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Kid A

Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.

After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.

In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animations and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.

Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure or derivative. However, at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked it the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, Kid A won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It was certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.

Radiohead released a second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, in 2001. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.

Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."

Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.

Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. His lack of knowledge of electronic instruments inspired him, as "everything's a novelty ... I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant." The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said other guitar bands were trying to do similar things, and so Radiohead had to change and move on.

Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. As the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaume Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.

Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.

The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."

Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively. According to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units on his guitar, which allow notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.

In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing. In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress.

Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.

On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense, and decided that a series of EPs would be a "copout". Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.

Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."

Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".

The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.

"Idioteque" was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser. It incorporates a sample from the electronic composition "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky, taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 album of experimental music. Greenwood gave 50 minutes of improvisation to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke said it was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage".

"Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single, "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. Radiohead added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".

Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.

The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.

Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.

Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken".

Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.

Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."

Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".

Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.

Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.

Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons. He later said he regretted the decision, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.

Radiohead were careful to present Kid A as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".

No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.

Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".

Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.

Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".

To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.

Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, the Capitol president, Ray Lott, likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".

The commercial success of Kid A suggested that leaks might not be as damaging as many had assumed. The music journalist Brent DiCrescenzo argued that the Napster leak profoundly affected the way Kid A was received, surprising listeners who would patiently download new tracks to find they comprised "four minutes of ambient noise".

Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.

In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.

Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live. The performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.

Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.

Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."

After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.

Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."

Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed. In a retrospective, the Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A 's release.

AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."

Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews published online, it helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.

Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said Radiohead had not attempted to alienate or confound, but that their musical interests had changed. He recalled that they had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." Yorke said Radiohead felt "incredibly vindicated and happy" after Kid A reached number one in the US.

At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the year's best albums by publications including the Wire, Record Collector, Spin, NME and the Village Voice. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.

Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Sheffield likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". In 2016, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency to venerate rock music over other genres.

In a 2011 Guardian article about his negative Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lynskey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."

Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks. Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of the "challenging" Kid A established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".

Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".

In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork  and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".

(*) designates unordered list

Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A.  On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.

The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.

On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.

Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.

Original CD release

 * 1) "Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
 * 2) "Kid A" – 4:44
 * 3) "The National Anthem" – 5:51
 * 4) "How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
 * 5) "Treefingers" – 3:42
 * 6) "Optimistic" – 5:15
 * 7) "In Limbo" – 3:31
 * 8) "Idioteque" – 5:09
 * 9) "Morning Bell" – 4:35
 * 10) "Motion Picture Soundtrack" (includes hidden track) – 7:01

Note

Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.

Production
 * Nigel Godrich – production, engineering, mixing
 * Radiohead – production
 * Gerard Navarro – production assistance, additional engineering
 * Graeme Stewart – additional engineering
 * Stanley – artwork ("Landscapes, Knives and Glue")
 * Tchock – artwork ("Landscapes, Knives and Glue")
 * Chris Blair – mastering

Additional musicians
 * Orchestra of St John's – strings
 * John Lubbock – conducting
 * Jonny Greenwood – scoring
 * Horns on "The National Anthem"
 * Andy Bush – trumpet
 * Steve Hamilton – alto saxophone
 * Martin Hathaway – alto saxophone (etc.)
 * Andy Hamilton – tenor saxophone
 * Mark Lockheart – tenor saxophone
 * Stan Harrison – baritone saxophone
 * Liam Kerkman – trombone
 * Mike Kearsey – bass trombone
 * Henry Binns – rhythm sampling on "The National Anthem"

title: Kid A


text:
Amnesiac (album)

Amnesiac is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 30 May 2001 by EMI. It was recorded with the producer Nigel Godrich in the same sessions as Radiohead's previous album Kid A (2000). Radiohead split the work in two as they felt it was too dense for a double album. As with Kid A, Amnesiac incorporates influences from electronic music, 20th-century classical music, jazz and krautrock. The final track, "Life in a Glasshouse", is a collaboration with the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band.

After having released no singles for Kid A, Radiohead promoted Amnesiac with the singles "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out", accompanied by music videos. Videos were also made for "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates", and "I Might Be Wrong", which was released as a promotional single. In June 2001, Radiohead began the Amnesiac tour, incorporating their first North American tour in three years.

Amnesiac debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number two on the US Billboard 200. By October 2008, it had sold over 900,000 copies worldwide. It is certified platinum in the UK, the US and Canada, and gold in Japan. Though some critics felt it was too experimental or less cohesive than Kid A, or saw it as a collection of Kid A outtakes, it received positive reviews. It was named one of the year's best albums by numerous publications.

Amnesiac was nominated for the Mercury Prize and several Grammy Awards, winning for Best Recording Package for the special edition. "Pyramid Song" was named one of the best tracks of the decade by Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone ranked Amnesiac number 320 in their 2012 "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.

Recording
Radiohead and the producer Nigel Godrich recorded Amnesiac during the same sessions as their previous album, Kid A, released in October 2000. The sessions took place from January 1999 to mid-2000 in Guillaume Studios in Paris, Medley Studios in Copenhagen, and Radiohead's studio in Oxfordshire. The drummer, Philip Selway, said the sessions had "two frames of mind ... a tension between our old approach of all being in a room playing together and the other extreme of manufacturing music in the studio. I think Amnesiac comes out stronger in the band-arrangement way."

