Radiohead lend “All I Need” to an MTV film against human trafficking

A film set to Radiohead's “All I Need”, from In Rainbows, premieres today on MTV's channels and websites around the world. MTV made it with the band for MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking), its campaign against human trafficking.

The screen is split in two, with a day in the life of a boy in a well-off Western home on one side and, on the other, a boy forced to work in a sweatshop in the East, making the shoes the first boy wears. Steve Rogers directed it, and John Seale shot it in Australia.

Thom Yorke credits MTV for taking on something so awkward for its advertisers, and told The Hollywood Reporter what that meant on screen. their lawyers had to beg to make sure there wasn't a single white trainer with a logo on it because the implication would be a little too close⁷

The band took the chance while they had it, Yorke says. He told Reuters he sees an irony in MTV, which spread Western consumer culture around the world, now leading a campaign like this, and likes that it has come full circle. At every concert on the band's coming tour of North America, Europe and Japan, young activists from local anti-trafficking groups will hand out information, as the campaign did on an R.E.M. tour.

Ed O'Brien told BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat that MTV asked about two months ago to use the song, and that the band looked into the campaign and were happy to say yes. He traces their thinking on exploitation to reading Naomi Klein's No Logo about eight years ago, and points to W.A.S.T.E., the band's merchandise company, as their ethical answer. you have a responsibility when you go into a shop and see a pair of jeans for 10 pounds, you have to question why⁶