Live in Lima, Peru (April 2018)

the Estadio Nacional

When the show was announced in November 2017, Miguel Rocca wrote in El Comercio, plenty of people in Lima found it hard to believe. Radiohead had never played Peru. They topped a Soundhearts festival bill at the Estadio Nacional, after the Peruvian band Mundaka, Junun and Flying Lotus, and El Comercio put the crowd at more than 20,000. The stadium lights went down at a minute to nine, and the band began with “Daydreaming”.

They said little between songs beyond thanks, in Spanish. Lima's audience, Rocca wrote, is often called cold, and this one sang from the start, the whole stadium together on “Fake Plastic Trees” when the band came back for the first encore.

the first encore

After “Fake Plastic Trees” the first encore went on with “You and Whose Army?”, “There There”, “Exit Music (For a Film)” and “The National Anthem”, and it ended on “Idioteque”. Partway through, something went wrong with Jonny Greenwood's synthesiser, plainly enough for the stands to hear it. Thom Yorke told the crowd that these things sometimes happen, and got a laugh.

When the film went up on the band's YouTube channel in May 2021, it ran straight from “The National Anthem” into the second encore. That encore is all there: “Creep”, the song Rocca said everyone had come for, then “Paranoid Android” and “Karma Police”.

Twenty-six songs were not enough for everybody. El Comercio's first report the next morning still found one to miss, and wished they had played “My Iron Lung”.