On film · video collection · 2008
The Best Of
EMI's DVD of 21 Radiohead videos, put out in 2008 after the band had left the label, and without asking them.
2008
after the band had gone
Radiohead's contract with EMI ended with Hail to the Thief in 2003, and they did not sign again. In Rainbows came out on their own website in October 2007, two months after the investment firm Terra Firma bought EMI. In February 2008 Ed O'Brien told a Canadian radio show that EMI was preparing a greatest hits, and that the band would not be promoting it. It came out in June, on two CDs and on this DVD.
Guy Hands, who ran Terra Firma, told The Guardian in 2019 that the decision to put it out had been his. Thom Yorke had his say in The Word that May.
We haven't really had any hits so what exactly is the purpose?
Thom Yorke · The Word, May 2008
He added that it was a wasted opportunity, because if the band had been behind it, it might have been good.
1992–2003
the videos
The DVD runs in order from “Creep” to “2 + 2 = 5”, eleven years of promo films. All seven from 7 Television Commercials are here, and so are both “High and Dry” videos, David Mould's British one and the American one in the diner. The 2001 and 2003 films include Shynola's “Pyramid Song”, Michel Gondry's “Knives Out” and Chris Hopewell's “There There”. The last is not a promo at all but “2 + 2 = 5” live at Belfort in July 2003, and it is the one film on the disc that Dilly Gent did not commission.
The videos are on the band's own YouTube channel now, and in the Radiohead Public Library, one by one. The DVD has no extras, and Scott A. Gray of Exclaim!, who thought the videos got better as the music did, told fans to hold out for a collection the band were behind.
sources8
- Eamonn Forde, “Chasing rainbows: inside the battle between Radiohead and EMI's Guy Hands”, The Guardian, 18 February 2019, theguardian.com (the end of the contract, Terra Firma, Hands's decision)
- NME, 11 February 2008, nme.com (O'Brien on the compilation)
- Simon Reynolds, “Yorke slams Radiohead 'Best Of' LP”, Digital Spy, 9 May 2008, digitalspy.com (Yorke in The Word)
- NME, “Radiohead 'Best Of' to be released as DVD”, 15 April 2008, nme.com (the 21 videos)
- Discogs, The Best Of, EU and US DVDs, discogs.com and discogs.com (the directors, Dilly Gent's credit, the running time)
- Scott A. Gray, Exclaim!, 20 June 2008, exclaim.ca (no extras, the verdict)
- Radiohead Public Library, radiohead.com (the videos filed under their records)
- This site's story of June 2008 on The Best Of and the show page for Belfort, 4 July 2003