Word: radioheads
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Naturally, Yorke believes this was largely the fault of a whacked-out world. After the release of 1997's OK Computer (voted best album of the 20th century by the slightly presentist readers of England's Q magazine), Radiohead appeared to become the band--and the brand--of a certain kind of contrarian chic. If you were smart, cool and worried about the world, nothing broadcast it quicker than some casually scattered Radiohead discs. Yorke blames the forces of commerce for making him feel like a cartoon. "Ultimately you get to a point--Coldplay's a good example right...
...hear, and those that did make it through were not about sunshine and lollipops. The process of making Kid A, by Yorke's admission, was as disturbing as the material. Three hundred hours were spent on the construction of a single song, and Yorke, who had always been Radiohead's main lyricist and melody writer, seized control of some of the instrumental parts from his bandmates. He summed up the band dynamic at the time: "We're like the U.N. And I'm America...
...Radiohead got two albums out of the sessions--Kid A and the equally dystopian Amnesiac, but when the group reconvened to discuss plans for Hail to the Thief in early 2002, it was decided that the creative process had to change. The other members of Radiohead--Selway, guitarists Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood and bassist Colin Greenwood--grew up with Yorke in Oxford. They loved him as a friend and admired him as a songwriter. But they wanted to make a record in time to catch the next Olympics. "On Kid A and Amnesiac we had far too much...
...decrease the neurosis, O'Brien proposed a timeline: Radiohead would rehearse new songs for three months, play those songs on a late summer 2002 tour and then record them in a single two-week session. Yorke agreed and subsequently turned over three CDs of unstructured acoustic recordings of new songs to his bandmates. "He was really careful to give us stuff that was as neutral and as bland as possible," says bassist Colin Greenwood, "so that we would be able to work together on providing music...
...writing was complete, the group tried their songs out on actual human fans--a big step for them--and discovered that market testing music had its advantages. "Playing live just sort of reminds you that the recording process is artificial," says Jonny Greenwood, Colin's younger brother and Radiohead's resident multi-instrumentalist. "However quickly you record, the process elongates time. Obviously in a concert you never forget the length of a song. You always hear it in its entirety, and you know when it's boring or indulgent...