Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Johnny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner Release Debut Single as Supergroup The Smile

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and Sons Of Kemet’s Tom Skinner, have released their debut single “You Will Never Work In Television Again” as The Smile.

The punk-propelled “You Will Never Work in Television Again” digs a different bowel from Radiohead, scratching around some sinister scene: Fear not my love he’s a fat fucking mist / Young bones spat out girls slitting their wrists / Curtain calling for the kiss from the nursery rhyme / Behind some rocks underneath some bridge / Some gangster troll promising the moon.

Accompanied by a lyric video, directed by Duncan Loudon, the song was produced by longtime collaborator, who also played with Yorke in Atoms for Peace and produced all of Radiohead’s albums following OK Computer, in addition to Yorke’s solo albums.

“You Will Never Work in Television Again” was first performed by the band during a secret show at Glastonbury Live At Worthy Farm in May 2021.

To follow up the release of their debut, The Smile will play three consecutive shows in 24 hours at Magazine London on January 29 and 30 to a seated audience. The performance will also be live streamed in real time. The live streams will combine the live show and a cinematic film, directed by director Paul Dugdale (Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Adele), produced by Driift.

Greenwood and Yorke also performed as Venus of Furs, along with Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay, and Bernard Butler of Suede, for the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine. Yorke released his soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria in 2018, and Greenwood has released film soundtracks to the Oscar-nominated Paul Thomas Anderson-helmed Phantom Thread and You Were Never Really Here, directed by Lynee Ramsay.

Pulling their name from a Ted Hughes poem, Yorke explained the meaning behind The Smile at their Glastonbury show. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are called ‘The Smile,’” said Yorke. “Not the smile as in ‘ahh’, more ‘The Smile’ as in, the guy who lies to you every day.”

Photo: Alex Lake