The sessions drew influence from electronic music, 20th-century classical music, jazz and krautrock, using synthesisers, ondes Martenot, drum machines, strings and brass. The strings, arranged by the guitarist Jonny Greenwood, were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church close to Radiohead's studio.

Radiohead considered releasing the work as a double album, but felt it was too dense. The singer, Thom Yorke, said Radiohead split it into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things" and came from "two different places". He felt Amnesiac offered a "different take" on Kid A and "a form of explanation". The band members stressed that they saw Amnesiac not as a collection of Kid A B-sides or outtakes but an album in its own right. Yorke said the title was inspired by a Gnostic belief that the trauma of birth erases memories of past lives, an idea he found fascinating.

Tracks
"Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" began as an attempt to record another song, "True Love Waits". It features keyboard loops recorded during the OK Computer sessions; Radiohead disabled the erase heads on the tape recorders so that the tape repeatedly recorded over itself, creating a "ghostly" tape loop, and manipulated the results in Pro Tools. Deciding that the arrangement did not fit "True Love Waits", Radiohead used it to create a new track. Yorke added a spoken vocal and used the pitch-correcting software Auto-Tune to process it into melody. According to Yorke, Auto-Tune "desperately tries to search for the music in your speech, and produces notes at random. If you've assigned it a key, you've got music." The "True Love Waits" version of "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" was eventually released on the 2021 compilation Kid A Mnesia.

Radiohead also used Auto-Tune on "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" to process Yorke's vocals and create a "nasal, depersonalised" sound. For "You And Whose Army?", Radiohead attempted to capture the "soft, warm, proto-doowop sound" of the 1940s harmony group the Ink Spots. They muffled microphones with egg boxes and used the ondes Martenot's resonating palme diffuseur loudspeaker to treat the vocals. Unlike many tracks from the sessions, the band recorded it live. The guitarist Ed O'Brien said: "We rehearsed it a bit, not too much, then just went in and did it. It's just us doing our thing as a band."

According to a diary kept by O'Brien, "Knives Out" took over a year to complete, as Radiohead had been tempted to over-embellish it. It was influenced by the guitar work of Johnny Marr of the Smiths. Yorke said "Knives Out" did not depart from Radiohead's earlier style, and "survived because it was too good to miss". "Dollars and Cents" was edited down from an eleven-minute jam, inspired by the krautrock band Can, who would record extensively and then edit their recordings.

"Like Spinning Plates" was the result of an attempt to record another song, "I Will", on synthesiser. Dismissing this recording as "dodgy Kraftwerk", Radiohead reversed it and created a new song. Yorke said: "I was in another room, heard the vocal melody coming backwards, and thought, 'That's miles better than the right way round', then spent the rest of the night trying to learn the melody." Radiohead recorded "I Will" in a new arrangement for their next album, Hail to the Thief (2003).

For the final track, "Life in a Glasshouse", Jonny Greenwood wrote to the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, explaining that Radiohead were "a bit stuck". Lyttelton agreed to perform on the song with his band after his daughter showed him Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer. According to Lyttelton, Radiohead "didn't want it to sound like a slick studio production but a slightly exploratory thing of people playing as if they didn't have it all planned out in advance". The recording session lasted seven hours, and left Lyttelton exhausted. "I detected some sort of eye-rolling at the start of the session, as if to say we were miles apart," he said. "They went through quite a few nervous breakdowns during the course of it all, just through trying to explain to us all what they wanted."

Music and lyrics
Amnesiac incorporates experimental rock, electronica and alternative rock, with elements of jazz. Colin Greenwood said it contained "traditional Radiohead-type songs" alongside more experimental work. The Atlantic contrasted it with "the surgical glint" of Kid A, with "swampy and foggy" arrangements and "uneasy" chords and rhythms.

The first track, "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box", is an electronic song with synthesisers and metallic percussion. "Pyramid Song", a swung ballad with piano and strings, was inspired by the Charles Mingus song "Freedom". Its lyrics were inspired by an exhibition of ancient Egyptian underworld art Yorke attended while the band was recording in Copenhagen and ideas of cyclical time discussed by Stephen Hawking and Buddhism.

Yorke said "You and Whose Army?" was "about someone who is elected into power by people and who then blatantly betrays them – just like Blair did". The song builds slowly on piano, before reaching a climax in the final minute. According to O'Brien, "In the Radiohead of old, on OK Computer, that break would have lasted four minutes. We would have carried on 'Hey Jude'-style."

"I Might Be Wrong" combines a "venomous" guitar riff with a "trance-like metallic beat". Colin Greenwood's bassline was inspired by the Chic bassist Bernard Edwards. The lyrics were influenced by advice given to Yorke by his partner, Rachel Owen: "Be proud of what you've done. Don't look back and just carry on like nothing's happened. Just let the bad stuff go." "Knives Out", described as the album's most conventional song, features "drifting" guitar lines, "driving" percussion, a "wandering" bassline, "haunting" vocals and "eerie" lyrics.

"Morning Bell/Amnesiac" is an alternative version of "Morning Bell" from Kid A; The Atlantic described it as a blend of "cosiness and nausea". O'Brien said that Radiohead often record and abandon different versions of songs, but that this version was "strong enough to bear hearing again". Yorke wrote that it was included "because it came from such a different place ... Because we only found it again by accident after having forgotten about it. Because it sounds like a recurring dream." He said the lyrics for "Dollars and Cents" were "gibberish", but were inspired by the notion that "people are basically just pixels on a screen, unknowingly serving this higher power which is manipulative and destructive".

"Hunting Bears" is a short instrumental on electric guitar and synthesiser. "Life in a Glasshouse" features the Humphrey Lyttelton Band playing in the style of a New Orleans jazz funeral. According to Lyttelton, the song starts with "ad-libbed, bluesy, minor-key meandering, then it gradually gets so that we're sort of playing real wild, primitive, New Orleans blues stuff". The lyrics were inspired by a news story Yorke read of a celebrity's wife so harassed by paparazzi that she papered her windows with their photographs.

Artwork and packaging
The Amnesiac artwork was created by Yorke and the longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood. For inspiration, Donwood explored London taking notes, likening the city to the labyrinth of Greek mythology. He scanned blank pages of old books and superimposed onto them photos of fireworks and Tokyo tower blocks, copies of Piranesi's Imaginary Prisons drawings, and lyrics and phrases printed by Yorke on a broken typewriter.

The cover depicts a book cover with a weeping minotaur. The minotaur, a motif of the Amnesiac artwork, represents the "maze" Yorke felt he had become lost in during his depression after OK Computer; Donwood described it as a "tragic figure". Figures included in the album booklet include faceless terrorists, self-serving politicians and corporate executives. Yorke said they represented "the abstracted, semi-comical, stupidly dark, false voices that battled us as we tried to work".

For the special edition, Donwood designed a package with a hardback CD case in the style of a mislaid library book. He imagined that "someone made these pages in a book and it went into drawer in a desk and was forgotten about in the attic ... And visually and musically the album is about finding the book and opening the pages." The special edition won a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package at the 44th Grammy Awards.

Release
Radiohead announced Amnesiac on their website in January 2001, three months after the release of Kid A. It was released in Japan on 30 May by EMI, in the UK on 4 June by Parlophone and in the US on 5 June by Capitol, both subsidiaries of EMI.

Amnesiac debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. On the US Billboard 200, it debuted at number two, with sales of 231,000, surpassing the 207,000 first-week sales of Kid A. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan for shipments of 100,000 copies across Japan. By October 2008, Amnesiac had sold more than 900,000 copies worldwide. In July 2013, it was certified platinum in the UK for sales of more than 300,000.

Singles and videos
Radiohead released no singles from Kid A. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons. He regretted the choice, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics. For Amnesiac, Yorke said Radiohead would have "singles, videos, glossy magazine celebrity photoshoots, children's television appearances, film premiere appearances, dance routines, and many interesting interviews about my tortured existence". "Pyramid Song" was released as a single in May, followed by "Knives Out" in July, backed by music videos. Two videos were created for "I Might Be Wrong", which was released as a radio-only single in June.

Radiohead reworked "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates" for a computer-animated video directed by Johnny Hardstaff. The video premiered on November 29, 2001, at an animation festival at the Centre For Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. It features imagery of killer whales swimming under UV light, a machine taking shape and conjoined babies spinning in a centrifuge. The video received little airplay from MTV, who felt it was "of a sensitive nature" and would only broadcast it with a warning. Hardstaff said: "The irony is that you can't move on MTV for bland R&B and the empty boasts of 'artists' effectively fixated with their own flaccid showbiz cocks, but any piece of film with an ounce of real emotion isn't going to get seen."

Tour
Radiohead first performed Amnesiac songs on the Kid A tour, which began in June 2000. They performed the electronic tracks using rock instrumentation. For example, "Like Spinning Plates" was rearranged as a piano ballad. On 10 June 2001, Radiohead recorded a concert for a special hour-long episode of the BBC show Later... with Jools Holland, including a performance of "Life in a Glasshouse" with the Humphrey Lyttelton Band.

Radiohead began the Amnesiac tour on 18 June 2001, with their first North American tour in three years. It comprised performances in west coast amphitheatres in June, followed by performances in the east and midwest in August. The openers were the Beta Band and Kid Koala. Capitol avoided traditional promotion for the tour and instead disseminated information to Radiohead's large online fanbase. Tickets sold out within minutes. The Observer described this as "the most sweeping conquest of America by a British group" since Beatlemania, succeeding where bands such as Oasis had failed.

Radiohead hoped to tour the US using a custom-built tent as they had for the Kid A tour in Europe, but met opposition from Clear Channel Entertainment and Ticketmaster, which Yorke said had a monopoly on American live music. Radiohead considered abandoning touring in the US, but felt this would have been a defeat. They instead chose unusual venues, such as Grant Park in Chicago and the bank of the Hudson River in New York. The German DJ Christoph de Babalon supported them in Europe. Recordings from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours were released on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings in November 2001.

Reception
After Radiohead's previous album, Kid A, had divided listeners, many hoped Amnesiac would return to their earlier rock sound. The Guardian titled its review "Relax: it's nothing like Kid A". However, Rolling Stone saw Amnesiac as a further distancing from Radiohead's earlier "Britpop-like" style, and Pitchfork found that it was nothing like Radiohead's 1995 album The Bends. Stylus wrote that although Amnesiac was "slightly more straightforward" than Kid A, it "solidified the postmillennial model of Radiohead: less songs and more atmosphere, more eclectic and electronic, more paranoid, more threatening, more sublime". Yorke felt Amnesiac was no more accessible than Kid A and would have elicited the same reactions had it been released first. In 2020, the Guardian wrote that "the impenetrable Amnesiac debunked industry rumours that Radiohead were primed for a bankable comeback".

Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times felt that Amnesiac, compared to Kid A, was "a richer, more engaging record, its austerity and troubled vision enriched by a rousing of the human spirit". The Guardian critic Alexis Petridis, who had disliked Kid A, felt that Amnesiac returned Radiohead to "their role as the world's most intriguing and innovative major rock band ... [It] strikes a cunning and rewarding balance between experimentation and quality control. It's hardly easy to digest but nor is it impossible to swallow." He criticised the electronic tracks "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates" as self-indulgent, but praised the album's "haunting musical shifts and unconventional melodies". The Guardian named it "CD of the week". Stylus wrote that it was "an excellent disc", but was not as "exploratory or interesting" as Kid A.

Some dismissed Amnesiac as a collection of Kid A outtakes. The Pitchfork founder, Ryan Schreiber, wrote that its "questionable sequencing ... does little to hush the argument that the record is merely a thinly veiled B-sides compilation". Another Pitchfork writer, Scott Plagenhoef, felt the sequencing worked by creating tension, heightening the power of the more experimental tracks. However, he felt the more conventional marketing created a sense of "ordinariness" compared to Kid A and the impression that Radiohead had bowed to pressure from their record label.

Some critics felt Amnesiac was less cohesive than Kid A. The AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that it "often plays as a hodgepodge", and that both albums "clearly derive from the same source and have the same flaws ... The division only makes the two records seem unfocused, even if the best of both records is quite stunning." Another AllMusic critic, Sam Samuelson, said Amnesiac was a "thrown-together" release that might have been better packaged with the live album I Might Be Wrong as a "complete Kid A sessions package". Schreiber, however, felt the "highlights were undeniably worth the wait, and easily overcome its occasional patchiness".

Reviewing the 2009 reissue for Pitchfork, Plagenhoef wrote: "More than Kid A – and maybe more than any other LP of its time – Amnesiac is the kickoff of a messy, rewarding era ... disconnected, self-aware, tense, eclectic, head-turning – an overload of good ideas inhibited by rules, restrictions, and conventional wisdom." In 2021, on the album's 20th anniversary, The Atlantic wrote that Amnesiac might be Radiohead's best work: "Listening to it 20 years after its release, the album's grumpy wisdom — its dignity in the face of dread — feels more moving than ever."

Accolades
Amnesiac was nominated for the 2001 Mercury Music Prize, losing to PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, for which Yorke provided guest vocals. It was the fourth consecutive Radiohead album nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, and the special edition won a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package at the 44th Grammy Awards.

Q, The Wire, Rolling Stone, Kludge, Pazz and Jop and Alternative Press named Amnesiac one of the best albums of 2001. In 2005, Stylus named it the best album of the preceding five years. In 2009, Pitchfork ranked Amnesiac the 34th-best album of the 2000s and Rolling Stone ranked it the 25th. It is included in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, and number 320 in the 2012 edition of Rolling Stone 's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. "Pyramid Song" was ranked among the best tracks of the decade by Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork.

Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Amnesiac. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Amnesiac was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums.

On 25 August, EMI reissued Amnesiac in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. The first CD contains the original studio album; the second CD collects B-sides from Amnesiac singles and live performances; the DVD contains music videos and a live television performance. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered. The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue was transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Radiohead's back catalogue on vinyl, including Amnesiac.

An early demo of "Life in a Glasshouse", performed by Yorke on acoustic guitar, was released on the 2019 compilation MiniDiscs [Hacked]. On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with two digital singles, the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on 18 November for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.

Personnel
Adapted from the Amnesiac liner notes.

Radiohead

 * Colin Greenwood
 * Jonny Greenwood
 * Ed O'Brien
 * Philip Selway
 * Thom Yorke

Additional musicians

 * The Orchestra of St John's – strings (tracks: 2, 8)
 * John Lubbock – conducting
 * The Humphrey Lyttelton Band (track 11)
 * Humphrey Lyttelton – trumpet, bandleader
 * Jimmy Hastings – clarinet
 * Pete Strange – trombone
 * Paul Bridge – double bass
 * Adrian Macintosh – drums

Technical personnel

 * Nigel Godrich – production, engineering
 * Radiohead – production
 * Dan Grech-Marguerat – engineering (track 11)
 * Gerard Navarro – engineering assistance
 * Graeme Stewart – engineering assistance
 * Bob Ludwig – mastering

Artwork

 * Stanley Donwood – pictures, design
 * Thom Yorke (credited as "Tchocky") – pictures

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Amnesiac (album)


text:
The Bends (album)

The Bends is the second studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 13 March 1995 by Parlophone. It was produced by John Leckie, with extra production by Radiohead, Nigel Godrich and Jim Warren. The Bends combines guitar songs and ballads, with more restrained arrangements and cryptic lyrics than Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey (1993).

Work began at RAK Studios, London, in February 1994. Tensions were high, with pressure from Parlophone to match sales of Radiohead's debut single, "Creep", and progress was slow. After an international tour in May and June, Radiohead resumed work at Abbey Road in London and the Manor in Oxfordshire. The Bends was the first Radiohead album recorded with Godrich and the artist Stanley Donwood, who have worked on every Radiohead album since.

