Trivia / Kid A

• Approval of God:
  • Warp Records founder Steve Beckett, whose artists Radiohead attempted to emulate on Kid A, praised the album upon its release, remarking that it would be much more appreciated in the years to come.
  • Boards of Canada have also applauded the album and even mentioned it having an influence on their own work.
  • Subverted by Autechre and Aphex Twin, who were both key influences for the album and were far more ambivalent towards it.
• Artist Disillusionment: The shift in sound and style on the album was influenced by the band experiencing this in the wake of OK Computer's success, with Thom Yorke specifically citing how the nervous breakdown he had following the album's tour cycle caused his longstanding distaste with the deification of rock music to come to a head. The album was a deliberate attempt to alienate their mainstream audience with a darker, more experimental album the way Kurt Cobain tried with Nirvana's In Utero, even if both albums would be held in high regard.
• Black Sheep Hit: An odd example with "Idioteque". While it was never released as a single (given that Kid A never had any singles), it was enough of a fan-favorite to make it onto Radiohead: The Best Of in 2008 (a compilation issued by Parlophone without the band's consent), and is generally used as a common representative of Kid A. Despite this, the song is much more danceable and melodic, arguably being classifiable as Synth-Pop or Alternative Dance, compared to the rest of the album, which otherwise leans in the direction of art rock.
• Creator Breakdown: Both this album and Amnesiac (recorded during the same sessions) were heavily influenced by the nervous breakdown frontman Thom Yorke suffered as a result of the sudden burst in popularity that the success of OK Computer brought about, which led to an extensive and unyielding promotion campaign and a wave of emerging imitation acts, both of which eventually left the band burnt out. The progression of this breakdown is documented in the 1998 documentary Meeting People is Easy.
• Fan Nickname: The Hidden Track / coda to "Motion Picture Soundtrack" was sometimes referred to as "Genchildren" due to a misunderstanding about an early Content Leak of the album. The album was initially leaked by a person / group who went by the screenname "genchildren" and had tagged this name after every song title, with the Hidden Track / coda indexed as its own track and simply labeled "-genchildren"; listeners who downloaded this version tended to remove this tag from all tracks except the last one, so other listeners who downloaded it secondhand thought "Genchildren" was the track's official title.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While the Kid A blips were readily available online for some time, they were pulled off after a while, and for a good chunk of the 2010s the only way to actually watch the blips was via low-quality fan uploads on YouTube and other video-sharing sites. This trope would eventually be averted in 2019, when the blips were all made available via an HD omnibus compilation on the Radiohead Public Library.
• Refitted for Sequel: "Motion Picture Soundtrack" was one of the earliest songs Radiohead had put together under their current moniker, predating their debut single "Creep" and being visited in various forms in the studio over the years; among other examples, work-in-progress versions from the OK Computer sessions can be found on the white cassette in the deluxe edition of OKNOTOK and in the MiniDiscs (Hacked) outtake compilation, respectively, both with an additional verse left out of the final version. The song would eventually be reworked for pedal organ and harp as the closing track to this album.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The album's famed lack of singles came about purely from the stress the band faced when promoting OK Computer; they didn't want to risk facing another bout of burnout, and consequently took a more minimalist approach to promoting Kid A. The consequent elusiveness of the album's blips and the limiting of individual song releases to promotional handouts for radio stations readily reflects this sentiment.
• What Could Have Been: Kid A and Amnesiac were originally recorded as a single double album; however, the band later decided to split their double-CD effort into two separate albums, released several months apart from one another, out of a concern that a double album would be too dense. Word of God states that "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places, I think ... In some weird way I think Amnesiac gives another take on Kid A, a form of explanation." As a nod to this, the two are packaged together in the Kid A Mnesia anniversary set.

---