums with drummer Tom Skinner as The Smile – the last being 2024’s ‘Cutouts’. Yorke’s last solo album was 2019’s ‘ANIMA‘, and he also featured on Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist and his Atoms For Peace bandmate Flea’s recent solo debut, ‘Honora‘. Today also sees Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien release his second solo album, ‘Blue Morpho‘.
Yorke received the Ivors Academy Fellowship alongside George Michael, who was posthumously awarded the statue by his longtime friend and former Wham! bandmate Andrew Ridgeley. The pair follow in the footsteps of previous winners Bruce Springsteen, U2, Kate Bush, Paul McCartney and more.
Other winners at the Ivors 2026 included Sam Fender, Rosalía, CMAT, Lily Allen, Jacob Alon, Lola Young and Kano. Check out the full list here.
The likes of Wolf Alice, Olivia Dean, Coldplay, Little Simz and Florence Welch were among the nominees.