Oppressed Class: Radiohead Listeners Who Are Hot
Since its invention in 1972, music has served as a social indicator and shorthand for one’s identity. As an elevated vehicle for speech and expression, music often attracts listeners who resonate with an artist’s particular messaging and stylings. With the emergence of online music spaces that better connect the listener to the artist, fandoms and subgenres have increasingly informed perceptions of genres. Music subcultures, such as Punk or Ska, once united by a shared aesthetic and broader global outlook, have been further divided into hyper-identity-focused ironic subgenres like “male manipulator music” and “sad girl music”, which both create and build upon specific collective identities for their followers.
Last December, Spotify weaponized these social identity indicators against me by informing my 600 Instagram followers that Radiohead was my second most listened-to artist in 2024.
I’m no stranger to being humiliated by my Spotify Wrapped. For the last three years, WAP by Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B has ranked in my top 5 most-listened-to songs, and that’s fine. I’m only moderately ashamed of that. But after being inundated with music compasses and TikToks labeling Radiohead as “virgin music,” I truly felt that Wrapped had shattered the sort of ‘cool girl’ persona I often try to inhabit on my Instagram page, which careens between hot and funny in a way that now, more than ever, is failing to translate.
It’s not my fault that Radiohead and peers (Weezer, The Deftones, Car Seat Headrest, etc.) have become increasingly associated with the Incel-adjacent. Sure, some Radiohead fans likely lead sad pathetic lives of chastity, but the vast majority (me) live normal, potentially even cool, lives. Perhaps the lyrics of Creep are the reason Radiohead has been so maligned in the eyes of those who are chronically online. However, reducing an entire catalog of work to a single song doesn’t accurately capture the majority of their songs, which are largely about being socially anxious and having no self-esteem—two traits notorious for resulting in a robust sex life.
The rise of algorithmically generated “vibes” and memeified subgenres has turned music consumption into a game of identity roulette, where listeners are pressured to curate playlists that align with hyper-specific, often absurd social caricatures.
We are already trapped in a never-ending revolving door of hot-or-not regarding other arbitrary factors like height, knowledge of candles, what kind of accent they have, etc. Let’s not lump so-called “virgin music” into our judgment.
