{"id":283661,"date":"2026-06-29T11:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/ed-obrien-compares-radioheads-paranoid-android-pretty-things-in-the-square-on-broken-record-podcast\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T12:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T16:00:09","slug":"ed-obrien-compares-radioheads-paranoid-android-pretty-things-in-the-square-on-broken-record-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/ed-obrien-compares-radioheads-paranoid-android-pretty-things-in-the-square-on-broken-record-podcast\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed O&#8217;Brien Compares Radiohead&#8217;s &#8220;Paranoid Android&#8221; &#038; Pretty Things&#8217; &#8220;In The Square&#8221; On &#8216;Broken Record&#8217; Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stereogum.com\/2503751\/radioheads-ed-obrien-stunned-by-obscure-70s-track-that-sounds-like-paranoid-android\/news\/\">Ed O&#8217;Brien Compares Radiohead&#8217;s &#8220;Paranoid Android&#8221; &#038; Pretty Things&#8217; &#8220;In The Square&#8221; On &#8216;Broken Record&#8217; Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stereogum.com\/2503751\/radioheads-ed-obrien-stunned-by-obscure-70s-track-that-sounds-like-paranoid-android\/news\/\">https:\/\/stereogum.com\/2503751\/radioheads-ed-obrien-stunned-by-obscure-70s-track-that-sounds-like-paranoid-android\/news\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-29 11:55:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"stereogum.com\">stereogum.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ed O&#8217;Brien has been making the rounds to promote his new solo album Blue Morpho, including a lovely We&#8217;ve Got A File On You interview with me here at Stereogum. The latest stop on his promo tour is the Broken Record podcast, where host Justin Richmond surprised him with a listen to a &#8220;Paranoid Android&#8221; soundalike from 27 years prior.<\/p>\n<p>More than an hour into the episode, Richmond asks if O&#8217;Brien has ever heard &#8220;In The Square&#8221; from London rock band the Pretty Things&#8217; 1970 album Parachute. Richmond notes that it has always reminded him of &#8220;Paranoid Android.&#8221; A curious, tentative O&#8217;Brien replies, &#8220;Do people think it&#8217;s some kind of lift?&#8221; (No, not &#8220;Lift,&#8221; Ed.) <\/p>\n<p>They then proceed to listen. When the peaceful major-key section shifts to dissonant guitar arpeggios, O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s eyes go wide at the resemblance to the OK Computer prog epic. Although he notes that Radiohead descend to E major while the Pretty Things opt for E minor, he is otherwise speechless at the resemblance. Check it out below, starting at the 1h2m35s mark.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Radiohead\u2019s Ed O\u2019Brien | Broken Record Podcast\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mrjOWvT1qAA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere in the episode, O&#8217;Brien recalls attending Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg&#8217;s Coachella performance with the 2Pac hologram in 2012, when Radiohead also headlined the fest. &#8220;I had some of those chocolate mushrooms I stayed on,&#8221; O&#8217;Brien recalls. &#8220;I remember watching that show, and that bass, and the sound, and I was just like, &#8216;Man, shit. This makes us look like a fucking string quartet. And I think we&#8217;ve always longed to have a bit of that West Coast or whatever, that depth, that bass. And I think we \u2014 not that we&#8217;re there \u2014 but it&#8217;s a work in progress.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He adds that when Radiohead were working on Kid A, he was obsessed with Dre&#8217;s production work, especially on Blackstreet&#8217;s &#8220;No Diggity.&#8221; &#8220;I was just like, &#8216;Fuck, how cool would it be for Radiohead to work with Dr. Dre?&#8217; It was just like a dream, in another world, in a parallel universe.&#8221; Watch a clip of that moment below.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;Brien also comes out in&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stereogum.com\/2503751\/radioheads-ed-obrien-stunned-by-obscure-70s-track-that-sounds-like-paranoid-android\/news\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed O&#8217;Brien Compares Radiohead&#8217;s &#8220;Paranoid Android&#8221; &#038; Pretty Things&#8217; &#8220;In The Square&#8221; On &#8216;Broken Record&#8217;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/lede-admin.stereogum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/64\/2026\/06\/eob-1.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283663,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283661\/revisions\/283663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}