News ·
Radiohead's Hail to the Thief tops Drowned In Sound's albums of 2003
first posted on Treefingers by Miro, Amie · rewritten for the archive
Drowned In Sound's staff poll makes Radiohead's Hail to the Thief the album of 2003, with nearly 200 points, ahead of The Darkness' Permission to Land. Britain's two biggest lists are cooler, with NME's writers putting it ninth and Q 11th; The White Stripes' Elephant tops both.
The album turns up on some three dozen lists in all. The Orlando Sentinel has it first, and so do the members of The DVD Forums, the message board of the British sites CD Times and DVD Times, who vote it ahead of Elephant. Jon Pareles of The New York Times ranks it third, behind Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Fever to Tell and OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, and credits the band with turning back to the outside world after two inward records.
Two lists call it Hail to the Chief. John Robinson has it 12th of his 20 albums of the year in The Guardian, whose picture caption gets the title wrong, and Ed Masley's list in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette puts it eighth under the same misprint.
Robinson has “There There” sixth among his singles, noting that it went into the top five without a chorus. The song is also 13th in Pitchfork's top 50 and fourth in the song of the year poll of VPRO, the Dutch broadcaster.
Several American papers pick a Radiohead night among their concerts of the year. Tacoma's News Tribune names the White River Amphitheatre show of 31 August its concert of 2003, The Denver Post has Red Rocks third and the Contra Costa Times has Shoreline Amphitheatre seventh.
Rolling Stone puts the album in its 50 best of 2003, unranked, and says the summer tour proved Radiohead the world's best band again. In the issue dated 5 February its critics go further and name the band's 2003 tour the best of the year, ahead of David Bowie's A Reality Tour.
Hail to the Thief in the 2003 year-end lists
| Publication | Country | List | Pos | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drowned In Sound | UK | Staff top 75 albums of 2003 | 1 | Nearly 200 points; The Darkness' Permission to Land second |
| Orlando Sentinel | US | Albums of 2003 | 1 | – |
| The DVD Forums (via CD Times) | UK | Readers' top 50 albums of 2003 | 1 | Elephant second, Blur's Think Tank third |
| Contra Costa Times (Tony Hicks) | US | Albums of 2003 | 2 | Behind OutKast; the Shoreline show seventh in his concerts of the year |
| The Grand Rapids Press | US | Best albums of 2003 | 2 | – |
| The Manila Times (Cris O. Ramos) | Philippines | Ten best foreign CDs of 2003 | 2 | OutKast first |
| The New York Times (Jon Pareles) | US | Albums of the year | 3 | Behind Yeah Yeah Yeahs and OutKast |
| CMJ | US | Top ten albums of 2003 (college radio) | 3 | Behind Elephant and The Postal Service's Give Up |
| Canoe (Jane Stevenson) | Canada | Albums of 2003 | 5 | – |
| The Columbian | US | Top CDs of 2003 | 5 | Elephant first |
| The Star-Ledger | US | Albums of 2003 | 6 | – |
| The News Tribune, Tacoma (Ernest Jasmin) | US | Ten CDs of 2003 | 7 | White River Amphitheatre his concert of the year |
| The Denver Post (Ricardo Baca, John Moore) | US | CDs of 2003 | 8 | Red Rocks third among the year's shows |
| Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Ed Masley) | US | Albums of 2003 | 8 | Printed as Hail to the Chief; Cat Power first |
| Toronto Star | Canada | Albums of 2003 | 8 | – |
| NME | UK | Writers' albums of 2003 | 9 | Elephant first |
| Q | UK | Fifty best albums of the year | 11 | Elephant first |
| The Guardian (John Robinson) | UK | Twenty albums of 2003 | 12 | Captioned Hail to the Chief; “There There” sixth in his singles |
| Las Vegas Mercury | US | Best CDs of 2003 (staff lists) | 15 | Geoff Schumacher's list |
| Amazon.com customers | US | Favourite CDs of 2003 | 20 | – |
| Amazon.com editors | US | Top 100 editors' picks of 2003 | 22 | – |
| Blender | US | 50 best albums of 2003 | 40 | – |
| Rolling Stone | US | 50 best albums of 2003 | unranked | – |
| Spiegel Online (Andreas Borcholte) | Germany | Abgehört 2003 | unranked | Says nobody pushed rock further in 2003 |
| The Sydney Morning Herald | Australia | Fifty best albums | unranked | – |
| The Philadelphia Inquirer (Tom Moon) | US | Ten records of 2003 | unranked | – |
| The Ottawa Citizen | Canada | Our favourite discs | unranked | – |
| Rolling Stone | US | Critics' picks: best tour of 2003 | 1 | The 2003 tour; David Bowie's A Reality Tour second |
| Pitchfork Media | US | Top 50 singles of 2003 | 13 | “There There”; OutKast's “Hey Ya!” first |
| VPRO | Netherlands | Song of the year poll | 4 | “There There”; “Seven Nation Army” first |
from the record
Go to Sleep · The promo, directed by Alex Rutterford.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →