Song · Kid A / Amnesiac era (2000–01)
Follow Me Around
Twenty-three years passed between a soundcheck in Meeting People Is Easy and the version on Kid A Mnesia.
Kid A Mnesia (KID AMNESIAE)album- 2021released
- 5:19length
1998
a soundcheck on film
The band ran it through at soundchecks on the OK Computer tour, and it first reached the public in Meeting People Is Easy, their 1998 tour film, with Thom Yorke starting on acoustic guitar and the others coming in as it goes. It has a big chorus and words about being followed. The early versions named Tony Blair and asked whether he had lied; the one finally released names Margaret Thatcher.
1999
voice and guitar
They worked on it through the summer of 1999, and Ed O'Brien's online diary followed it. On 28 July the band talked it through before playing it, so as not to slip into old habits. On 5 August it grew out of “Up the Ladder” (later “Up on the Ladder”), the two run together, and on 1 September they went round it twice, without much to show for it. They recorded it in the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions and left it off both.
2000–09
on request
The archive first has it in concert at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on 17 October 2000. A fan site named after the song had been asking on its news pages for the band to play it on that tour, and the setlist on file notes that it came at fans' request, for the site's webmistress.
After that it came out now and then for six years, six times in 2003, the last of them for a small Radio 1 audience at Maida Vale, with Yorke and Greenwood alone. Bootlegs spread, and a fan, Pawel Osmolski, built a full-band version around Yorke's solo take from a KROQ breakfast session in September 2003, playing everything else himself at home. When Q printed its “What's on our iPod” list in its February 2004 issue, the “Follow Me Around” on it was Osmolski's.
Yorke kept it going alone and with Atoms for Peace. At Latitude in 2009 he introduced it as a song that had been on the shelf for a while, and in 2017 he and Greenwood played a rearranged version at an earthquake benefit in Macerata.
1 nov 2021
released at last
It came out on 1 November 2021 as the second single from Kid A Mnesia, with a video in which Guy Pearce is followed round his own house by a drone. The A.V. Club thought it possibly the band's simplest pop song; Rolling Stone, five years earlier, had counted it among Yorke's darkest. The recording is Yorke alone on acoustic guitar.
the video
The official promo film.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
the record(1)
on stage(8)
Live history
| Times played | 13 shows · 3 of them Thom Yorke solo shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Tuesday 17 October 2000 · Toronto |
| Last played | by Thom Yorke, solo, Sunday 24 November 2024 · Tokyo |
| Last by Radiohead | Thursday 29 June 2006 · Los Angeles |
| Longest absence | 2 years · back on Thursday 29 June 2006 · Los Angeles |
First played live in 2000, 21 years before it was released.
Thom Yorke, solo 1 September 2003 Seattle, 19 July 2009 Southwold, 24 November 2024 Tokyo
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. Thom Yorke’s solo nights are counted and marked as his; the openers, closers, longest absence and chart are Radiohead’s own. All setlist stats →
Tabs (1)
sources13
- Jonathan Dean, “Kid A Mnesia shows that the future is still Radiohead”, The Times.
- Ed O'Brien's studio diary on radiohead.com, 22 to 30 July, 3 to 6 August and 31 August to 9 September 1999, for the old habits, “Up the Ladder” and the 1 September session.
- NME, “Get ‘…around’!”, 18 October 2000, for Toronto and the soundchecks.
- “Radiohead finally release fan favourite ‘Follow Me Around’”, NME, 1 November 2021.
- “Radiohead: ‘Follow Me Around’”, Stereogum, 1 November 2021.
- Angie Martoccio, “Radiohead's ‘Follow Me Around’ is a holy grail for fans. 20 years later, it's here”, Rolling Stone, 1 November 2021, for the Atoms for Peace performances.
- Daniel Kreps, David Ehrlich and James Montgomery, “20 insanely great Radiohead songs only hardcore fans know”, Rolling Stone, 7 March 2016, for one of Yorke's darkest.
- “Radiohead's long-awaited new single is one of the purest folk-pop songs they've ever written”, The A.V. Club, 1 November 2021.
- James Rettig, Stereogum, 20 August 2017.
- NME, “Radiohead head completes new songs”, 27 May 2004, a fan site's note of 17 January 2004 on Q's list, and this site's own news desk, post 1256, 11 May 2004, for Pawel Osmolski's version.
- NME and Uncut, reports from Latitude, 19 July 2009.
- treefingers.com, the 2003 lyric page for “Follow Me Around”, for the soundcheck in Meeting People Is Easy and the lines about Tony.
- treefingers.com live archive and news, for the Toronto night and the Maida Vale session of December 2003.