Art & Creativity Quote by Ed O'Brien

Refusing the feed is its own kind of flex, especially coming from Ed O'Brien: a public figure whose job depends on attention, choosing to step away from the attention machine. The line plays like a shrug, but it’s a boundary marker. “I don’t read the press” isn’t just anti-gossip; it’s a way of rejecting the narrative that gets built around artists once they’re successful enough to be discussed rather than heard. The press turns careers into story arcs - comebacks, feuds, “difficult” phases - and the temptation is to start performing for that story instead of the work.

“I don’t watch endless music TV” lands as a period-specific jab. Music television, at its peak, wasn’t neutral distribution; it was an aesthetic governor. It rewarded a certain kind of image-readiness and repetition, the same handful of singles cycling into cultural dominance. “Endless” is doing the heavy lifting: not a thoughtful objection to video as art, but to the numbing loop that turns music into background branding.

The subtext is self-preservation. For a band like Radiohead, whose reputation has long been tied to resisting industry expectations, the refusal signals autonomy: protect your ears, protect your instincts, don’t let the hype ecosystem rewire your taste. It also hints at a quiet anxiety: if you binge the coverage and the constant stream of other people’s hits, you risk losing the internal compass that makes your own work sound like yours.