Radiohead's “Paranoid Android” goes in at number three, behind Hanson

“Paranoid Android”, the first single from OK Computer, is new at number three in this week's chart, behind Hanson's “MMMBop”. It is the highest any Radiohead single has gone in Britain, two places above “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” in January 1996. Music Week's Dooley's Diary had picked it as EMI's big Parlophone release of the week and warned that Hanson would be hard to beat for Sunday's number one, and they were.

Parlophone put it out on 26 May on two CDs and a cassette, with four new songs between them: “Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)”, “Pearly”, “A Reminder” and “Melatonin”. The album follows on 16 June.

Both EMI's marketing plan and the spring newsletter) of W.A.S.T.E., the band's fan club, set its first Radio 1 play for the Evening Session on 30 April. By late May it was on the station's playlist. Colin Greenwood told Melody Maker's Mark Sutherland that when the band played it to their A&R man, he picked it as the single on the spot. He also said that it does feel like a victory to have Radio 1 hammering merry shit out of it, cos it's hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzzbin unit shifter they can have been expecting⁷.

Official Singles Chart, 1 June 1997, top five