Radiohead compilation · In Rainbows era (2007–09)

Radiohead Box

EMI's Christmas box of the seven Parlophone records, announced five days after Radiohead signed to XL and released a week after their own box.

the sessions

22 Feb 1993ParlophonePablo Honey, the first of the seven records, is released
9 Jun 2003ParlophoneHail to the Thief, the last album owed to EMI
2007EMITerra Firma buys EMI; talks with the band break down
31 Oct 2007XL RecordingsRadiohead sign with XL for the In Rainbows CD
5 Nov 2007radioheadstore.comEMI announces the box, the download and the bear stick
13 Nov 2007GoogleA search advert for In Rainbows leads to the EMI box
4 Dec 2007NMEThe Belfort 2003 stream revealed as the computer extra
10 Dec 2007radioheadstore.comReleased in all three formats

2003–07

what emi kept

Hail to the Thief was the last album Radiohead owed EMI, and when the contract ran out the six studio albums and the live I Might Be Wrong stayed with the company. In 2007 EMI was bought by Guy Hands's private equity firm, Terra Firma, and the talks about a new deal broke down over exactly those records. Bryce Edge, one of the band's managers, said afterwards that Hands had refused to talk seriously about the catalogue, and that the band wanted a say in how the six albums would be used in future.

They got their answer within a week of choosing someone else. Radiohead signed with XL for the shop release of In Rainbows on 31 October 2007, and on 5 November EMI announced a box of everything they had made for Parlophone.

nov 2007

three formats and a stick

It came three ways, all due on 10 December and sold only at radioheadstore.com, a shop EMI built for the purpose: seven CDs in a box for £39.99, the same seven albums as 320kbps MP3 files without copy protection for £34.99, and a 4GB memory stick in the shape of the bear, carrying the albums as WAV files with their artwork, for £79.99. The Official Charts Company had just changed its rules so that a USB release could count towards the albums chart. Miles Leonard, Parlophone's managing director, said the label was particularly excited about the stick, and EMI billed it as the first USB release of a major act's whole catalogue at CD quality.

The Guardian noticed that the wording on EMI's site had changed from Radiohead releasing the box to EMI/Parlophone releasing it. Murray Chalmers, the band's spokesman, told the paper exactly how much they had been involved.

The band were informed by EMI that they intended to release the box set. That's what happened: they were informed.
murray chalmers · the guardian, 8 november 2007

An anonymous post on Boing Boing claimed EMI had threatened to put the box out on the day the In Rainbows discbox shipped unless the band gave the label the album's CD. Chris Latham, for EMI, said there was no truth in it and that Radiohead had been kept fully updated. One part of the plan did match the band's own wishes. They had kept their albums off iTunes because Apple would sell them only song by song, and EMI's download sold them only whole.

A week later a paid Google advert offered the new album as a box set and led to EMI's box instead. Some fans had already read the matching price and month as EMI setting itself up against the band, which EMI denied. The label blamed the advert on a fault in a data feed and took it down, and a band spokesperson told NME they accepted it had been an honest mistake.

dec 2007

white box, black sheath

The box is a tall white case with the bear printed over it in rows and the name in a black block on the front. Inside, a black sheath holds the seven albums, each in a fold-out digipak with its original sleeve, and each marked as taken from the box and not to be sold separately. On the back the barcode's bars are cut into the shape of the bear, and the printed label beneath it credits the original artwork to Stanley Donwood and Tchock, the name Yorke used on the sleeves. Nothing was remastered, and there were no notes, demos or outtakes. The seventh disc, I Might Be Wrong, is the only live record in it, eight songs from Oxford, Berlin, Oslo and Vaison-la-Romaine in 2001. None of the EPs or B-sides came along, and neither did Airbag / How Am I Driving?, which Capitol had released in North America.

In Japan EMI issued the same seven discs with a booklet in Japanese in a plastic case of its own, and called the set Radiohead Box, which is the name this site files it under.

The one extra needed a computer. A sticker told buyers to put any of the discs into one and visit radioheadstore.com, and NME reported what waited there for a limited time: a stream of the band's set at Les Eurockéennes in Belfort on 4 July 2003, shown on French television at the time, with Neil Young's “After the Gold Rush” folded into “Everything in Its Right Place”.

