Radiohead's “Pop Is Dead” enters the UK chart at number 42

“Pop Is Dead” has entered the UK singles chart at number 42 in the week from 16 May, six days after Parlophone released it.

NME had been scathing. Its unsigned review in the 8 May issue said the song, like half the album it is not on, tries to be four different songs, and comes out as an ugly concept rock opera anthem with a chugging guitar lifted from “2-4-6-8 Motorway”. Perhaps, it wondered, pop is alive and well in Oxford with dyed yellow hair. It signed off by jeering that for all the record-company money, Radiohead had got no higher than number 32, the peak of “Anyone Can Play Guitar”, and that nobody fancies them.

The single is out on CD, 12-inch and cassette, each with the same four tracks. The title song was recorded and mixed at Chipping Norton, produced by Jim Warren with the band and engineered by Barry Hammond. “Banana Co.” is acoustic, from a session at Signal Radio in Cheshire, and the sleeve credits it as “recorded live courtesy of Craig Cash”. The live “Creep” and “Ripcord” were taped by the Manor Mobile at the Town and Country Club in London on 14 March, the night Radiohead supported Belly. The rear cover art is by Rachel Owen, the design by Icon.

According to Dilly Gent, the video is shot to a treatment Thom Yorke wrote frame by frame, and has members of the band's fan club carrying him across the Oxford Downs in a glass coffin.

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