Trivia / Radiohead

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: In addition to the quote about "Street Spirit" under God Never Said That below, several other fake Thom quotes, primilarily from this website, have been spread around the Internet as if they were real, no matter how outrageous they are. Someone even wrote a blog post about one such quote, in which Thom allegedly suggests Sonic the Hedgehog is an allegory for capitalism!
• Black Sheep Hit: They have a knack for this.
  • "Creep," their first hit, isn't one in the context of their debut album, but it's become more of a starting point for their work than anything else — they evolved past it fairly quickly. Their highest-charting song since then, "Bodysnatchers," is considerably more raucous and punk-influenced than the rest of In Rainbows.
  • "Lotus Flower" (which, thanks to its memetically famous video, became quite big online) sounds almost nothing like the band's prior work.
• Blooper: The "There There" video has a fleeting continuity error when Thom loses the boots. The left boot slips off first, resulting in Thom's left foot taking root when it lands unshod on the ground. Despite this, when the video cuts afterwards to the right boot slipping off, Thom's left foot passes by the camera, still shod and rootless.
• Breakthrough Hit: "Creep".
• Bury Your Art:
  • After regaining the rights to their catalog, Radiohead withdrew the non-album single "Pop Is Dead" — which they openly regretted making — from circulation. It was last seen on the 2009 collector's edition of Pablo Honey, which, like the other collector's editions of their first six albums, was put out by Parlophone Records without the band's consent. "Pop Is Dead" currently stands as their only officially-released song not available on digital platforms.
  • An Animated Music Video for "Let Down" was created by Simon Hilton, only to be rejected by the band because they didn't like how it turned out, with Thom Yorke outright calling it "shite." Hilton eventually made the video available on his website, but eventually took it down for unspecified reasons; despite this, fan reuploads can be found online.
• Channel Hop: The band first signed to Parlophone Records in the UK and Capitol Records in the US. When they completed their contract with the labels with Hail to the Thief, they decided to release In Rainbows themselves, rebuffing attempts by EMI to renew their old contract out of distaste towards the company's new owners, Terra Firma. Instead, Radiohead signed with XL Recordings for the physical editions of In Rainbows, releasing both that album and The King of Limbs under the one-off vanity imprints TBD and Ticker Tape, respectively, before releasing A Moon Shaped Pool through XL alone. XL would also inherit the Parlophone/Capitol material after EMI dissolved in 2012.
• Chart Displacement: "Nude" is alongside "Creep" one of the band's two Top 40 hits in the US, only because of sales of the individual master stems for fans to make remixes for a competition. In the UK, "Pyramid Song" and "There There" are among the band's top 10 hits instead of their earlier, better known songs "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Just".
• Content Leak:
  • Kid A was leaked 3 weeks before its original release and available through Napster. This however did not stop the album from reaching number 1 in the United States, UK and some other countries despite the lack of general promotion for the album.
  • It happened again with Hail to the Thief where demo versions of the tracks got leaked 10 weeks before the finished version was commercially available. The band was upset, not because the album was being pirated, but because it had leaked before they had set the final mix.
  • These two examples are child's play, however, compared to what happened to OK Computer. The most common story is that an intern at XL Recordings got a hold of mini-discs that Thom kept demos, live performances, and alternate takes of songs and copied them to a USB in front of Colin Greenwood, who didn't care. After going through the hands of a few people, the latest person to get it decided to upload excerpts from these mini-discs, demanding $150,000 for the audio. Since nobody paid it, the leaker uploaded them online the next day. The result? On June 5, 2019, 17 hours worth of unreleased OK Computer content was released. The band responded a few days later by giving the material a limited digital release under the title MINIDISCS (HACKED), with proceeds going to climate activist group Extinction Rebellion.
