EMI's Radiohead compilation The Best Of enters the UK chart at number four

Radiohead: The Best Of, the compilation EMI put together after the band left the label, entered the UK albums chart at number four on 8 June. Parlophone released it in Britain on 2 June and Capitol in America a day later, and Radiohead had no say in what went on it. In Rainbows, put out by the band themselves and then through XL, was at 98 the same week. In Ireland The Best Of went to number one, and in America it is new at 26 on the Billboard 200.

Thom Yorke, talking to The Word in May about the band's exit from EMI, compared it to leaving a home. And now it's like when you move house, you don't want to peer through the window and see what they've done with the wallpaper because it will only upset you.¹² The compilation itself he called pointless. We haven't really had any hits so what exactly is the purpose?¹² The songs were public property now and there was nothing the band could do, he said, and it was a wasted opportunity that might have been good with the band behind it.

The plan first came out in February, when Ed O'Brien told the Canadian programme Radio Show that EMI was preparing a greatest hits for April or May, to coincide with the tour. We won't be doing any promotion for that, obviously.⁶ Phil Selway told Analogue it was well within EMI's rights, and that the band would have to see.

Scott Plagenhoef, reviewing the Capitol editions for Pitchfork, gave the single disc 4.0 and the double 2.0 out of 10, scores he said were about who each record was for. Martin Robinson in NME saw the release as the industry hitting back at In Rainbows, and still enjoyed it as a well-timed run through the band's best songs.

In Britain the single disc has 16 songs and the double 29; the American editions add an edit of “Optimistic”, and there is a four-LP vinyl set of the double. A DVD of the same title, due on 23 June, gathers 21 promo films from “Creep” to “Sit Down. Stand Up”, counting both versions of “High and Dry”, and nine of them are new to DVD. It ends with “2 + 2 = 5” filmed live at the Belfort festival in 2003. The rarest things on the CDs are on disc two: “Talk Show Host”, a B-side of “Street Spirit”, and Yorke's solo acoustic “True Love Waits” from Oslo Spektrum on 9 September 2001. That recording was first issued on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, and the song has still never had a studio release.

First-week charts