Just

Radiohead recorded Just in 1994, during the sessions for their second album, The Bends. The song emerged under pressure: their first single, Creep, had been an unexpected hit, and the band feared being trapped in that sound. Thom Yorke wrote the lyrics thinking of someone close, but the true protagonist ended up being Jonny Greenwood’s riff: an angular pattern inspired by John McGeoch’s guitar work in Magazine’s Shot by Both Sides. Greenwood wasn’t just chasing melodies—he stacked chords to the brink, as if the track were a technical challenge. The result is a piece where the solo, played with a Whammy pedal, ascends four octaves in an instant, leaving behind any conventional structure.

The recording process was a rollercoaster. In February 1994, Radiohead began at London’s RAK Studios, but sessions dragged on due to label demands and internal doubts. Yorke would later recall that Just was the first song completed for The Bends, and that early versions exceeded seven minutes. Engineer John Leckie—who had previously worked with Magazine—captured that tension at Abbey Road and Manor Studios, where the band blended distorted guitars with lyrics that oscillated between cryptic and deeply personal. The video, directed by Jamie Thraves, amplified that ambiguity: shot over two days in Liverpool Street, it shows a man lying on the street as passersby ask why he doesn’t get up. The answers are never revealed, and the mystery—according to Thraves—was intentional. Actor Dorian Lough even fractured his wrist during filming, stumbling repeatedly to achieve the perfect take. By 1995, Just reached No. 19 in the UK, and in 2007, NME ranked it 34th on its list of indie anthems. But beyond the numbers, the song became a bridge between early-'90s grunge and the alternative rock Radiohead would help define.