• Creator Backlash:
  • The band don't look back fondly on the Pablo Honey era. Songs from then are virtually never performed anymore, with the exception of "Creep" every dozen or so shows. It also had incredibly memorable performances such as this one, in which Thom starts screaming and jumps into a pool. Some particular sticking points the band have with that period are as follows:
    • Radiohead grew to hate "Creep," which was their first hit song, because people would show up to their concerts exclusively to hear it, acted indignant until they played it, and left immediately afterwards. They continued to play it reluctantly, usually stating how they had no respect for the people that wanted to hear it right before. They eventually cut the song from their setlist for a long period of time, and wrote "My Iron Lung" as a reaction ("This / This is our new song / Just like the last one / A total waste of time / My iron lung"). They even asked every single band who were playing on the Pyramid Stage (which they headlined) at Glastonbury 2003 if they'd be so kind to perform it so they didn't have to (the duty was taken up by Moby instead). Since 2009, however, the band has had a much kinder stance towards "Creep" and now play it in concert often; it seems that they've warmed up to it now that they've long since escaped its shadow. They played "Creep" several times in 2009, 10 times in 2016 and 5 times in 2017 (including their Coachella and Glastonbury sets), each time receiving a warm reception from the audience.
    • The band as a whole aren't that fond of the early non-album single "Pop is Dead", to the point where it's the only officially-released song of theirs not available on streaming services.
  • Thom dislikes another early hit of theirs, "High and Dry," once saying about it, "It's not bad... it's very bad." Radiohead hasn't played it since 1998, and unlike "Creep", it likely won't be returning to their set list any time soon.
  • Thom has admitted that in retrospect he would've preferred to leave "Electioneering" off of OK Computer. Like "High and Dry", the song has also been out of their set lists since 1998.
  • Producer Nigel Godrich isn't very fond of the band's (almost) Bond song, "Spectre", for screwing with their momentum while making A Moon Shaped Pool.
• Creator Breakdown: Thom's periods of depression largely inspire the bleak tone of much of his work. Most notably, his trouble coping with the attention that the band received after the success of OK Computer (supposedly, at one point, he'd have panic attacks just by trying to play guitar) largely caused the much more challenging music in Kid A and Amnesiac.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: For a long while, the band openly refused to make their material officially available on any digital platform (barring In Rainbows and its "pay what you want" service), citing issues with the way they operated in regards to artist royalties. They eventually changed their opinion in 2016, with almost their entire backlog being made available on all digital download and streaming platforms as part of the Radiohead Public Library, a wider project that saw their backlog Rereleased for Free. The only song not put up was "Pop is Dead", a huge point of regret for the band.
• Dye Hard: Some fans can date Radiohead photoshoots by album era based off the cut and color of Thom's hair. The Pablo Honey era deserves particular mention for it being at a point where Radiohead were so determined to be the British Nirvana that Thom went as far as replicating Kurt Cobain's hairstyle (albeit with much more bleached-blonde hair compared to Cobain's dirty blonde).
• Follow the Leader: It'd likely be easier to name an alternative act that started since The Bends or OK Computer came out that doesn't see them as an influence, although Muse and Coldplay are the most commonly mentioned, to varying degrees of infamy. To the band's credit, Phil has gone on record stating that he has no problem with those select two bands taking inspiration from them, as Radiohead themselves did the same with other bands:
  "In a way, I think it is logical. When the group started it also had its references, you know, American things from the East Coast, like Pixies and Sonic Youth. From there you should try to refine your sound or endow it with your personality. But it doesn't seem bad to me that bands like Coldplay, from whom I've heard a couple of songs, Muse or Travis look at Radiohead as a starting point, as a provisional reference. We did it too."
• God Never Said That: The following hilariously pretentious quote about the true meaning of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", attributed to Thom, has been floating around the Internet since at least the early 2000s, despite the fact there's zero evidence he ever actually said it:
  "Street Spirit" is our purest song, but I didn’t write it. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers; its biological catalysts. Its core is a complete mystery to me, and, you know, I wouldn’t ever try to write something that hopeless. All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve. Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition. We all have a way of dealing with that song. It’s called detachment. Especially me; I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn’t play it. I’d crack. I’d break down on stage. That’s why its lyrics are just a bunch of mini-stories or visual images as opposed to a cohesive explanation of its meaning. I used images set to the music that I thought would convey the emotional entirety of the lyric and music working together. That’s what’s meant by ‘all these things you’ll one day swallow whole’. I meant the emotional entirety, because I didn’t have it in me to articulate the emotion. I’d crack… Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don’t realise what they’re listening to. They don’t realise that Street Spirit is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he’ll get the last laugh. And it’s real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I’d crack. I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that song.
