This Isn't Happening

In either case, what was “real” was in fact extremely fictional. That was just how it was in the early ’00s. And you… accepted it.

Years before Wikipedia or most other online resources, these sites were among the first places where Radiohead fans could go to learn basic information about the band, like a history of their EPs and single releases. It was also a clearinghouse for news items about whatever Radiohead happened to be doing in the studio or on the road.

Kid A unfolds exactly as the Internet does. It is obscure and inexplicable and moves relentlessly forward without bothering to explain itself, offering no context outside of our own personal biases, opinions, and limited consciousness. And yet… we understand it intuitively.

You know the phrase “fuck-you money”? Radiohead will one day have “fuck-you” credibility.

the world never recovered from the era between Kid A and Hail to the Thief.

Yorke credited Blood & Chocolate as “the album that made me change the way I thought about recording and writing music. Lyrics, too.” You can hear that influence loud and clear in “Creep.”

While the aughts were a time of massive trauma in nearly all areas of public life—caused by war, terrorism, duplicitous governments, and a mass-media system that was breaking down and drifting toward an à la carte “choose your own reality” pluralism—it still felt like the Internet was a place where truth, intelligence, and individuality might still

Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon. With any luck, I will wake up sucking a lemon tomorrow too.

Nobody looks to Radiohead now to make the masterpiece that will define our present moment. Thom Yorke is no longer the sort of artist who can seek out what’s ahead of us. There are newer, younger artists for that, as there should be. Yorke’s role now is to explore his own past, to dialogue with it, to reconnect with what was lost and how we were ch