I Might Be Wrong

first heard in milan

The archive's first night for it is the Villa Reale in Milan on 19 June 2000, almost a year before Amnesiac came out. The 2003 site noted the date and thought the song had a strong beat, grooved nicely, and would be a favourite once it was released. It was right about that.

On the record it is built on Jonny Greenwood's riff, a cyclical figure in drop D, over a metallic, trance-like pulse. Chris DeVille at Stereogum, looking back twenty years later, heard it as a new kind of song for the band.

invents a new kind of Radiohead guitar banger

chris deville · stereogum, 4 june 2021

In his account, the band build a hard shell around that riff and then let Yorke breathe out over sparse, dramatic arpeggios. On an album made largely of loops and edits it is one of the few tracks that sounds like five people in a room.

what rachel said

Yorke told Nick Kent at Mojo that the song was a document of a complete crisis point. The line he half-sang to Kent to explain it is about thinking there was no future left at all. What gets him out is a piece of advice from his long-term partner, Rachel Owen, which she had been giving him all along.

Be proud of what you've done. Don't look back and just carry on

rachel owen, quoted by thom yorke · mojo, june 2001

He said he only really heard it after months of what he called utter torment, and that hearing it is what the song is about.

a promo, two videos and a title

In June 2001 it went out as a promotional single, and two videos were made for it. Sophie Muller directed one of them. In November it gave its name to I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, released in Britain on 12 November 2001, which opens with “The National Anthem” and puts this song second. The discography lists no chart placing for it. In 2008 it went onto the second disc of The Best Of.

When the 2003 site asked its readers for their favourite Amnesiac song in January 2003, “I Might Be Wrong” got 37 votes, second only to “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” on 41.

on stage

The archive counts 175 nights. The busiest year was 2003, with 44, when it also went out stripped down: Yorke and Jonny Greenwood played it for KCRW at Electric Lady Studios in New York on 4 June, for KROQ at the Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles on 29 September and for Radio 1 at Maida Vale on 8 December. It opened a show once and closed one once.

It came back in 2012 for 20 nights, then went quiet after the Sydney Entertainment Centre on 13 November 2012. The gap ran 1,598 days, to the American Airlines Arena in Miami on 30 March 2017. Ten nights that year and seven in 2018 followed, the last at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on 31 July 2018.

adverts and covers

In September 2004 the desk noted an extract of it in a Sky Movies advert on British television. For Stereogum's cover of every Amnesiac track in June 2011, it went to the Amnesiac Quartet.