Thom Yorke has revealed he was “jealous” of his Radiohead bandmate Jonny Greenwood‘s work on film scores.

Yorke recently wrote the score for the remake of classic horror movie Suspiria – his first ever attempt at composing a full film score.

Appearing on BBC Radio 1’s The Chillest Show, the frontman and solo artist discussed his work on the soundtrack. Asked by DJ Phil Taggart if having someone experienced in score work like Greenwood in his band made embarking on the project easier, Yorke replied: “If I was honest with myself, I was a little bit jealous but felt that I couldn’t [do it] so I never tried.


“Jonny’s just so far ahead – he understands orchestration works, he can read music, he’s studied it all. I mean, he sits there studying scores. For Paul Thomas Anderson’s last film, he went away and read all the scores from the period of the composers of the time. That is not gonna happen with me cos I can’t read music.”

He continued: “So he’s out there off on his travels and he knows what he’s doing, whereas I’m totally scratching the surface, purely amateur. It stayed like that for a while and then I suddenly found myself committing to do a horror film and then thinking, ‘Well, it’s a horror film, I can just make loads of weird noises. It’ll be fun.’ There was way more to it than that and it was more melodic than that and more adventurous, and I was having to write choral pieces just using my own voice and many, many different things. So I’m a sucker.”

Yorke also performed piano versions of ‘Suspirium’ from the score and of Radiohead classic ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, both of which you can watch above.


Meanwhile, the musician recently teased a new, “politically-charged” solo album that’s completely “different to anything” he’s done before.

“I didn’t have the wish to make politically charged music, but everything I do goes that way anyways”, he said. “I’m trying to finish a record with Nigel [Godrich] and it’s going that way. It’s something that’s always there.”