Thom Yorke has revealed that Radiohead’s 2025 reunion tour led to a “massive” crash in his self-confidence that took months to recover from.
The band announced their long-awaited live return in September last year, marking their first shows together in over seven years. They went on to play 20 arena dates across Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin that November and December.
Now, in a new conversation with Harry Styles for Rolling Stone, Yorke has spoken about the more difficult aftermath of the comeback.
The subject arose as Styles asked him about becoming more willing to embrace and celebrate his past work, both through the Radiohead tour and by accepting the Academy Fellowship at the 2026 Ivor Novello Awards.
“You’re answering this better than I can do,” Yorke replied. “You’re right, that I’m in a slightly better place nowadays, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that something like getting an Ivor Novello fellowship was not deeply confusing for me.
“I admire a lot of the people that they’ve given those awards to. Some of these people are my heroes. But I have a very, very strange relationship to… God, this is really hard to explain. I have a very strange relationship to that element of my work.”
Yorke said he finds looking forward creatively much easier to process.
“I find it hard to believe in it,” he continued. “The moving-forward thing, that’s what I believe in. That’s easy to believe in, because it’s new. I don’t have to explain it, so I’m happy.”
He then explained how that uneasy relationship with his past caught up with him after the Radiohead dates ended.
“After the [2025 reunion] Radiohead tour – even though in the middle of it, it was really fun – my response to it afterwards was to crash, like massively crash, in terms of self-confidence,” Yorke said. “It took me months. It took me starting on my own record again two months later to go, ‘Oh, OK. I’m good now. I’m fine.’ I just have a really odd relationship with it. And I’ve just grown used to that.”
Yorke also linked that feeling to the Ivors, where Styles had presented him with the Fellowship and paid tribute to Radiohead as his “favourite band” and made the memorable admission: “I lost my virginity to ‘Talk Show Host’.”
“The Ivors, to be honest, your speech was great, because it was really honest and personal, and I could relate to it,” Yorke told him. “Whereas when it feels like a business, and you’re part of a business, and the cameras are running… I don’t know, man. I got this legacy feeling about all of it.”
Despite the difficult aftermath, Yorke also recalled just how emotional Radiohead’s return itself had been. Discussing their opening night in Madrid, when the band walked through the crowd to reach the stage, he said: “All of us, the whole band, were like, ‘OK, keep it together. Keep it together.’
“Because I wanted to burst into tears, and we hadn’t even played a note. I hadn’t been exposed to whatever that was for so long, and to walk through the middle of it… I mean, all of us, we were like, ‘Holy s***. Holy s***.’”
That echoes comments Yorke made at the Ivors earlier this year, when he described the comeback tour as “overwhelming” but said: “I’m really, really glad we did it.”
He also revealed there that he was working with producer Sam Petts-Davies on a new solo album, which he described as “pretty f****** different” for him.
Radiohead have not returned to the studio together, however. Elsewhere in his new conversation with Styles, Yorke said: “We haven’t worked. We haven’t been in the studio together for a long time, so I don’t know how it would actually feel now.”
The band will nevertheless continue their live reunion in 2027, having announced 21 shows across Australia and Japan.
In a glowing, five-star review of one of Radiohead’s gigs in London last November, NME wrote: “What a show: a visceral energy, a tasteful spectacle, all delivered with a generosity of spirit, Yorke in full rockstar mode as the band trade places to tend to each corner of the venue.
“For a band once embarrassed by the notion of ‘arena rock’, nobody does it better. A new album and another night like this can’t come soon enough.”
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