Several singles were released, backed by music videos: "My Iron Lung", the double A-side "High and Dry / Planet Telex", "Fake Plastic Trees", "Just", and Radiohead's first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart, "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". "The Bends" was also released as a single in Ireland. A live video, Live at the Astoria, was released on VHS. Radiohead toured extensively in support of The Bends, including US tours supporting R.E.M. and Alanis Morissette.

The Bends reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, but failed to build on the success of "Creep" outside the UK, reaching number 88 on the US Billboard 200. It received greater acclaim than Pablo Honey, including a nomination for Best British Album at the Brit Awards 1996, and elevated Radiohead from one-hit-wonders to one of the most recognised British bands. It is frequently named one of the greatest albums of all time, cited in lists including Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums and all three editions of Rolling Stone 's lists of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Bends is credited for influencing a generation of post-Britpop acts, such as Coldplay, Muse and Travis. It is certified platinum in the US and quadruple platinum in the UK.

Background
Radiohead released their debut album, Pablo Honey, in 1993. By the time they began their first US tour early that year, their debut single, "Creep", had become a hit. The band felt pressured by the success and mounting expectations. Following the tours, the singer, Thom Yorke, became ill and Radiohead cancelled an appearance at Reading Festival. He told NME: "Physically I'm completely fucked and mentally I've had enough."

According to some reports, Radiohead's record company, EMI, gave them six months to "get sorted" or be dropped. EMI's A&R head, Keith Wozencroft, denied this, saying: "Experimental rock music was getting played and had commercial potential. People voice different paranoias, but for the label [Radiohead] were developing brilliantly from Pablo Honey."

After Radiohead finished recording Pablo Honey, Yorke played the co-producer Paul Q. Kolderie a demo tape of new material with the working title The Benz. Kolderie was shocked to find the songs were "all better than anything on Pablo Honey". The guitarist Ed O'Brien later said: "After all that touring on Pablo Honey ... the songs that Thom was writing were so much better. Over a period of a year and a half, suddenly, bang." Kolderie credited Radiohead's Pablo Honey tours for "turning them into a tight band".

To produce their next album, Radiohead selected John Leckie, who had produced records by acts they admired, such as Magazine. The drummer, Philip Selway, said Radiohead were reassured by how relaxed and open-minded Leckie was on their first meeting. According to O'Brien, the success of "Creep" meant that Radiohead were not in debt to EMI and so had more freedom on their next album. EMI asked Radiohead to deliver a followup to "Creep" for the American market; however, according to Leckie, Radiohead had disowned "Creep" and did not "think in terms of making hit singles".

Recording was postponed so Leckie could work on the album Carnival of Light, by another Oxford band, Ride. Radiohead used the extra time to rehearse in a disused barn on an Oxfordshire fruit farm in January 1994. Yorke said: "We had all of these songs and we really liked them, but we knew them almost too well ... so we had to sort of learn to like them again before we could record them, which is odd."

Recording
EMI gave Radiohead nine weeks to record the album, planning to release it in October 1994. Work began at RAK Studios in London in February 1994. Yorke would arrive at the studio early and work alone at the piano; according to Leckie, "New songs were pouring out of him." The band praised Leckie for demystifying the studio environment. The guitarist Jonny Greenwood said: "He didn't treat us like he had some kind of witchcraft that only he understands. There's no mystery to it, which is so refreshing."

The sessions saw Radiohead's first collaboration with their future producer, Nigel Godrich, who engineered the RAK sessions. When Leckie left the studio to attend a social engagement, Godrich and the band stayed to record B-sides. One song, "Black Star", was included on the album.

Whereas Pablo Honey was mostly written by Yorke, The Bends saw greater collaboration. Previously, all three guitarists had often played identical parts, creating a "dense, fuzzy wall" of sound. Their Bends roles were more divided, with Yorke generally playing rhythm, Greenwood lead and Ed O'Brien providing effects. O'Brien described the Boss DD-5, a delay pedal, as important to the album's sound. The band also created more restrained arrangements; in O'Brien's words, "We were very aware of something on The Bends that we weren't aware of on Pablo Honey… If it sounded really great with Thom playing acoustic with Phil and [Colin], what was the point in trying to add something more?"

"Planet Telex" began with a drum loop taken from another song, the B-side "Killer Cars", and was written and recorded in a single evening at RAK. "(Nice Dream)" began as a simple four-chord song by Yorke, and was expanded with extra parts by O'Brien and Greenwood. Much of "Just" was written by Greenwood, who, according to Yorke, "was trying to get as many chords as he could into a song". Not satisfied with the versions of "My Iron Lung" recorded at RAK, Radiohead used a live recording from the London Astoria, with Yorke's vocals replaced and the audience removed.

Radiohead made several efforts to record "Fake Plastic Trees". O'Brien likened one version to the Guns N' Roses song "November Rain", saying it was "pompous and bombastic ... just the worst". Eventually, Leckie recorded Yorke playing "Fake Plastic Trees" alone, which the rest of the band used to build the final song. "High and Dry" was recorded the previous year at Courtyard Studios, Oxfordshire, by Radiohead's live sound engineer, Jim Warren. Yorke later said it was a "very bad" song that EMI had pressured him into releasing.

