Radiohead

Radiohead is a British band that has played together since they were in high school. The band members are Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Colin Greenwood, and Phil Selway. Thom is the lead vocals, Jonny plays guitar and keyboard, Ed plays guitar and also sings backup vocals, Colin plays base, and Phil is the drummer.

Radiohead’s sound has evolved significantly from their humble origins. They began playing out of their school’s music room on Fridays. Showing their ever-present sense of irony, their band was first named On A Friday in honor of their normal practice day. The band members played regularly together through high school, and got together on occasion while they were in college. Once they had graduated, the band reformed and began recording in earnest.

On A Friday played in and around the Oxford area in England. They picked up managers and were eventually signed to a record label. At the request of their label, they changed their name to Radiohead. In 1992 they released their first single, “Creep”. That single was followed by the release of their debut album Pablo Honey in 1993. Neither album nor the single made much of an impact on the local music scene. However, “Creep” did extremely well overseas and has since become the band’s top selling single. Radiohead was subsequently booked on tour dates in Tel Aviv and the United States.

The combination of home antipathy and overseas fame thrust the band into a difficult situation. They were playing music they’d written, and failed to gain the attention of their nation with over two years after they’d written it. When they returned to the studio, they tried to veer away from the MTV lifestyle they felt they’d been used to represent. Their second album The Bends fared better at home than their debut, and their fame abroad continued to grow. Radiohead’s third album, Ok Computer has been their greatest selling album, for reasons we’ll touch on later. It featured such singles as “Karma Police” and “Paranoid Android.”

The band took their sound in a markedly different direction with their fourth album, Kid A. The album stepped away from the natural, acoustic sound that had marked all their previous releases. It featured heavy electronic as well as orchestral additions, and scaled back the guitar playing. The drastic difference caused fans and critics to offer mixed reviews of the album, but it cut such popular singles as “Idioteque” and “Optimistic” from the album with huge success. They released Hail to the Thief in 2003, which fulfilled their initial contract with their record label.

After that album, Radiohead did something truly different. They produced their seventh album In Rainbows. Rather than signing with a label and producing the album in the traditional manner, the band chose instead to offer the album for download on their site. The truly innovative portion of the sale was that you could pay “whatever you felt like” for the album, up to and including nothing. The nearly free release was followed by a more traditional CD release six months later. As a result, sales numbers for In Rainbows are unreliable. Nevertheless the album has gone gold in both the US and UK. Actual numbers are probably much higher than traditional sales.