Immerse Your Soul In Love - The Radiohead Thread
- Thread starter Joe Mac
- Start date
gaporter
Well-Known Member
I have to ask - would Kid A really be that mindblowing to a kid nowadays? It's a great album but it's been over 20 years since it came out and any album is going to start to sound a bit dated at some point. I'm much younger than the average poster on here but I'm also old enough to where I feel like my generation might be the last to really be wowed by Radiohead. Consider that we live in the age of streaming, where even the most experimental music can find a fairly large audience with the right promotion, and the "shock" of a band like Radiohead releasing something like Kid A just doesn't have the same impact to a modern audience unless they're given all of the context around it.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
LOL, He’s absolutely loves Radiohead and Oasis. He’s basically the American version of Joe Mac
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
I don’t always like the people I agree with and I don’t always agree with the people I like.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
It all depends on the context. I would argue very few artists (save perhaps Kanye) of today are both as “mind blowing” AND as popular as Radiohead have been. Yeah there is lots of band that are weird as fuck but most of those bands have a fraction of the audience that Radiohead has/had. Kid A was a number 1 album on the Billboard charts in both the US and UK upon its release. Pop culture today is rarely ubiquitous. Weirder band today can certainly find much larger audience than they could 20 years ago but with more artist taking on a bigger slice of the audience it’s harder than ever to today to be both experimental and have mass appeal.
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Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
It’s one of those that at 17 it utterly blew my mind. By 20/21 (around HTTT) I’d realised it was just Radiohead writing Radiohead songs but with a new electronic element to the sound. I can’t help but think that someone who has just had all the Radiohead there in front of them rather than grown with the band would not see it as the departure and/or shock that it was to us in 2000.
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TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
Well said! I feel like there might be some projection there and that’s completely alright.
You seem like the type of chap that would have a tough time enjoying any sort critic/reviewer. I personally am a fan of critics; I love reading reviews from entertaining writers (regardless of whether I would agree with their specific review or not); from Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau to David Fricke to Jim DeRogatis, Rob Sheffield, Greg Kot, Chuck Klosterman, to Ryan Schreiber Andy Greenwald and Steven Hyden. I enjoy a good critical essay or review regardless.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
Depends on the critic to be honest. Good reviews and reviewers have generally been my gateway to discovering new music. I’m also someone who utterly rejects star or out of ten scores and instead I concentrate totally on the content of the review. There’s just something about his personality in those pieces that rubs me up the wrong way and I can’t quite put my finger on it!
gaporter
Well-Known Member
Yes but that was partially my point - "mass appeal" is really optional nowadays. I'm not arguing Radiohead's achievements, I think it's clear from my presence in this thread I will happily ramble on about how great they are as much the next person. But will a young person in let's say, 40 years from now bother looking at that context? Does it matter to current young people how many #1 songs The Beatles had during their run? And on that note, look at Sgt. Pepper's - you could make an argument, in terms of innovation and not sounding like anything else, it was essentially the Kid A of its time, but put that album in front of a 13-year-old right now without any context and see what they think of it. I think it's just an example of time marching on more than anything; it doesn't say anything negative about Kid A, it's still an impressive piece of work and always will be, but odds are it will eventually end up seeming passe to audiences who have lived with its influence for several decades.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
It’s surprising, I guess I never considered that Steve Hyden would be a polarizing writer but here we are. Being originally from a small town in the Midwest and him being about 5 years older than me I guess he reminds me a lot of me and my friends as we grew up and talking about music (lots of pop culture references, sardonic jokes, with self deprecating wit mixed in).
I mean I personally have no time for Anthony Fantano and I know a lot of people across the interweb find him to be quite entertaining, to each there own I suppose.
gaporter
Well-Known Member
I'll say that my views on Radiohead are much different than others on here due to my age, because growing up I alternated between their first couple of albums and didn't really think much of it. I actually remember being very young and seeing the "Best Of" CD in a Barnes & Noble before listening to any of their music and thinking they were an electronic group along the lines of Daft Punk
Obviously I gave myself an education in Radiohead later down the line but the fact remains that I don't have the connection to Kid A others do, but I'm also a music nerd that recognizes that it was indeed a big deal for its time.Also, I think there's something to be said for the fact that Kid A clearly had its own music it was indebted to; anyone who was into Björk or Aphex Twin (among others) in 2000 probably recognized what Radiohead was going for. That's not to say they didn't make something new out of these influences, but a lot of reviews for and discussion about Kid A have tried to pretend that Radiohead singlehandedly pioneered forward-thinking usage of electronic music, which does a disservice to a lot of artists in the 90s who laid the groundwork for Kid A to be what it was.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
I agree if your point you is that familiarity dampens excitement. Something 20 years old isn’t gonna have the same luster especially if the product is emulated by other lesser quality artists. The Beatles have been copied more than any group in history and though I was born in the 1980 and really didn’t start exploring the group until the mid to late 90s “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “A Day In the Life” still blew my mind. I feel Like Kid A is similar in that regard.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
I can’t speak for every reviewer or review but I feel like many reviews at the time made a point to reference Kid A influences. I feel like Radiohead (much like Nirvana had) made sure to note their inspiration, all of which became fodder for music writers trying to fill out column inches. The specific thing that made this album innovative was that it tied electronic music to Rock music in ways that had not been done previously while still remaining hugely popular.
