Kid A takes Radiohead to number one in America

Kid A went into the Billboard 200 at number one, on more than 207,000 copies in the week to 8 October, and gave Radiohead their first American number one. Their best placing until now was OK Computer's 21 in 1997. The new record got there with no music video and no official radio single, at $18.99 in most American shops, and knocked Mystikal's Let's Get Ready off the top. Radiohead are the first British act to top the American album chart since the Prodigy's The Fat of the Land in 1997.

Kid A fell to number ten the next week, and in its third it was 14th across the country, but in Southern California, one of Radiohead's strongest American markets, it climbed from three to two on the regional chart. The Los Angeles Times put that down to the band's show at the Greek Theatre on 20 October.

At home Kid A came out on Monday 2 October, and HMV said it had sold 86,000 copies by the Wednesday, about 55,000 of them on the first day. It went into the British chart at number one on 8 October, displacing Madonna's Music. Ed O'Brien told BBC London Live that the sales meant the band could make another couple of records. It's brilliant, it's like winning the FA Cup!⁵

The band heard on 11 October, the day of their show at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, their first American concert since June 1998. Colin Greenwood, talking to NME after the show, called it madness, it's fucking brilliant², and said he was curious to see what Europe would make of the record after America and all the press there. Thom Yorke told MTV the celebration was a glass of champagne and the five of them shaking their heads, and that he wanted to be able to tell his children it happened and leave it there. I cannot get my head around the fact that it's number one in America at all. It just doesn't mean anything. It's just la-la.⁵

Kid A on the Billboard 200