Song · Kid A / Amnesiac era (2000–01)
The National Anthem
Yorke wrote the bassline at sixteen, and the horn section was told to sound like a traffic jam.
Kid Aalbum- 2000released
- 5:51length
1985ish–1997
the riff
Yorke wrote the bassline when he was sixteen. In late 1997 the band put down drums and bass meaning to use it as a B-side for OK Computer, then decided to keep it. A demo from that period was eventually released on the OKNOTOK special edition, and Record Collector was blunt about what they had avoided: it “could very easily have resembled the sort of latterday U2 track chosen to soundtrack Goal of the Month reels… That Radiohead had the self-awareness to sit on it rather than go for the drive-time jugular says so much about their intuitive good taste.”
1999
ondes martenot and radio static
They recorded it properly in Gloucestershire in mid-1999. Yorke played the bass and ran his vocal through a ring modulator; Jonny Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled off the radio, scanning between stations.
It's a very ill-disciplined way of recording… You're adding things to the stew, as well as rejecting things, and then you come back to the song with fresh ears.
ed o'brien
nov 1999
just blow
In November 1999 they brought in a horn section and told them to play free jazz. The model was Charles Mingus's Complete Town Hall Concert, the same record that shaped “Pyramid Song”.
Just fucking chaos… There's this incredible tension and it was the most formative record of the whole time.
thom yorke · juice, 1 october 2000
Yorke and Jonny Greenwood asked the players for a traffic jam, angry people stuck in a lift. Yorke conducted by jumping up and down, and broke his foot doing it.
The running joke when we were in the studios was, ‘Just blow. Just blow, just blow, just blow.’
thom yorke · mtv, 1 october 2001
2000
the part people hated
The horns were the most disliked thing on Kid A. Nick Hornby, in the New Yorker, called it “an unpleasant free-jazz workout, with a discordant horn section squalling over a studiedly crude bass line”. Others reached for “Mingus-in-a-tumble-dryer” and “annoying pileup of squawking instruments”. MTV, more usefully, described “a brass band marching into a brick wall”. Simon Reynolds heard “a strange, thrilling blast of kosmik highway music” somewhere between Hawkwind and Can.
Yorke met a fan who told him he could not make sense of the horns, and concluded that people did not want a sound that angry on a record they had paid for.
2000–2025
how it starts
On the Kid A tours the house brass bands improvised over it live, which is how people who had hated the record found out what it was for.
on stage
Live at South Park, 2001.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
Live history
| Times played | 319 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Tuesday 13 June 2000 · Arles |
| Last played | Thursday 11 December 2025 · Berlin |
| Opened the night | 50 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 →
Tabs (2)
Remixes & alternate versions (1)
- The National Anthem (live)
sources8
- David Fricke, “Making Music That Matters”, Rolling Stone, 2 August 2001.
- Nic Harcourt, “Radiohead”, Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW, October 2000.
- Kylee Swenson, “A spy in the house of music: Radiohead's Ed O'Brien discusses sonic espionage”, January 2001.
- Lauren Zoric, “Fitter, happier, more productive”, Juice, 1 October 2000.
- Kurt Loder, “Radiohead: Ice Age Coming”, MTV, 1 October 2001.
- Nick Hornby, “Beyond the Pale”, The New Yorker, 30 October 2000.
- Simon Reynolds, “Classic reviews: Radiohead, Kid A”, Spin, 2 October 2000.
- Jamie Atkins, “OK Computer: OKNOTOK 1997–2017”, Record Collector, 22 June 2017.