Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien on Grief and the Power of Samora Pinderhughes
In Our Headphones
KEXP
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
On a special episode of In Our Headphones, host Evie Stokes talks with Ed O’Brien of Radiohead about one of the songs that inspired him while working on his upcoming new solo album, Blue Morpho, out May 22 via Transgressive Records. The two talk about Samoa Pinderhughes’ track “Grief,” his pandemic routines, and how the song guided him through a difficult time. The song comes from the album GRIEF, out now via Stretch Music/Ropeadope.
Produced by Dusty Henry
Mastered by: William Myers
Production support: Serafima Healy
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is in our headphones and I'm Evie Stokes. |
| 0:02.8 | I am so excited to share that we had Ed O'Brien from Radiohead on the podcast. |
| 0:09.5 | We were able to sit down with him last week and talk a bit about the influences behind Blumorpho. |
| 0:16.1 | He had a whole list of songs ready to share with us and we wanted to focus in on one of those and bring it to |
| 0:22.0 | you today. So here's a little bit more from our conversation. I had a list, a beautiful, |
| 0:27.7 | diverse list of songs shared with me that was maybe some things that inspired you for this |
| 0:33.8 | record. It was like, I heard some symphony music from Grecky and yeah Ripperton was on it and JPEC |
| 0:41.1 | Mafia. |
| 0:42.1 | But I'm hoping that we can talk about that song from Samora Pinder, who's, a Penderhue is called |
| 0:47.3 | grief, which is, and boom, boom bishop on, on the track as well. |
| 0:53.8 | And that album came, it was the title track off Grief from |
| 0:56.7 | 2022. It was serious critical acclaim. And I want to just, I'm wondering how you came across |
| 1:02.2 | the record. Oh my God. I'm so glad you mentioned this song. This song was like my North Star. |
| 1:08.8 | I came across this song because when I, in this dark period, I had this weird thing |
| 1:14.6 | in lockdown and the first part of lockdown, first lockdown, before I went into this whole, |
| 1:20.0 | stopped being able to listen to music. |
| 1:21.7 | I suddenly, I didn't, there was a trap by one of my favorite bands on the radio. |
| 1:26.8 | And I suddenly, I'm done with this I can't listen |
| 1:30.0 | to any more alternative music I just suddenly like that and I stopped listening to music anyway I went |
| 1:36.9 | into when I went into this sort of dark night of the soul there was a show that's on six music in the |
| 1:43.3 | UK by sort of one of the most brilliant and esteemed DJs guy called Giles Peterson. |
| 1:49.6 | And he has this show on Six Music and it's really eclectic and it leans into jazz, it leans into Brazilian, it leans into sort of soul, R&B, hip-hop. |
... |
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