That's kinda hard to deal with.'Įnvironmental concerns persisted in Radiohead's music for several more years, as evident in 2011's The King of Limbs. 'And every time he draws a polar bear, I want to tell him there probably won't be any by the time. 'My son really loves wildlife,' Yorke told Friends of the Earth in 2007. But Radiohead has kept an unflinching focus on global warming for a while now. It's a clear foreshadowing of many environmental discussions over the past decade, many of which have dealt with accusations of scare-mongering. The cover of the album is even a picture of ice surrounded by water. It's hard to ignore the outward calls for awareness in 2000's 'Idioteque,' especially when the lyrics turn political: 'We're not scare-mongering / This is really happening.' At times, its electronic spareness feels apocalyptic. ' no great loss to the world.' That mix of apocalypticism and optimism suits a band that pioneered one of the most successful new models for selling music: pay what you want. 'It will only be a matter of time - months rather than years - before the music business completely folds,' Yorke once said.

Radiohead prematurely eulogized that decline back in 1993, but they knew it would come soon. With the popularity of apps like Shazam leading to the ' Shazam Effect,' it's clear that mainstream music is increasingly less about good songwriting and more about commercialism. It's a line that foreshadows his harsh criticism of the music industry - and especially Spotify, which he called 'the last desperate fart of a dying corpse.' The songs of Radiohead's early days still emphasize an important idea: that pop music will become homogenous and everything sounds exactly the same. 'Oh no, pop is dead, long live pop / It died an ugly death by back-catalogue,' Yorke sings. 'Pop Is Dead' sees the homogenous rise of pop music. Here are six songs where Radiohead saw the present and the future more clearly than any of us. More than two decades later, those ambitions have cemented the band as one of rock's most prescient acts. 'We're not going to sit around and wait and just be happy if something turns up. 'People sometimes say we take things too seriously, but it's the only way you'll get anywhere,' frontman Thom Yorke said in an early interview, back in 1991. They may not see the future, but they see more clearly than anyone else how the present is shaping up - which is itself a sort of foretelling. Pigeons & Planes wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about other things Radiohead predicted, but there's actually some legitimacy to Radiohead's visionary status. Released in 2000, the album was later noted by music critic Chuck Klosterman as a bizarrely accurate prediction of the Sept. 11 attacks. The response to Kid A, Pitchfork's best record of the 2000s, was especially keen on this point. 1997's OK Computer was about technological alienation 2003's Hail to the Thief centered on political reform 2011's The King of Limbs was all about environmental concerns.

Theirs is socially conscious art that speaks to the ills of society. But at the core of Radiohead's music, there's always been a larger and more prophetic message than most musicians ever muster. Even Kanye has stepped down from his throne and acknowledged the band's influence.

Radiohead has long served as rock's modern heroes.

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