A Triumphant Return in Madrid

Some nights don’t simply happen — they stay.
They hover above time, as if the universe knew it couldn’t expand without paying tribute to them.
Radiohead’s show at Madrid’s Movistar Arena on Friday, November 7th, was one of those nights.
After seven years of silence since A Moon Shaped Pool, fifteen thousand people felt it all at once: something was falling back into place. The world, maybe. Them, for sure.

They opened with “Planet Telex,” a song that hadn’t kicked off a concert since 2008.
The floor shook, lights spiraled, and the air turned electric.
It wasn’t just a comeback — it was a summoning, a 360-degree, immersive, circular experience of sound, image, and faith.
Then Thom Yorke appeared, moving like a preacher who has seen the future and can’t decide whether to warn us or celebrate it.
He moved at a different speed, detached from the gravity of the rest: the audience, the band, the world.
Watching him felt like seeing Heath Ledger’s Joker from Nolan’s The Dark Knight conducting a symphony — genius and danger, a crooked smile, beautiful chaos.
That look of someone who would burn the city just to watch the reflection in the glass.

Then came “There There.”
The first storm.
Perfect. Precise. Ascending.
A thunder that grew until it swallowed everything.
The crowd held it in suspense, knowing the explosion was inevitable.
And right when the storm reached its peak, “No Surprises” arrived.
And it was the rainbow after the end of the world…
The lights turned white, then golden, and the stage seemed to open itself to let peace in.
Yorke’s voice floated through the air, and fifteen thousand bodies surrendered, without resistance, to beauty.
No jumping, no shouting — just surrender.
It was the night’s first great ovation: a collective exhale.
Madrid breathed. Finally.

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It was the third of four consecutive nights in the Spanish capital — the opening leg of a world tour that didn’t feel like a return but like redemption.
OK Computer anchored the setlist with six songs — “Lucky,” “Let Down,” “No Surprises,” “Paranoid Android,” “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” and “Karma Police” — while Hail to the Thief held its own with five, balancing dystopia and grace.
Together, they built the concert’s emotional skeleton, reminding everyone that the 21st century still sounds like Radiohead.
“Idioteque” — that electronic scream, that controlled chaos — was the alarm of a planet that no longer listens.

And then, “Just.”
Absent since 2009.
When it hit, the crowd erupted as if someone had hit reset on a collective heart.
It wasn’t nostalgia. It was resurrection.

Visually, the show drifted between cathedral and digital nightmare — rotating screens, shifting projections, bodies dissolving into light.
At times, you couldn’t tell if you were watching Radiohead or your own subconscious trying to break free.
Yorke danced, spun, broke, rebuilt himself: an electric medium tuned to a frequency no one else could reach.

And “Creep” wasn’t there.
Nor was it needed.
Because Radiohead no longer play songs — they play concepts.
They don’t repeat the past; they dictate destiny.

They closed with “Karma Police.”
Fifteen thousand voices sang “For a minute there, I lost myself.”
Yorke smiled — half tenderness, half menace.
For a minute, we all lost ourselves.
And it was beautiful.
Because that minute — that moment — justified every silence, every wait, every winter.

It wasn’t a concert.
It was a planetary alignment.
A night when humanity remembered what it feels like when everything is in the right place.
Because yes: everything — absolutely everything — was in the right place.

Jorge Fernández is a music journalist and editor-in-chief of Corrientes Circulares, a Spanish outlet focused on alternative and indie music, both national and international.

Radiohead, November 7th at Movistar Arena in Madrid – Setlist:
Planet Telex (first time as set opener since 2008)
2 + 2 = 5
Sit Down. Stand Up.
Bloom
Lucky
Ful Stop
The Gloaming
There There
No Surprises
Videotape
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Everything in Its Right Place
15 Step
The National Anthem
Daydreaming
Subterranean Homesick Alien
Bodysnatchers
Idioteque