Radiohead clear “Exit Music (For A Film)” for a charity short

Radiohead have let a short charity film use “Exit Music (For A Film)”, and its director, Rob Sanderson, tells LBB the answer came almost as soon as he asked. Member of the British Empire, which he directed and edited for The Respite Association with Partizan, was launched on 14 January and runs two and a half minutes.

Its subject is Isaac Harvey, a disability advocate who cannot feed himself alone. When his mother, his main carer at 83, was due away for three weeks, his council offered four visits a day, and he had to leave home for respite accommodation. Sanderson read Harvey's LinkedIn post about being made an MBE one year and forced out of his home in another, and took the title from it.

He first wanted Puscifer's “The Humbling River”, until he decided the film needed a British voice to root it in England, and went after a Thom Yorke solo track instead. Yorke said yes early, but other rights holders held it up. The music supervisor, Dhamirah Coombes of Leland, told him Yorke's team had liked the film and suggested he try Radiohead's catalogue. There he kept to older, less commercial songs, thinking they would clear more easily. I dug through the back catalogue and tentatively requested 'Exit Music (For A Film)'. I think within a day or two we got a very straightforward 'yes'.¹

Then a late email told him the Yorke track had cleared after all. To find myself choosing between two god-tier tracks wasn't a problem that I'd seen coming.¹