The 2001 Album That Captured Modern Dread

Whenever someone disses agnosticism as pointless, bleak, or weak, Radiohead’s 2001 song “I Might Be Wrong” starts playing in my head. A guitar riff conveys all the tension of a bar that’s about to erupt into a brawl. Thom Yorke sings, in his meekest mumble, “I used to think there was no future left at all.” That’s an unsurprising confession from a notoriously gloomy bandleader, but it’s paired with tentatively happy lines such as this: “I could have sworn I saw a light coming on.” Eventually, Jonny Greenwood’s ominous riff gives way to a tender, consoling strum, and you may feel moved to cry.

Yorke has that he wrote “I Might Be Wrong” during a period of personal crisis, after he glimpsed a figure in the windows of his house he would never die for his beliefs, because he “may be wrong.” Russell often criticized how righteous certainty can lead to war. Yorke sings about shaking off the certainty of despair that can make people give up on themselves. Doubt—the suspicion that the reality you perceive is not all there is—can save lives.