"The Bends", "(Nice Dream)" and "Just" were identified as potential singles and became the focus of the early sessions, which created tension. Leckie recalled: "We had to give those absolute attention, make them amazing, instant smash hits, number one in America. Everyone was pulling their hair out saying, 'It's not good enough!' We were trying too hard." Yorke in particular struggled with the pressure, and Radiohead's co-manager Chris Hufford considered quitting, citing Yorke's "mistrust of everybody". Jonny Greenwood spent days testing new guitar equipment, searching for a distinctive sound, before reverting to his Telecaster. The bassist, Colin Greenwood, described the period as "eight weeks of hell and torture". According to Yorke, "We had days of painful self-analysis, a total fucking meltdown for two fucking months." O'Brien said each member examined their options for leaving their contracts.

With the October deadline abandoned, recording paused in May and June while Radiohead toured Europe, Japan and Australasia. Work resumed for two weeks in July at the Manor studio in Oxfordshire, where Radiohead completed songs including "Bones", "Sulk" and "The Bends". This was followed by tours of the UK, Thailand and Mexico. In Mexico, the band members had a major argument. Yorke said: "Years of tension and not saying anything to each other, and basically all the things that had built up since we'd met each other, all came out in one day. We were spitting and fighting and crying and saying all the things that you don't want to talk about. It completely changed and we went back and did the album and it all made sense." The tour gave Radiohead a new sense of purpose and their relationships improved. Hufford encouraged them to make the album they wanted instead of worrying about "product and units".

Recording ended in November 1994 at Abbey Road Studios in London. Selway said the album was recorded in about four months total. Leckie mixed some of The Bends at Abbey Road. With deadlines approaching, EMI grew concerned that he was taking too long. Without his knowledge, they sent tracks to Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie, who had produced Pablo Honey, to mix instead. Leckie disliked their mixes, finding them "brash", but later said: "I went through a bit of trauma at the time, but maybe they chose the best thing." Only three of Leckie's mixes were used on the album.

Music
The Bends has been described as alternative rock and indie rock. Like Pablo Honey, it features guitar-oriented rock songs, but its songs are "more spacey and odd", according to The Gazette 's Bill Reed. The music is more eclectic than Pablo Honey; Colin Greenwood said Radiohead wanted to distinguish themselves from Pablo Honey and that The Bends better represented their style. Pitchfork wrote that it contrasts warmth and tension, riffs and texture, and rock and post-rock. Several critics identified it as a Britpop album, though Radiohead disliked Britpop, seeing it as a "backwards-looking" pastiche.

The critic Simon Reynolds wrote that The Bends brought an "English art rock element" to the fore of Radiohead's sound. According to Kolderie, "The Bends was neither an English album nor an American album. It's an album made in the void of touring and travelling. It really had that feeling of, 'We don't live anywhere and we don't belong anywhere.'" Reed described the album as "intriguingly disturbed" and "bipolar". He likened "The Bends" to the late music of the Beatles, described "My Iron Lung" as hard rock, and noted more subdued sounds on "Bullet Proof ... I Wish I Was" and "High and Dry", showcasing Radiohead's "more plaintive and meditative side".

Rolling Stone described The Bends as a "mix of sonic guitar anthems and striking ballads", with lyrics evoking a "haunted landscape" of sickness, consumerism, jealousy and longing. Several songs evoke a "sense of a disintegrated or disconnected subject". The journalist Mac Randall described the lyrics as "a veritable compendium of disease, disgust and depression" that nonetheless become uplifting in the context of the "inviting" and "powerful" arrangements. Jonny Greenwood said The Bends was about "illness and doctors… revulsion about our own bodies". Yorke said it was "an incredibly personal album, which is why I spent most of my time denying that it was personal at all". The album title, a term for decompression sickness, references Radiohead's rapid rise to fame with "Creep". Yorke said, "We just came up too fast."

In "Fake Plastic Trees", Yorke laments the effects of consumerism on modern relationships. It was inspired by the commercial development of Canary Wharf and a performance by Jeff Buckley, who inspired Yorke to use falsetto. Sasha Frere-Jones compared its melody to the "second theme of a Schubert string quartet". In "Just", Jonny Greenwood plays octatonic scales that extend over four octaves, influenced by the 1978 Magazine song "Shot By Both Sides". With the use of a DigiTech Whammy pedal, Greenwood pitch-shifts the solo into a high, piercing frequency. Greenwood also uses the Whammy for the opening riff of "My Iron Lung", creating a "glitchy, lo-fi" sound. According to Randall, "My Iron Lung" transitions from a "jangly" opening hook to a "McCartney-esque verse melody" and "pulverising guitar explosions" in the bridge.

"Sulk" was written as a response to the Hungerford massacre. It originally ended with the lyric "just shoot your gun". Yorke omitted it after the suicide of the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994, as he did not want listeners to believe it was an allusion to Cobain. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" was inspired by R.E.M. and the 1991 novel The Famished Road by Ben Okri; the lyrics detail an escape from an oppressive reality. The journalist Rob Sheffield described "Street Spirit", "Planet Telex" and "High and Dry" as a "big-band dystopian epic".

Artwork
The Bends was the first Radiohead album with artwork by Stanley Donwood. Donwood met Yorke while they were students at the University of Exeter, and previously created artwork for the My Iron Lung EP. With Yorke, Donwood has created all of Radiohead's artwork since.

For The Bends, Yorke and Donwood hired a cassette camera and filmed objects including road signs, packaging and street lights. They entered a hospital to film an iron lung, but, according to Donwood, found that iron lungs "are not very interesting to look at". Instead, they filmed a CPR mannequin, which Donwood described as having "a facial expression like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously". To create the cover image, the pair displayed the footage on a television set and photographed the screen.

