Amanda Palmer sells her Radiohead ukulele record from 84 cents

The former Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer's Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele is out on Bandcamp from today, Tuesday 20 July, for a donation of as little as 84 cents. Of those 84 cents, Palmer says, 54 go straight to Radiohead as the cost of selling covers of their songs and 30 pay PayPal's fee. Anything above that is hers. She hopes the sum teaches buyers how an artist gets paid for a record like this one, and has asked fans to buy it direct rather than wait for iTunes. The “Idioteque” single, out on 11 June, had a 40-cent minimum, nine of them for Radiohead and the rest for PayPal.

There are seven tracks and six songs, because “Creep” comes twice. The album version was taped at a soundcheck in Berlin on tour with Evelyn Evelyn, another of her bands, while she was hungover. Everything is played on ukulele, with piano and toy piano on some tracks. Most of it was recorded in Australia earlier this year with the engineer Mick Wordley, and “Exit Music (For a Film)” is live from the Sydney Opera House, with Zoe Keating on cello and Lyndon Chester, who wrote the string arrangement. I tried to strip the songs down as far as possible without destroying them.⁵

The vinyl is limited to 1,000 copies and there is no CD; some copies come with a phone or Skype performance from Palmer on a ukulele she decorated. On the night of the release she launched it with “Amanda Palmer's Party On the Internet”, a Ustream webcast from her living room that opened with viewers' questions. When she played “Idioteque”, a stapler and what looked like a screwdriver were among the percussion.

The record comes after her exit from Roadrunner Records, and she presents it as a celebration of that freedom. Radiohead songs almost play themselves because the songwriting is so genius, and the ukulele is perfect for laying that genius bare.⁵

Tracklist