Radiohead has released seven studio albums to date. What if you were to take the top two most played tracks on Last.FM (using the last 6 months rankings) from each of those albums and put them on a mix? It seems like this mix would be a pretty good introductory overview of Radiohead’s career to date.

That’s my theory anyway, the 14 track mix below is the result of that theory put to the test (each song title is a link to where you can download the song so you can put this mix together yourself.)

The songs are in chronological order. The total amount of unique listeners for each song to date is included.

1. “Creep” – 738K listeners
2. “You” – 296K
3. “High and Dry” – 529K
4. “Fake Plastic Trees” – 536K
5. “Karma Police” – 864K
6. “Paranoid Android” – 748K
7. “Everything in it’s Right Place” – 497K
8. “Idioteque” – 496K
9. “Pyramid Song” – 396K
10. “I Might Be Wrong” – 356K
11. “There There” – 260K
12. “Go To Sleep” – 208K
13. “All I Need” – 598K
14. “15 Step” – 586K

I do think that’s a pretty good overview of their career (while being constrained to just 14 songs.) Really I think of Radiohead as an “album band.” I generally want to listen to a whole album by them rather than just a specific song. But at the same time, if you’re new to the band and you want to get a feel for their career to date I think this mix would give it to you.

I find it interesting how overlooked Hail to the Thief seems to be in comparison to the rest of their post Pablo Honey albums. I would agree that it’s not as good as OK Computer, Kid A, or In Rainbows but on the other hand, it’s still a really great album.