Song · In Rainbows era (2007–09)
15 Step
In 2017 a data scientist scored every song on Radiohead's studio albums for gloom, and this one came out the least gloomy of them all.
In Rainbowsalbum- 2007released
- 3:57length
2005–07
a beat in five
It came out of a stretch in 2005 when the band were writing in odd metres on purpose. Thom Yorke built the beat on his laptop, with the clapping groove of Peaches' “Fuck the Pain Away” as his model, and it came out in five. Five is a hard count to clap to. When the band played it at the 3Arena in Dublin in June 2017, GoldenPlec's reviewer noticed that nobody in the hall even tried, though plenty of the same people clapped along to “Everything in Its Right Place”.
The band teased it on their blog in March 2006, first played it in Copenhagen that May, and had it in the set on thirty nights by the end of the year. When the sessions started again in January 2007, after a month off, Yorke's post about going back to work said they had spent a good day on a version of it, and on rebuilding the studio in a gale.
the sound
drum machine and children
It opens with about forty seconds of chopped-up drum machine, nearer to Kid A than to anything else on In Rainbows, before the guitar and a bassline arrive. The words are about deception and disillusion, and the fifteen steps of the title end at a gallows.
Over all of it come children cheering, recorded by Nigel Godrich and Colin Greenwood at the Matrix Arts Centre in Oxfordshire. The children win, and the BBC called it “astoundingly uplifting”. In 2017 Charlie Thompson, a data scientist, scored every song on Radiohead's studio albums for gloom, from Spotify's measure of a track's mood and the sadness of its words, and this came out the least gloomy of them all.
2008
the opener and the cartoon
In 2008 it took over the start of the show, opening most nights that year and the next, the first of them in London on 16 January 2008. That March the band's American label had run a contest with Aniboom for animated films of songs from In Rainbows, and Hideyuki Kota's storyboard for this one was among the four winners. His finished film went up on 2 December 2008.
8 feb 2009
the grammys
Radiohead had never played the Grammys before. When they did, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on 8 February 2009, the night In Rainbows won best alternative music album, it was with this song and 36 members of the USC Trojan Marching Band, the university band that had played on Fleetwood Mac's “Tusk” in 1979. Dr David Campbell arranged their part. In the rehearsals, which the marching band filmed and later put on YouTube, Yorke tells the drummers their snare drums are too busy.
Entertainment Weekly said they took “an already good song” and made it “jubilant, slightly menacing”. Four days later Yorke put the performance up on Dead Air Space, the band's blog.
a big thank you to both Dr David Campbell for arranging and the USC Marching Band for working so hard with us to get this right.. we had such a laugh.
thom yorke · dead air space, 12 february 2009
the video
The official promo, from Scotch Mist.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
the record(1)
on stage(10)
explained
The 5/4 drum pattern rebuilt from scratch on a drum machine.· Captain Pikantwatch on youtube →
Live history
| Times played | 192 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Saturday 6 May 2006 · Copenhagen |
| Last played | Monday 15 December 2025 · Copenhagen |
| Opened the night | 40 times |
| Longest absence | 7 years · back on Tuesday 4 November 2025 · Madrid |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
sources16
- Tom Doyle, “The Complete Radiohead”, Q, April 2008.
- Nick Kent, “Ghost in the Machine”, Mojo, 1 August 2006.
- Scott Plagenhoef, “Pitchfork's guide to Radiohead's In Rainbows”, Pitchfork, 9 October 2007.
- Mark Pytlik, “Radiohead: In Rainbows”, Pitchfork, 15 October 2007.
- Victoria Malawey, Ear Training with the Music of Radiohead, Indiana University Press, 2012.
- Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, 10 October 2007.
- NME, news item reproducing Yorke's Dead Air Space post, 19 January 2007, for the first day back in the studio.
- Daniel Kreps, “Radiohead picks four winners for animation contest”, Rolling Stone, 11 August 2008.
- NME, “Radiohead impress at the Grammys with USC marching band”, 9 February 2009, and Josh Tyrangiel, “Grammys 2009: the performances”, TIME, 8 February 2009, for the night, the arranger and “Tusk”.
- Clash, “Watch Radiohead Rehearse”, 10 March 2009, for the rehearsal film and the snare drums.
- Thom Yorke, “business trip”, Dead Air Space (radiohead.com), 12 February 2009.
- Whitney Pastorek, Entertainment Weekly, 7 February 2009.
- GoldenPlec, review of Radiohead at the 3Arena, Dublin, 22 June 2017, for the crowd that did not clap.
- Damian Jones, “Radiohead's saddest song revealed”, NME, 23 February 2017, for the gloom index's top score.
- Charlie Thompson, “fitteR happieR”, RCharlie, February 2017, for the gloom index and its happiest song.
- The site's live archive, for the nights it opened.