Phil Selway on Red Bull Music Academy

Philip Selway fills a Headphone Highlights for Red Bull Music Academy Radio with songs that are not in four, and saves “Pyramid Song” for last. People online have drawn “unbelievable charts” trying to map its time signature; to him it is a very simple, slow four underneath. He never counted it while writing the drum part, but fixed Thom Yorke's cycle of chords in his head and picked out the syncopations in Yorke's playing. On his own “Coming Up for Air”, from Weatherhouse, he counts a turnaround in the chorus in seven, though a bar of three and a bar of four might make more sense, “probably to make myself feel better”.

He has tried and failed many times to work out “Black Dog”, which feels as if it could fall apart at any moment while John Bonham marshals everything around him. Keeping up with all the time signatures in Deerhoof's “Paradise Girls” is like doing a sudoku. “15 Step” is in five, like Dave Brubeck's “Take Five” and Nick Drake's “River Man”, and the way into the seven of Pink Floyd's “Money” is to count along with the bass.