Sam Smith and Thom Yorke don’t see eye to eye. But they do agree on one thing: they’re both into Billie Eilish.
When the rising U.S. pop star performed in London recently, an eagle-eyed fan spotted Smith and Yorke watching on from the stands. In the video which can be seen below, Smith is standing for Eilish’s performance of “You Should See Me In a Crown” with a beer in hand and a smile on his face, while Yorke is sat one row in front, joyfully throwing his head about with the music.
Apart from being British and appreciating Billie Eilish, Smith and Yorke apparently share little in common. The singers have a frosty relationship, at best. In 2016, when asked what he thought of Radiohead’s rejected song for the film Spectre, Smith seemed to question who Yorke was and threw some shade at his Bond-theme rivals. Smith needn’t have been defensive. Smith won the pitch with “Writing’s On The Wall,” which set the singles charts ablaze in his homeland, and bagged an Oscar (for best original song) and a Golden Globe (also for best original song).
In a new interview for The Times of London, Yorke took his own swipe. Speaking of the Eilish gig, a “fine moment,” he told the broadsheet, Yorke shared his own version of events. “We sat down and what’s-his-name — the guy who did the Bond film we didn’t do,” he said. “That’s it. He stands behind us, and I’m sitting with my daughter, her friends and my girlfriend, when suddenly everyone goes, ‘Saaam!’” “I’m, like, ‘Aaaargh!’”
And yes, the Radiohead frontman and sometimes solo artist, whose latest album Anima dropped recently, is impressed by Eilish. “She’s doing her own thing. Nobody’s telling her what to do,” he said.