Do we like Thom Yorke?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record on people and the planet, with one contested stance on Israel and Gaza that has annoyed people on every side.
Thom Yorke is the voice of Radiohead, one of Britain's biggest and most studied rock bands, and he has spent years since as a solo artist and in side projects. The band's work and his own stay restless and experimental. Only the 2026 Ivors coverage was read in full for this card, so the early-life story is left to the biographies.
The recent news is a good one. In May 2026 he received the Ivors Academy Fellowship, the ceremony's top honour, and used his speech to go after the industry. He criticised an “insane flow of money upwards” that leaves little for new artists, told executives to “pull your finger out”, and debuted a new song.
The messy chapter is Israel and Gaza. In October 2024 he walked offstage in Melbourne after a heckler raised Gaza, snapping back at them to come up and say it. Critics read it as dismissive, and in May 2025 he put out a long statement saying his silence had been wrongly read as complicity.
That statement condemned “Netanyahu and his crew of extremists” and urged international pressure on Israel. It also questioned the “unquestioning Free Palestine refrain” and said Hamas hides behind its people's suffering. It also called out “social media witch-hunts” on all sides. Some read that as balanced, while others, including the BDS movement, called it too little and too late.
By October 2025 he told an interviewer he would “absolutely not” play Israel again, saying he would not want to be within 5,000 miles of the Netanyahu regime. Bandmate Phil Selway said BDS's demands were impossible for the band because they would mean cutting ties with Jonny Greenwood, who has Israeli links. So this is a contested position, but nothing harmful in his own words turned up.
On the planet he has put his money where his mouth is. In 2019 Radiohead released 18 hours of OK Computer demos with all proceeds going to Extinction Rebellion. When critics called him a climate hypocrite for flying to work, he agreed he was one but said change has to come through governments. I found nothing on his views on LGBTQ+ people or trans rights either way, so that part of the record is blank rather than clean.