• He Also Did:
  • Aside from Thom's solo music (and his score for Suspiria (2018)), he has occasionally appeared as a guest vocalist on other artists' works, such as Björk's "I've Seen It All" from the Dancer in the Dark soundtrack, and three songs from Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea by PJ Harvey.
  • Jonny has had a successful second career scoring films. He and Phil Selway also appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as part of the fictional band The Weird Sisters.
  • Ed and Phil have also released solo projects (the former under his initials, EOB), and both members participated in the charity project 7 Worlds Collide, organized by Neil Finn of Crowded House and featuring members such as Johnny Marr, Eddie Vedder, Lisa Germano, and four of the members of Wilco, among others.
  • Several band members/affiliates have been a part of separate bands; Thom and long-time producer Nigel Godrich were in the supergroup Atoms for Peace around the turn of the 2010s, and he and Jonny collaborated with Tom Skinner (drummer for Sons of Kemet) to form The Smile in 2021.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The band's 1993 non-album single "Pop is Dead" has not been officially available in any form since 2009, when it was included without their permission on a deluxe edition re-release of Pablo Honey, due to it being a source of regret for the band. When Radiohead made their back-catalog available on streaming services in 2016, "Pop is Dead" was the only song not put up, leaving older releases and unofficial reuploads the only means of listening to it.
  • While they were officially online for some time, the blips for Kid A and Amnesiac were taken down sometime later, only being viewable via unofficial fan uploads on YouTube and other video sharing sites and in much lower quality than what was originally broadcast on MTV. The Kid A blips were eventually made officially available online again via a 720p omnibus compilation on the Radiohead Public Library, but at the moment the Amnesiac blips are still only watchable through the low-quality fan reuploads.
    • The Public Library also lacks the unofficial video for "Motion Picture Soundtrack", which was made by Capitol Records out of the blips for Kid A and only aired on North American television.
  • The early leak of Hail to the Thief is unmastered (and therefore not Loudness War'd), and it also has some other differences from the final product such as extra passages that were deleted in the final version. You can still find it on the Internet if you know where to look; unfortunately, it's only available in 192kbps MP3.
• The Merch: Available here.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Just about all of the collaborators on TKOL RMX 1234567.
  • Jonny himself is one for composer Krzysztof Penderecki, with many of his classical compositions being inspired by him. He eventually performed with Penderecki at Sacrum Profanum 2011, and they even collaborated together on an album (48 Responses to Polymorphia being Jonny's own addition).
• Reality Subtext: See Creator Breakdown above. In addition:
  • Hail to the Thief was influenced in part by the rise of the far right in European and North American politics, as well as Thom's fatherhood.
  • A Moon Shaped Pool was colored by Thom's separation from Rachel Owen and the death of Nigel Godrich's father.
• Referenced by...:
  • The Wesley Willis song "Radiohead" describes Willis attending and enjoying a Radiohead concert in Chicago.
  • In Dear Evan Hansen, Evan has a poster for Radiohead in his room.
• Refitted for Sequel: There are many songs in the band's catalogue that were written in a certain album's sessions, but for various reasons were shelved—then appeared, reworked, on another album years later.
  • Examples of this are "Motion Picture Soundtrack" (written at the same time as "Creep" in the early 90s and eventually appearing on Kid A in 2000), "Nude" (written during the OK Computer sessions and finally appearing on In Rainbows), and "Morning Mr Magpie" (a Hail to the Thief-era leftover that appears in acoustic form on The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time , retooled later for The King of Limbs).
• Rereleased for Free: The whole point of the Radiohead Public Library, an official online archive of Radiohead's material that allows fans to access all of their works, both old and new, for no monetary payment. The stuff included on the site includes studio and live recordings going all the way back to the Drill EP in 1992, concert videos, music videos (including all of the Kid A blips in 720p), older versions of the band's website, liner notes, promotional flyers, and even the 1998 rockumentary Meeting People is Easy in its entirety.