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Ericj32
Well-Known Member
I feel like I remember this all really differently though. The reason Kid A was #1 on the charts had less to do with the popularity of what Radiohead did with Kid A and more to do with the popularity of OK Computer and the fact that, in a pre-streaming world, you had to buy albums in order to listen to them. There weren’t any singles released before it came out and very little promotional work, so the vast majority of those sales cannot be attributed to the music on the album itself.
In fact, there was a considerable backlash by the fans of OK Computer who bought Kid A and, once they were able to listen to it, did not at all like the way that it sounded and wanted their money back. Many people thought it was unnecessarily difficult and alienating. Nick Hornby famously panned the album in the New Yorker in a review that I obviously disagree with, but still enjoy reading. Here’s the last paragraph of his review:
“Radiohead reportedly spent more than a year recording one song that it eventually decided not to include on “Kid A.” The album is morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity, rather than something distinctive and original. (The CD pamphlet, incidentally, contains a splenetic attack on Tony Blair, who may feel entitled to ask himself how a band that spends a year failing to come up with an album track would have responded to the Kosovo crisis or the floundering Northern Ireland peace process.) Nobody is asking Radiohead not to grow, or change, or do something different. It would be nice, however, if the band’s members recognized that the enormous, occasionally breathtaking gifts they have—for songwriting, and singing, and playing, and connecting, and inspiring—are really nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, they might even come in handy next time around. ♦”
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
If it still exists the Melody Maker review is one of the most damning reviews of a major act by a music magazine that i can remember. The author still stands by too, whilst accepting that lots of people that he likes and respects disagree with him.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
We are traveling on different plains of existence my friend, I was a freshman in college when Kid A dropped me and my group listened to the album (which leaked on P2P sites well before the release date) were blown away and were super pumped about its release. I am sure for a certain portion of the populous that wasn’t into file sharing, probably went in and purchased it blind but I think most of the people who purchase the album were very excited for it because of what they had heard via the leak.
Also most of my review sources at the time heaped tremendous praise on the album upon its release…
Review: Radiohead, 'Kid A'
9SPIN Rating: 9 of 10Release Date: October 02, 2000Label: CapitolThis review originally ran in the October 2000 issue of SPIN. In honor of the 15th
www.spin.com
Radiohead: Kid A
I had never even seen a shooting star before. 25 years of rotations, passes through comets' paths, and travel, and ...
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
From Wikipedia:
“Kid A was widely anticipated. In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they became one of the first major acts to use the internet as a promotional tool; Kid A was made available to stream and was promoted with short animated films featuring music and artwork. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and the album was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.”
“Kid A was widely anticipated. In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they became one of the first major acts to use the internet as a promotional tool; Kid A was made available to stream and was promoted with short animated films featuring music and artwork. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and the album was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.”
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
This thread is exhausting. Can’t everyone just share in my exact same opinion on everything so I can go back to posting Simpsons memes.
Ericj32
Well-Known Member
Yeah this was also published in Rolling Stone at the time, but no longer appears in their official website:We are traveling on different plains of existence my friend, I was a freshman in college when Kid A dropped me and my group listened to the album (which leaked on P2P sites well before the release date) were blown away and were super pumped about its release. I am sure for a certain portion of the populous that wasn’t into file sharing, probably went in and purchased it blind but I think most of the people who purchase the album were very excited for it because of what they had heard via the leak.
Also most of my review sources at the time heaped tremendous praise on the album upon its release…
Review: Radiohead, 'Kid A'
9SPIN Rating: 9 of 10Release Date: October 02, 2000Label: CapitolThis review originally ran in the October 2000 issue of SPIN. In honor of the 15th
Radiohead: Kid A
I had never even seen a shooting star before. 25 years of rotations, passes through comets' paths, and travel, and ...www.google.com
RollingStone.com: Radiohead
Includes bio, photo gallery, news, discography, album reviews, audio/video, message boards and more.
web.archive.org
yeah the “critical reception” section of that article shows plenty of the negative reactions:
After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, obscured vocals, and unconventional song structures,[1] and some called the album "a commercial suicide note".[6] The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners.[1] Mojo 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."[120]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".[111]
Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Timesbemoaned 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."[118] In the New Yorker, 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".[121] 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."[112] Alexis Petridis of the Guardiandescribed 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".[122] Rolling Stone published a piece by Michael Krugman and Jason Cohen mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs; they wrote: "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."[123]
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
My point wasn’t that there weren’t negative reviews my point was that the we experienced the album was quite a bit differently and I don’t recall the album as being all that divisive. It receive more glowing reviews than negative ones and most everyone I knew (even the hip-hop kids) were buying and playing this album.