Radiohead rule out singles and videos for Kid A

Radiohead will release no singles and make no promo videos from Kid A, out on 2 October, and their co-manager Chris Hufford tells Music Week the choice was deliberate. Radio programmers in every country will choose which tracks to play.

In place of videos they have made a series of “video blips”, 10 to 40 seconds each, carrying fragments of the album for the internet and television. And Grant Gee, who made Meeting People Is Easy, the film of the band ground down by the promotion of their 1997 world tour, is to shoot live footage of them. He let it slip while directing Idlewild's “Roseability” video in a Hammersmith studio on 18 August, and Radiohead's spokesperson has since confirmed it.

Over their last three records, Hufford says, the band found it ever harder to square their idea of their work with an industry that treats music as a commodity, and they could not go through the old routine again. Doing a commercial single doesn’t make any sense at all with what they’re trying to do with their music.¹