Creativity Quote by Colin Greenwood

Colin Greenwood’s line reads like a casual studio anecdote, but it quietly sketches Radiohead’s real superpower: treating “making a song” less like capturing inspiration and more like running experiments. “Dollars And Cents” begins as “a band jam” - the most democratic, meat-and-potatoes origin story you can have - then gets subjected to this very 21st-century musician’s method: sonic collage. Greenwood “playing with records over the top” isn’t just a quirky pastime; it’s crate-digging as composition, DJ logic smuggled into a rock band’s workflow. The bass player becomes an editor, an arranger, a test pilot.

The intent here is practical: find friction, find fit, find the accidental groove that makes a track feel inevitable. But the subtext is cultural. By the time Amnesiac-era Radiohead were working, “authenticity” in rock was already being renegotiated. Layering records over your own work is an admission that influence isn’t a secret shame, it’s a tool you can audition in real time. It’s also a subtle rebuke to the romantic myth of the self-contained genius: Greenwood is describing craft, patience, and play.

There’s another sly resonance in the song choice itself. “Dollars And Cents” is a track obsessed with systems - money, power, machinery - and Greenwood’s method mirrors that theme. He’s building the song the way modern life is built: by overlaying existing patterns until something clicks, or until it sounds like the world outside your window.