The lyrics address climate change, groupthink and heartbreak. Many critics saw them as a response to the split of the singer, Thom Yorke, from his wife, Rachel Owen. Radiohead's longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood created the abstract cover by exposing his paintings to weather.

A Moon Shaped Pool examines a world faced by demagoguery, racial fear, debilitating paranoia, environmental disregard, empathetic disconnect, a diseased system of values, and a bloated sense of privilege that undermines the entirety of political discourse and democracy itself.

Radiohead's “A Moon Shaped Pool” is a masterpiece. The band experimented with different writing techniques in this album, and it definitely paid off.

Pitchfork attributed the Smile to Greenwood's frustration with Radiohead's slow working pace and his desire to release records that are "90 percent as good [that] come out twice as often". Greenwood said: "We didn't have much time, but we just wanted to finish some songs together.