Song · Kid A / Amnesiac era (2000–01)
Motion Picture Soundtrack
At the South Park homecoming in 2001 the organ died a few chords in, and Oxford got “Creep” instead.
Kid Aalbum- 2000released
- 7:01length
early 1990s
older than creep
Record Collector reported in 2000 that it was written before “Creep”, which puts it back in the On a Friday years, before there was a Radiohead to record it. The archive's first performance is a radio session at WHFS in Rockville on 10 April 1996.
On the OK Computer tour it became an occasional encore, with Thom Yorke alone on an acoustic guitar. At the fan club's thank-you night at the London Astoria on 3 September 1997 the setlist records an early version with a third verse and a second chorus. After Festival Hall in Melbourne on 2 February 1998 it was put away for 942 days.
1996–97
the piano version
They tried it in the studio during the OK Computer sessions, with Yorke at a piano, and left it there. That take stayed in the vaults until 2017, when it came out on the cassette in the special edition of OKNOTOK, and Jamie Atkins, reviewing the box for Record Collector, rated the vocal among the best Yorke has given, wounded at the start and defiant by the end.
1999–2000
pump organ and harps
It came back during the Kid A sessions. The 2003 version of this site kept two of Yorke's studio notes from October 1999. The first was pleased with the singing and the sounds Jonny Greenwood, Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien had made, and reckoned the song half done; the second had a rhythm track, a plan to try keyboards and “endless guitar solos”, and a feeling Yorke would have to sing it again.
Yorke recorded the song on a pedal organ, with Tom Waits in mind, and the band added sampled harps and double bass, aiming for the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Simon Reynolds in Spin heard the album end on Yorke numbing a heartbreak with pills, wine and sad films, under harps and heavenly voices that came close to kitsch. Brent DiCrescenzo in Pitchfork heard Lennon's “Julia” crossed with the maudlin song that ends the White Album.
It runs 7:01 because the song is not the end of the track. A long silence follows, and then a short untitled coda, which Rob Mitchum in Pitchfork reckoned justified the hidden-track trick.
7 jul 2001
kaputt
The album arrangement was first played in Newport on 1 September 2000, and from then on it was always in an encore, the last song of the night 11 times.
At the homecoming in South Park, Oxford, on 7 July 2001 it came in the third encore, in pouring rain, and a few chords in Yorke's organ died. Yorke put on a mock-German Kraftwerk voice, told the crowd “It's kaputt, ja?” and promised them an older song. The whole band came back for “Creep”, which they had not played since June 1998, and about 40,000 people sang it in the downpour.
Don't know if you could tell, but I was in tears for the last part of it.
thom yorke, afterwards, to colin greenwood's wife, molly · the new yorker, 13 august 2001
2026
motion picture house
The installation that took the Kid A Mnesia film and Nigel Godrich's new surround mix of Kid A and Amnesiac on the road in 2026 was called Motion Picture House. It opened in a bunker beneath the Coachella grounds in April and moved to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in May, and in its galleries, among Yorke and Stanley Donwood's faxes and the sculptures of the crying minotaur, a low hum carries scraps of “Motion Picture Soundtrack”.
on stage
Live at The Gorge 2001.· WiseRileywatch on youtube →
the record(2)
on stage(1)
explained
It predates “Creep” and waited years before it closed Kid A.· Stempwatch on youtube →
Live history
| Times played | 31 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Wednesday 10 April 1996 · Rockville |
| Last played | Saturday 7 July 2001 · Oxford |
| Closed the night | 11 times |
| Longest absence | 2 years · back on Friday 1 September 2000 · Newport |
First played live in 1996, 4 years before it was released.
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
Tabs (1)
Heard in (2)
- Westworld
- Nine Perfect StrangersUnder the shared hallucination in the woods.
sources15
- Jake Kennedy, “Kid A Rock”, Record Collector, November 2000, as cited by Wikipedia, “Kid A”, for the song predating “Creep”.
- Jazz Monroe, “Radiohead's 40 greatest songs, ranked!”, The Guardian, 23 January 2020, for On a Friday.
- Mat Smith, review of the London Astoria, NME, 13 September 1997, for the fan club night.
- Wikipedia, “Kid A”, for the piano version, the pedal organ, Tom Waits, the harps, the double bass and Disney (citing Jonny and Colin Greenwood, Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW, 20 October 2000, and Mixing It, BBC Radio 3, 20 January 2001).
- Jamie Atkins, “OK Computer – OKNOTOK 1997-2017”, Record Collector, issue 468, 21 June 2017.
- Wikipedia, “OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017”, for the cassette.
- Thom Yorke's studio notes, October and 12 October 1999, and the site's own note on the OK Computer tour encores, both on the 2003 treefingers.com lyric page (
_legacy/lyrics/songs/motion_picture_soundtrack.txt). - Simon Reynolds, “Radio Chaos”, Spin, October 2000.
- Brent DiCrescenzo, “Kid A”, Pitchfork, 2 October 2000, for the White Album.
- Rob Mitchum, “Radiohead: Kid A (Special Collectors Edition)”, Pitchfork, 25 August 2009, for the coda.
- Michael Hubbard, review of South Park, Oxford, musicOMH, 7 July 2001, for the broken keyboard and “kaputt”.
- Alex Ross, “The Searchers”, The New Yorker, issue dated 13 August 2001, for “Creep” and Yorke's words to Molly Greenwood.
- “Radiohead's ‘Motion Picture House: Kid A Mnesia’ to premiere at Coachella, then play in installations in four cities”, Variety, 8 April 2026, for the installation.
- Min Chen, Artnet News, 11 May 2026, and SPIN, 12 May 2026, for the galleries in Brooklyn.
- The site's live archive and its setlist notes, for the encores and the nights on stage.