General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20266 min read

My Iron Lung

My Iron Lung is a 1994 song by the English rock band Radiohead and the title track of the My Iron Lung EP, released on 26 September 1994 by Parlophone Records in the UK and Capitol Records in the US. Written as a bitter response to the worldwide success of the band's 1993 hit "Creep", it uses an iron lung, a machine that sustains life while immobilizing its patient, as a metaphor for a hit single that both sustained and trapped the band.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Songwriting credit	Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Philip Selway, and Thom Yorke³
Recording	Sessions for The Bends at RAK Studios, London; the album take is mostly a live recording from The Astoria, London, May 1994, with only the vocals replaced¹^•⁴
Producer	John Leckie, with Nigel Godrich assisting as tape engineer, Radiohead's first collaboration with Godrich²
Signature sounds	Jonny Greenwood's DigiTech Whammy pedal for pitch-shifted texture; Ed O'Brien's EBow drone; a ring-modulated opening hook²^•⁴
Context	"Creep" reached number 34 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and went Top Ten in the UK; EMI wanted a repeat¹
Later role	Included on The Bends (1995); the EP marked the first signs of the more inventive style that led toward OK Computer⁴^•⁵

Background: life after "Creep"

Radiohead's 1993 debut album Pablo Honey was, by itself, a modest commercial result, but its lead track "Creep" became a global hit, reaching number 34 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and going Top Ten in the UK charts. Their label wanted more of the same, and the band was pressed to write and record another album built on that formula.¹

Rather than comply, Thom Yorke turned the pressure into subject matter. The iron lung of the title stands for the way the 1992 breakthrough had simultaneously sustained and trapped the group: the hit kept the band alive commercially while confining it to a sound it wanted to escape. Yorke's lyric sneers with sarcastic gratitude for this "life support", and, as the NME put it, even concedes that Radiohead itself had become a similar kind of commodity.²^•⁶

Asked in a Melody Maker interview at the time whether the song was about the suffocation of fame caused by "Creep"'s success, Yorke said it was "more a statement about some of the people who come to see us, or certain members of certain audiences we've experienced", adding: "I'm not very good at ignoring people who slag us off. I won't just laugh it off. To my cost."¹

Recording

The band began work on the song during the sessions for their second album, The Bends, at RAK Studios in London, but struggled to nail it in the studio. The take that appears on the finished album is mostly lifted from a live performance at The Astoria in London in May 1994, patched together with elements from the studio recordings; according to a Guitar World retrospective, only the vocals were replaced and there are no other overdubs.¹^•⁴

MusicBrainz credits the song to all five band members and lists recording of the My Iron Lung material at Abbey Road Studios, RSK in London, and The Manor in Oxfordshire between February and November 1994, with mixing at Abbey Road and at Fort Apache in Cambridge, Massachusetts.³ The sessions were produced by John Leckie, whose previous credits included XTC, Magazine, and the Stone Roses. The EP marked Radiohead's first collaboration with Nigel Godrich, then working as a tape engineer assisting Leckie at RAK, a partnership that would go on to define the band's later sound.⁴^•²

The early Bends sessions were difficult, with the pressure to follow up Pablo Honey creating tension within the band. Radiohead broke off to tour Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Far East, breaking in the new songs on stage, and completed the album in about two weeks after returning to England.⁴

Music

The title track moves from a jangly, ring-modulated opening hook through a smooth, McCartney-esque verse melody before erupting into crushing guitar sections in the bridge. Jonny Greenwood deployed a DigiTech Whammy pedal for pitch-shifted, lo-fi texture, and Ed O'Brien used an EBow to sustain a hypnotic drone.²^•⁴

Guitar World notes that the single was greeted with puzzlement on release, but in retrospect marks a prime example of the new Radiohead style, and that it fits naturally with the rest of The Bends, where it has since become a concert highlight.⁴

Release and the EP

The My Iron Lung EP collected the title track with further Bends-era material, including "The Trickster".³ EMI's pick as lead single for The Bends was "My Iron Lung", a choice that poked fun at "Creep"'s success.⁶ Guitar World identifies it as the one single the band released during 1994.⁴ A Music Week retrospective records that the success of "My Iron Lung" as the album's first single gave Radiohead's international rock prospects an airplay boost, though less than the Britpop wave around Oasis and Blur that dominated attention at the time.⁷

The Quietus describes the EP as a stopgap released in October 1994, its opener lifted directly from the tapes of the band's Astoria show with only Yorke's vocals newly tracked; the Louder feature and the EP's own release listing give 26 September 1994 as the release date.⁸

Artwork

The EP's sleeve began the long visual partnership between Yorke and the artist Stanley Donwood, real name Dan Rickwood, whom Yorke had met as an art student at Exeter. For the My Iron Lung artwork the two snuck into Oxford's John Radcliffe hospital to photograph an iron lung, but ended up photographing a resuscitation dummy instead; Donwood went on to create the cover art for The Bends with Yorke.⁹^•¹⁰

Legacy

The song set a blueprint from which the band's later identity emerged. Louder calls the EP a crucial springboard: after it, "Creep" was behind them and the band never looked back.¹ Guitar World argues that, more importantly, it laid the groundwork for OK Computer, and that the choice of John Leckie as producer, who did not dictate anything to the band, helped them work out what they wanted to do for themselves.⁴ Retrospective coverage treats the 1994 EP as the first sign that Radiohead were more inventive than anyone, perhaps including the band, had yet realized.⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Music › Musical works and recordings › Albums and recorded releases › EPs, mixtapes, and short-form releases › Pop, rock, and other EPs

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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