The box came out on 10 December, a week after the first discboxes went out. Both cost about £40. Whatever the new chart rules allowed, it made no mark in Britain; it reached 95 in Canada and 162 in France.

dec 2007–jan 2008

reviews and a shrug

The reviews were kinder to the music than to the idea. NME gave it four and a half out of five, called it essential and found only Hail to the Thief a let-down. Andy Kellman at AllMusic gave it four stars as a plain, good-looking box at a fair price. In Uncut, Peter Paphides reviewed it alongside the discbox and used it to trace everything back to “Creep”; like NME, he named Hail to the Thief the poor relation, though he defended its best songs. Tim Perlich in Toronto's NOW was blunter: a generic-looking box, nothing for the long-time fan, and a label cashing in on the wait for In Rainbows.

The band said almost nothing in public about the box itself. Talking to BBC 6 Music about Terra Firma that month, Yorke said a private equity firm saw recordings as an asset to trade. To Mojo he gave his answer in a Peter Cook voice.

No, I'm not really annoyed, and anyway there's nothing we can do about it.
thom yorke · mojo, february 2008

Jonny Greenwood said it could have been far worse, and named the worse.

Like a cheesy greatest hits with the worst photo of Thom with big hair on the cover.
jonny greenwood · mojo, february 2008

2008–19

the rest of the catalogue

It was not the last of it. EMI released Radiohead: The Best Of in June 2008, again without the band, and expanded editions of the first six albums in 2009. In 2016 the albums began to appear under XL's name on streaming services, the first step in moving them away from Parlophone, by then part of Warner. Guy Hands told Eamonn Forde in 2019 that the reissues had been his decision. Yorke had complained that the briefings against the band had ruined his Christmas. Hands answered that too.

And if it spoiled his Christmas, I'm sorry!
guy hands · the guardian, 18 february 2019

The greatest hits Jonny had seen coming did not have Thom on the cover. It had two stick men shaking hands.

on film

The box opened disc by disc, with each digipak unfolded.· MusicUnboxingZonewatch on youtube →

videos(3)

every song taken apart →

track by track (79)

Disc 1 Pablo Honey

01
You 3:23
One of the oldest songs they have, recorded twice and used to open fifty-seven shows.
02
Creep 3:56
They caught it in one take nobody knew was running, then barely played it for seventeen years.
03
How Do You? 2:12
Two minutes about an insufferable man, with the prank call that named the album buried in the solo.
04
Stop Whispering 5:26
The demo that got them a manager, recorded twice because the band did not like the album version.
05
Thinking About You 2:15
An electric song on the Drill EP, stripped back to acoustic guitar and harmonium for the album.
06
Anyone Can Play Guitar 3:38
Everyone in the building played on the intro, including the cook.
07
Ripcord 3:10
A long drop with nothing to pull, and one of the songs that carried the 1993 shows.
08
Vegetable 3:13
Ed O'Brien called it a warning against being dehumanised; the band played it 102 times and dropped it in December 1995.
09
Prove Yourself 2:32
The first Radiohead song played on national radio in Britain.
10
I Can't 4:13
Older than the record deal: it was on the tape that got On a Friday signed.
11
Lurgee 3:08
The one Pablo Honey song not made at Chipping Norton, and a regular again on the OK Computer tour.
12
Blow Out 4:40
The last track on Pablo Honey, and the first place the later band can be heard.