• Schedule Slip: From Pablo Honey to Hail to the Thief: six albums in ten years. After Hail to the Thief to 2023: three more albums in 20 years.
• Throw It In!:
  • A missed cue led to the electric guitars in "Fake Plastic Trees" coming in late. It worked, so they left it.
  • The title of "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" stemmed from typos.
  • The three blasts of "dead notes" at the end of the verses in "Creep" were Jonny Greenwood getting frustrated with the slow song and trying to "fuck it up".
• Two-Hit Wonder: Despite all their influence, popularity, acclaim and a string of hits on the alternative chart, they spent the first 15 years of their career as a technical One-Hit Wonder in the US. "Creep" reached #33 on the Hot 100 in 1993, but not one of their other singles, not even fairly radio-friendly songs like "High and Dry" and "No Surprises", came close to the Top 40. That changed in 2008, when the band had a remix contest for their song "Nude" and released the stems of the track on iTunes. Billboard rolled the sales of those stems into those for the song itself, launching the "Nude" to a #37 peak. They haven't been back to the Top 40 since.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The band veered into the avant-garde electronica of Kid A as a reaction to the overwhelming praise garnered by OK Computer's more accessible, anthemic art rock. Fans of the latter sometimes find themselves wishing their favorite album hadn't been one of the most acclaimed of all time.
  • The B-side "Cuttooth," well-liked among fans, was very nearly included on Amnesiac, but was held off at the last minute for reasons unknown.
  • There were plans to release Kid A and Amnesiac as a double album; the two were eventually split apart due to the band feeling that a double album would be too dense.
  • Because the band often performs songs live before they set them to tape, there are a lot of versions of certain songs floating around. Some notable examples include the various forms of "Nude" played for a decade before it was finally recorded, and the original version of "Videotape" which ended with a rather epic rock-out instead of the album version's drum loops.
  • "Lift" was an early fan-favorite song that missed out on OK Computer, with it continuing to remain on the band's mind for so long that they even considered reworking it for A Moon Shaped Pool. Ed O'Brien explained that they couldn't make it work for either album (eventually leading it to be released as one of three new tracks on OKNOTOK), and even they ruminated on how different their careers might have turned out if it were released early and had gotten big.
  • Imagine what it would've been like if "Spectre" had actually been the theme song for the Bond movie. Maybe it would've won the Oscar that went to Sam Smith's Bond song instead.
  • Back when they were still called On A Friday, the band almost got a major record label contract with Island Records. Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien turned it down to focus on college, which Yorke later called the best decision he ever made. Considering how different they sounded as On A Friday, they probably wouldn't have been the same band if they took up the offer!
  • Before Jonny, Thom and Phil began their film scoring careers, the band were the first choice to compose the score for Fight Club. They turned it down to focus on preparing Kid A, and the final score was made by The Dust Brothers.
  • Yorke and Stanley Donwood had originally conceived Kid A Mnesia Exhibition as a physical installation in London, constructed from shipping containers to look like "a Brutalist spacecraft had crash-landed into the classical architecture of the Victoria & Albert museum in Kensington" before touring the rest of the world. However, the design was too big to fit in the V&A, and the Westminster City Council refused to let it be built in the side of the Royal Albert Hall. The COVID-19 Pandemic led to it being retooled into a VR game.
• Word of God:
  • Averted by the video for "Just": the final line that the man lying in the street says is not subtitled, and the cuts between odd camera angles make lip reading impossible. The band have refused to say what the line is. Lip-readers making the attempt have said that it seems to be "I like banana yoghurt."
  • Thom himself stepped in with the true lyrics of "Pearly*" ("Darling, use me") when he saw that fans were hearing it as "Daddy hurts me".
• Write What You Know: The band's lyrical emphasis on themes of mental instability (particularly on "Climbing Up The Walls") was at least partly based on Thom Yorke's experiences working in a mental ward during the enactment of the Care in the Community deinstitutionalization policy.

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