Lift (Radiohead song)

Further versions recorded during the OK Computer period were released on the 2019 compilation MiniDiscs [Hacked] and received more positive reviews.

O'Brien described "Lift" as an "epic" song similar to the 1996 Manic Street Preachers single "A Design for Life", and said that Radiohead no longer produced that kind of music.

[2] In 2002, Radiohead performed "Lift" in a slower, more restrained arrangement,[8] which Pitchfork described as "a somber, almost queasy affair".

[8] In June 2017, Radiohead released "Lift" on the OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017,[2] alongside two other previously unreleased tracks: "I Promise" and "Man of War".

He said it reflected Radiohead's tendency to overanalyse their work: "You have it there and then you just try to pull it apart and then when you put it back together it doesn't look like a television set any more ...

[5] Rolling Stone described it as "one of the last vestiges of [Radiohead's] anthemic, Britpop hooks before the band embarked on a darker path with OK Computer".

[15] Reviewing OKNOTOK for Record Collector, Jamie Atkins, wrote that "Lift" was "an undeniably brilliant alt rock song, with surprising echoes of the grandstanding, otherworldly melancholy of prime Smashing Pumpkins".

Rolling Stone wrote that it was "restrained, decelerated and boasting an uncharacteristically blasé Yorke vocal take" and did not match the "magnitude" of the live bootlegs.

[10] The Spin critic Andy Cush felt it was "strangely neutered, with drums that patter instead of exploding with energy", and that the widely circulated 1996 bootleg remained "canonical".

[5] Another Spin writer, Winston Cook-Wilson, agreed that the bootlegs were "a bit more staggering", but felt this was "a testament to the band's remarkable pop sense at the time – an inclination they, for their own neurotic reasons, quickly moved to complicate or subvert".

[18] Following the 2019 release of MiniDiscs [Hacked], the Pitchfork critics Greene and Jeremy D Larson wrote that it had a superior version of "Lift".

Larson wrote: "It's not mixed very carefully, but it sounds scrappy and untamed, like the band is pushing it into the red unselfconsciously.

[10] The Guardian wrote that this "satisfying" version would likely have pleased EMI had Radiohead released it as the first OK Computer single, but that it was "ultimately a conservative song and feels like a path the band were right to fork from".