Release
In September 1994, EMI released the My Iron Lung EP, comprising "My Iron Lung" plus Bends outtakes. "My Iron Lung" was also released as a single. The A&R VP Perry Watts-Russel said EMI did not pursue radio play as "My Iron Lung" was intended for fans rather than as the lead single for The Bends.

The Bends was released in Japan on 8 March 1995 by EMI, and in the UK on 13 March by Parlophone Records. It spent 16 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, reaching number four. On the same day as the UK release, Radiohead's performance at the London Astoria in May 1994 was released on VHS as Live at the Astoria, including several Bends tracks.

In the US, The Bends was released on 4 April by EMI's North American subsidiary, Capitol Records. According to the journalist Tim Footman, Capitol almost refused to release it, feeling it lacked hit singles. It debuted at the bottom of the US Billboard 200 in the week of 13 May and reached number 147 in the week of 24 June. It re-entered the chart in the week of 17 February 1996, and reached number 88 on 20 April, almost exactly a year after its release. On 4 April, The Bends was certified gold in the US for sales of half a million copies. Though it remains Radiohead's lowest-charting album in the US, it was certified platinum in January 1999 for sales of one million copies.

Interest from influential musicians such as the R.E.M. vocalist Michael Stipe, combined with several distinctive music videos, helped sustain Radiohead's popularity outside the UK. Selway credited the videos for helping The Bends "gradually seep into people's consciousness". "Fake Plastic Trees" was used in the 1995 film Clueless and is credited for introducing Radiohead to a larger American audience. According to the MTV host Matt Pinfield, record companies would ask why MTV kept promoting The Bends when it was selling less than their albums; his reply was: "Because it's great!" Yorke thanked Pinfield by giving him a gold record of ''The Bends. ''

By the end of 1996, The Bends had sold around two million copies worldwide. In the UK, it was certified platinum in February 1996 for sales of over 300,000, and was certified quadruple platinum in July 2013.

Singles
According to Hufford, American audiences were disappointed by the lack of a "Creep"-style song on The Bends. In response, Capitol chose "Fake Plastic Trees" as the first US single, to further distance Radiohead from "Creep". It failed to enter the US Billboard Hot 100, but reached number 20 on the UK Singles Chart. "Just", released in the UK on August 21, reached number 19. It was not released as a single in the US, but its music video, directed by Jamie Thraves, received attention there. The next US single, the double A-side "High and Dry" and "Planet Telex", reached number 78. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", released in January 1996, reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, surpassing "Creep" and demonstrating that Radiohead were not one-hit wonders. "The Bends" was released as a single in Ireland and reached number 26 on the Irish Singles Chart in August 1996.

Tours
Radiohead toured extensively for The Bends, with performances in North America, Europe and Japan. They first toured in support of Soul Asylum, then R.E.M., one of their formative influences and one of the world's biggest rock bands at the time. Yorke said about the tour with R.E.M: "Everything that we've come to expect was completely turned on its head. Like the idea that you get to a certain level and you lose it. Everything was amicable and there was no bitchiness or pettiness about it."

The American tour included a performance at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas concert at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, alongside Oasis, Alanis Morissette, No Doubt and Porno for Pyros. The Capitol employee Clark Staub described this as a "key stepping stone" for Radiohead in the US.

Before a performance in Denver, Colorado, Radiohead's tour van was stolen and with it their musical equipment. Yorke and Jonny Greenwood performed a stripped-down set with rented instruments and several shows were cancelled. Greenwood was reunited with his stolen Fender Telecaster Plus in 2015 after a fan recognised it as one they had purchased in Denver in the 1990s. In November 1995, Yorke became sick and collapsed on stage at a show in Munich. NME covered the incident in a story titled "Thommy's Temper Tantrum". Yorke said it was the most hurtful thing anyone had written about him, and refused to give interviews to NME for five years.

In March 1996, Radiohead toured the US again and performed on The Tonight Show and 120 Minutes. In mid-1996, they played at European festivals including Pinkpop in Holland, Tourhout Werchter in Belgium and T in the Park in Scotland. That August, Radiohead toured as the opening act for Morissette, performing early versions of several songs from their next album, OK Computer.

Critical reception
The Bends brought Radiohead significant critical attention. The Guardian critic Caroline Sullivan wrote that Radiohead had "transformed themselves from nondescript guitar-beaters to potential arena-fillers ... The grandeur may eventually pall, as it has with U2, but it's been years since big bumptious rock sounded this emotional." Q described The Bends as a "powerful, bruised, majestically desperate record of frighteningly good songs", while NME's Mark Sutherland wrote that "Radiohead clearly resolved to make an album so stunning it would make people forget their own name, never mind ['Creep']", describing it as "the consummate, all-encompassing, continent-straddling '90s rock record". Dave Morrison of Select wrote that it "captures and clarifies a much wider trawl of moods than Pablo Honey" and praised Radiohead as "one of the UK's big league, big-rock assets". NME and Melody Maker named The Bends among the top ten albums of the year.

Critical reception in the United States was mixed. Chuck Eddy of Spin deemed much of the album "nodded-out nonsense mumble, not enough concrete emotion", while Kevin McKeough from the Chicago Tribune panned Yorke's lyrics as "self-absorbed" and the music as overblown and pretentious. In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote that the guitar parts and expressions of angst were skilful and natural, but lacked depth: "The words achieve precisely the same pitch of aesthetic necessity as the music, which is none at all." In the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Morris praised Yorke as "almost as enticingly enigmatic as Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, though of a more delicate constitution".