Disc 2 The Bends

01
Planet Telex 4:19
The only song on The Bends nobody rehearsed, made up after a restaurant and a few bottles of wine.
02
The Bends 4:06
Written before “Creep” came out, and held back for the second album.
03
High and Dry 4:17
They wrote the demo off as too Rod Stewart, then put it on the album untouched.
04
Fake Plastic Trees 4:50
They threw out a version for sounding like “November Rain”, and three takes later the singer was in tears.
05
Bones 3:09
Three minutes about a body giving out, the shortest thing on The Bends, and the opener on twenty-four nights.
06
(Nice Dream) 3:53
Five acoustic guitars on a lawn and a dream Yorke had half drunk, once lined up as the follow-up to “Creep”.
07
Just 3:54
Jonny Greenwood trying to fit as many chords as possible into one song, and a video whose punchline was deliberately left off the screen.
08
My Iron Lung 4:36
A song about the hit that was keeping them alive and holding them under, taken from a live recording.
09
Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was 3:28
Two guitarists played their parts into a track they were not allowed to hear.
10
Black Star 4:07
The producer was away, the house engineer pressed record, and a B-side ended up on the album.
11
Sulk 3:42
Yorke started it after the Hungerford shootings and cut its last line when Kurt Cobain died.
12
Street Spirit (Fade Out) 4:12
The song Thom Yorke says is the reason he does this at all, and the single that proved the band were not a one-hit wonder.

Disc 3 OK Computer

01
Airbag 4:44
Phil Selway drummed, the others chopped it up, and OK Computer opened on a loop of the band's own drummer.
02
Paranoid Android 6:23
Three unfinished songs were welded into one, and a fourteen-minute organ outro was cut out of it.
03
Subterranean Homesick Alien 4:27
A school essay about aliens landing in Oxford, rewritten years later by someone who would quite like them to take him along.
04
Exit Music (For a Film) 4:24
Written for the last thirty minutes of Romeo + Juliet, it went by courier just before the final mix.
05
Let Down 4:59
They recorded it in a ballroom at three in the morning, and TikTok made it a hit twenty-eight years later.
06
Karma Police 4:21
A tour in-joke about cosmic punishment turned into a song against bosses.
07
Fitter Happier 1:57
Fred, a stock voice on an Apple Macintosh, reads out Yorke's list, and Parlophone pasted the words up in tube stations.
08
Electioneering 3:50
Yorke plays a politician working the crowd over the heaviest track on OK Computer, and the band have left it alone since 1998.
09
Climbing Up the Walls 4:45
Yorke's cupboard monster, with sixteen string parts tuned a quarter-tone apart underneath it.
10
No Surprises 3:48
A lullaby about a life that is quietly killing you, kept from the first take.
11
Lucky 4:19
They found it at a soundcheck in Japan and recorded it in five hours for a charity album.
12
The Tourist 5:24
Jonny Greenwood's slow song ends OK Computer, and for years it ended the concerts too.

Disc 4 Kid A

01
Everything in Its Right Place 4:11
The first song Thom Yorke wrote after the breakdown that followed OK Computer, and the moment the band accepted that not everyone has to play.
02
Kid A 4:44
A sequencer named it, and Yorke said its words were the most vicious he had ever sung.
03
The National Anthem 5:51
Yorke wrote the bassline at sixteen, and the horn section was told to sound like a traffic jam.
04
How to Disappear Completely 5:56
A dream after a bad night in Dublin, a sentence Michael Stipe gave Thom Yorke, and a string score that looked unplayable.
05
Treefingers 3:42
Ten minutes of Ed O'Brien's guitar, rebuilt in Thom Yorke's sampler into the track this site is named after.
06
Optimistic 5:15
The one guitar-led song on Kid A, built round something Rachel Owen kept telling Yorke while the record would not come.
07
In Limbo 3:31
It was “Lost at Sea” for most of 1999, and the guitars were built to make you lose your footing.
08
Idioteque 5:09
It was cut out of fifty minutes of improvisation, over a computer-music record found second-hand.
09
Morning Bell 4:35
Yorke wrote it whole, lost it to a lightning storm, and got it back half asleep on a plane.
10
Motion Picture Soundtrack 7:01
Older than “Creep”, it waited most of a decade for the band to find it a setting, and got a pump organ and Disney harps.

