Radiohead is a band that I see praised often but, for no particular reason, I've never really sat down and listened to their work. My only exposure to them is hearing the song Creep on the radio and in movies/shows but it seems like people online treat Pablo Honey as their worst album. Their discography is so huge at this point that I figured I would just ask for a good starting point for the "true" Radiohead.
IMO I think they became popular because at the time they were cutting through the minutiae and monotoneous of the music industry, and this created another option beyond record industry hegemony. "Innovation" if you will. This could be why people think Pablo Honey is lame because it was pretty representative of semi-generic alternative music in the 90s. The Bends pushed them into the college radio genre, but I would go with the other commenters suggestions to start with Kid A and OK Computer. This is when they started to experiment. That will lead you into Amnesiac. But I guess just living through that time I could see how groundbreaking these albums were. The music industry owes a lot to how they created another avenue. Nowadays there's all sorts of music. Radiohead's relevance made its stamp on the time that it came out I guess kind of like Pink Floyd or something but that time has passed. Not to say that I would ever trash them. Another similar thing happened I think in the early 2000s with bands like The Strokes or the White Stripes becoming popular because mainstream music was just so lame and uninteresting.