In 1997, Jonny Greenwood said The Bends had been a "turning point" for Radiohead: "It started appearing in people's [best of] polls for the end of the year. That's when it started to feel like we made the right choice about being a band." The success gave Radiohead the confidence to self-produce their next album, OK Computer (1997), with Godrich.

Legacy
In 2015, Selway said The Bends had marked the origin of the "Radiohead aesthetic", aided by Donwood's artwork. The journalist Rob Sheffield recalled that The Bends "shocked the world", elevating Radiohead from "pasty British boys to a very 70s kind of UK art-rock godhead". It attracted interest from high-profile musicians and film stars.

Two years after its release, the Guardian critic Caroline Sullivan wrote that The Bends had taken Radiohead from "indie one hit-wonder" into the "premier league of respected British rock bands". The Rolling Stone journalist Jordan Runtagh wrote in 2012 that The Bends was "a musically dense and emotionally complex masterwork that erased their one-hit-wonder status forever". The writer Nick Hornby wrote in 2000 that, with The Bends, Radiohead "found their voice ... No other contemporary band has managed to mix such a cocktail of rage, sarcasm, self-pity, exquisite tunefulness and braininess."

In Pitchfork, Scott Plagenhoef wrote that The Bends presented a "more approachable and loveable version" of Radiohead and remained many fans' favourite album. He argued that it presented a transition from Britpop to "the more feminine, emotionally engaging music that would emerge in the UK a few years later", led by OK Computer.

Influence
The Bends influenced a generation of British and Irish acts, including Coldplay, Keane, James Blunt, Muse, Athlete, Elbow, Snow Patrol, Kodaline, Turin Brakes and Travis. Pitchfork credited songs as such as "High and Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees" for anticipating the "airbrushed" post-Britpop of Coldplay and Travis. Acts including Garbage, R.E.M. and k.d. lang began to cite Radiohead as a favourite band. The Cure contacted Radiohead to inquire about the Bends production in the hope of replicating it.

In 2006, The Observer named The Bends one of "the 50 albums that changed music", saying it had popularised an "angst-laden falsetto ... a thoughtful opposite to the chest-beating lad-rock personified by Oasis", which "eventually coalesced into an entire decade of sound". Yorke held contempt for the style of rock The Bends popularised, feeling other acts had copied him. He said in 2006: "I was really, really upset about it, and I tried my absolute best not to be, but yeah, it was kind of like— that sort of thing of missing the point completely." Godrich felt Yorke was oversensitive and told him he did not invent "guys singing in falsetto with an acoustic guitar".

Accolades
In 2000, in a vote of more than 200,000 music fans and journalists, The Bends was named the second-greatest album of all time behind Revolver (1966) by the Beatles. Q readers voted it the second-best album in 1998 and 2006, behind OK Computer. Colin Larkin named it the second-best album of all time in the 2000 edition of All Time Top 1000 Albums. It was included in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Rolling Stone placed it at number 110 on its original 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at 111 in its 2012 list, and at 276 in its 2020 list. In 2006, it reached number 10 in a worldwide poll of the great albums organised by British Hit Singles & Albums and NME. Paste named it the 11th-greatest album of the 1990s. In 2020, the Independent named it the best album of 1995, writing: "Downbeat, melancholic, yet wonderfully melodic and uplifting ... The Bends stood apart from Britpop and everything else in the storied year of 1995." In 2017, Pitchfork named The Bends the third-greatest Britpop album, writing that its "epic portrayal of drift and disenchantment secures its reluctant spot in Britpop's pantheon".

Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including The Bends. On 31 August 2009, EMI reissued The Bends and other Radiohead albums in a "Collector's Edition" compiling B-sides and live performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissue and the music was not remastered.

In February 2013, Parlophone was bought by Warner Music Group (WMG). In April 2016, as a result of an agreement with the trade group Impala, WMG transferred Radiohead's back catalogue to XL Recordings. The EMI reissues, released without Radiohead's consent, were removed from streaming services. In May 2016, XL reissued Radiohead's back catalogue on vinyl, including The Bends.

Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead.

Personnel
Adapted from the liner notes.

Radiohead
 * Thom Yorke – voice, guitar, piano; string arrangements
 * Jonny Greenwood – guitar, organ, recorder, synthesiser, piano; string arrangements
 * Ed O'Brien – guitar, voice
 * Colin Greenwood – bass
 * Philip Selway – drums

Additional musicians
 * Caroline Lavelle – cello
 * John Matthias – viola, violin

Production
 * John Leckie – production (tracks 1, 2, 4–12), mixing (tracks 2, 3, 11, 12), engineering
 * Radiohead – production (tracks 3, 10), mixing
 * Nigel Godrich – production (track 10), engineering
 * Jim Warren – production (track 3), engineering
 * Sean Slade – mixing
 * Paul Q. Kolderie – mixing
 * Chris Brown – engineering
 * Guy Massey – engineering assistance
 * Shelley Saunders – engineering assistance
 * Chris Blair – mastering

Design
 * Stanley Donwood – artwork
 * The White Chocolate Farm – artwork
 * Green Ink – painting

title: The Bends (album)