Disc 5 Amnesiac

01
Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box 4:00
Clanking percussion, a laptop noise Colin Greenwood spells as a word, and Yorke's voice pushed through Auto-Tune until it goes nasal.
02
Pyramid Song 4:49
Yorke wrote it on a new piano in Cornwall, on a Mingus swing nobody counts the same way.
03
Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors 4:07
A list of doors, read aloud into software that goes hunting for a tune in Yorke's speaking voice.
04
You and Whose Army? 3:11
It started as the voices in Yorke's head, turned into Tony Blair, and was sung through an egg box.
05
I Might Be Wrong 4:54
What Rachel Owen kept telling Yorke, set to a drop-D riff that went on to name a live album.
06
Knives Out 4:15
373 days to record the most straightforward thing they had written in years, with a guitar part aimed squarely at Johnny Marr.
07
Morning Bell/Amnesiac 3:14
Yorke said they found this take again by accident, having forgotten it, and kept it because it sounded like a recurring dream.
08
Dollars and Cents 4:52
Ten minutes of the band doing the Can thing, cut down with a razor, then given strings by way of an Alice Coltrane record.
09
Hunting Bears 2:01
Two minutes and one second of guitar, which Radiohead took on stage sixteen times and mostly tucked behind “The National Anthem”.
10
Like Spinning Plates 3:57
“I Will”, played backwards, with Yorke singing along to the reversed tape until the words came out the right way round.
11
Life in a Glasshouse 4:34
Jonny Greenwood wrote to Humphrey Lyttelton to say the band were stuck, and Lyttelton brought his band and blew for seven hours.

Disc 6 I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings

01
The National Anthem 5:51
Yorke wrote the bassline at sixteen, and the horn section was told to sound like a traffic jam.
02
I Might Be Wrong 4:54
What Rachel Owen kept telling Yorke, set to a drop-D riff that went on to name a live album.
03
Morning Bell 4:35
Yorke wrote it whole, lost it to a lightning storm, and got it back half asleep on a plane.
04
Like Spinning Plates 3:57
“I Will”, played backwards, with Yorke singing along to the reversed tape until the words came out the right way round.
05
Idioteque 5:09
It was cut out of fifty minutes of improvisation, over a computer-music record found second-hand.
06
Everything in Its Right Place 4:11
The first song Thom Yorke wrote after the breakdown that followed OK Computer, and the moment the band accepted that not everyone has to play.
07
Dollars and Cents 4:52
Ten minutes of the band doing the Can thing, cut down with a razor, then given strings by way of an Alice Coltrane record.
08
True Love Waits 5:02
Played live in 1995 and bootlegged for twenty years, it was finally released in 2016.

Disc 7 Hail to the Thief

01
2 + 2 = 5 3:19
A studio test finished in two hours, opening with the sound of a guitar being plugged in.
02
Sit Down. Stand Up 4:19
Written in front of the television news from Rwanda after OK Computer, and left off Radiohead setlists for twenty-one years.
03
Sail to the Moon 4:18
Written in five minutes for a baby called Noah, then rebuilt by a band who thought it was half an idea.
04
Backdrifts 5:22
Yorke blamed a strange light and a smell. Jonny Greenwood said it was the week the machines finally talked to each other.
05
Go to Sleep 3:21
A folk riff in restless bars, ending with Jonny Greenwood's guitar chopped to pieces by a patch he wrote himself.
06
Where I End and You Begin 4:29
Jonny Greenwood teased that it was another love song. Yorke thought about it and agreed.
07
We Suck Young Blood 4:56
A funeral march with handclaps in the wrong places, sold to Los Angeles on posters dressed up as a casting call.
08
The Gloaming 3:32
Named after one of Yorke's demo CDs and nearly the album's title, it was built from analogue synths, tape machines and sellotape.
09
There There 5:23
Two drummers, and a mix that made Thom Yorke cry with relief.
10
I Will 1:59
Two minutes long, older than Kid A, and once played backwards so well that it became another song.
11
A Punchup at a Wedding 4:57
Forty-two thousand people saw Radiohead come home to Oxford in 2001. One review of it is the reason this song exists.
12
Myxomatosis 3:52
Named after a rabbit plague because Yorke liked the sound of it, and really about having your words rewritten for you.
13
Scatterbrain 3:21
Old newspapers in a gale, on chords that never land. Four Tet took it apart and dropped the vowels.
14
A Wolf at the Door 3:22
Jonny Greenwood wrote all of the music, Yorke added a rant about a train, and it is the last thing on the album.

