Just

On paper, 'Just' uses a modest palette — diatonic chords in B minor that any intermediate guitarist would recognise. The sophistication is in the execution: Jonny Greenwood's chromatic counterpoint cuts against the root harmony with passing tones, so even straightforward chord changes sound unstable and combative. The song is a reminder that harmonic complexity and emotional complexity are not the same thing — the density here is textural and contrapuntal, not theoretical.

Like most of The Bends, 'Just' emerged from the band's collective writing process. All five members — Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, and Philip Selway — share the writing credit. The song represents the more abrasive, guitar-driven side of the record, a deliberate contrast to the atmospheric and melodic material elsewhere on the album. By 1994 Radiohead were moving decisively away from the brittle, effects-heavy sound of Pablo Honey toward something denser and more physically assertive.

Recorded in 1994 and released on EMI from The Bends, 'Just' sits at the most guitar-forward end of Radiohead's catalogue from that era. John Leckie's production keeps the dense interlocking guitar parts of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood distinct in the mix, while the rhythm section drives the track with relentless forward momentum. The music video — ending with an unexplained mass of people lying in the street, the reason rendered unreadable — became one of the defining visual moments of 1990s alternative rock.