the sleeve

The box: the name in a black block on white (Parlophone, 2007)cover art archive

The back of the box, still sealed, with the barcode cut into the bear (Parlophone, 2007)cover art archive

the booklet (6)

Pablo Honey in its box digipak (2007)cover art archive

The back of The Bends digipak, with “Taken from the Radiohead album box set” along the foot (2007)cover art archive

The back of the OK Computer digipak (2007)cover art archive

The back of the Amnesiac digipak (2007)cover art archive

I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, the box’s seventh disc (2007)cover art archive

The back of the Hail to the Thief digipak (2007)cover art archive

the art and the editions

The black sheath that slides into the box, with the bear (2007)cover art archive

The box and the seven digipaks, as EMI pictured them (2007)cover art archive

The sticker: limited edition 7 CD album box set, with the computer extra (2007)cover art archive

The Japanese edition, Radiohead Box, with the bear repeated across the case (EMI Japan)art: design/illustration: Stanley Donwood; design/illustration: Lola. J · cover art archive

The Japanese edition’s sticker (EMI Japan)art: design/illustration: Stanley Donwood; design/illustration: Lola. J · cover art archive

the press

the press release

from EMI, radioheadstore.com

dated nov 2007

Deluxe box set includes all seven classic Radiohead albums released on Parlophone from 1993-2003 (including one live album), repackaged in digipack sleeves featuring the original artwork.

the original →

the reviews

4.5/5
NME
11 dec 2007
It would be even if it were only available on reel-to-reel tape.
read it →
4/5
AllMusic
Andy Kellman · dec 2007
No remastering took place with any of the recordings.
read it →
NNN
NOW
Tim Perlich · 20 dec 2007
All wrapped up in a generic-looking black-and-white box.
read it →
4/5
Uncut
Peter Paphides · 4 jan 2008
The Parlophone years in box and USB stick, plus an In Rainbows you can hold.
read it →

later

looking backThe Guardian · Eamonn Forde · 18 feb 2019read →

sources11

EMI, radioheadstore.com, home, box set, download and USB pages (Wayback Machine, 7 to 16 November 2007), for the formats, the prices, the release date and the shop's wording.
The Hollywood Reporter and the Associated Press, “Radiohead albums boxed in time for holidays”, 6 November 2007, for the WAV stick, the shop, Miles Leonard and the chart rules.
J. Kelly Nestruck, “EMI stab Radiohead in the back catalogue”, The Guardian, 8 November 2007, for Murray Chalmers, Chris Latham, the Boing Boing post, the changed wording and the whole-album download.
The news stories here on the XL deal (31 October 2007), the announcement and the stick's first (5 November 2007), the Chicago Reader on the Boing Boing tip (6 November 2007), the Google advert (13 November 2007), the Belfort stream (4 December 2007), Yorke and O'Brien on BBC 6 Music (17 December 2007), Bryce Edge on the catalogue (28 December 2007) and the move to XL (4 April 2016).
NME, “Radiohead speak out about box set mix-up”, 13 November 2007, for the band's response to the advert.
Discogs, Album Box Set (master 269869; releases 1216703, 2412294 and 30012661), for the digipaks, the note on each disc, the computer extra, the stick, the live recordings and the Japanese edition and its booklet; the Cover Art Archive scans of releases 5fdd4427 and 84b9d51c, for the box, the sheath, the barcode and the Japanese title.
NME, “Radiohead: Boxset”, 11 December 2007; Andy Kellman, AllMusic (Wayback Machine, 2012); Peter Paphides, Uncut, 4 January 2008; Tim Perlich, NOW, 20 December 2007, for the reviews and the remastering.
Mark Paytress, “Chasing Rainbows”, Mojo, February 2008, for Yorke and Jonny Greenwood on the box.
Wikipedia, “Airbag / How Am I Driving?”, for its North American release; Wikipedia, “Radiohead discography”, for the Canadian and French chart places and the absence of a British one.
Eamonn Forde, “Chasing rainbows: inside the battle between Radiohead and EMI's Guy Hands”, The Guardian, 18 February 2019, for Hands on the reissues and his reply to Yorke.
The Radiohead: The Best Of page here, for its sleeve.

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