Song · Hail to the Thief era (2003–04)
Where I End and You Begin
Jonny Greenwood teased that it was another love song. Yorke thought about it and agreed.
Hail to the Thiefalbum- 2003released
- 4:29length
24 jul 2002
the encore in lisbon
It was the newest thing in the set even by the standards of the Iberian try-out run. Radiohead first played it on 24 July 2002, the third and final night at the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon, in the encores: twentieth of 23 songs in the running order NME printed, between “Talk Show Host” and “Pyramid Song”.
2002–03
a new order rhythm
On the interview CD Parlophone sent out in April 2003, the band described it as a rock song with “walls” of ondes Martenot on top of a rhythm section that owed something to New Order. Philip Selway's drums and Colin Greenwood's bass run a pattern that never really develops, it just continues, and Jonny Greenwood lays the ondes over it until it stops sounding like a melody and starts sounding like weather.
Greenwood had wanted an ondes Martenot since he was 15 and first heard Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony. The album's sleeve credits him with it, alongside his Analogue Systems modular and a laptop. His personal thanks on the same sleeve end with Jeanne Loriod, the instrument's leading player, who had recorded the Turangalîla six times: “(to her memory) - & all her pupils”. She had died in August 2001, after a stroke while swimming near Antibes, less than a year before this song was first played.
the words
the gap
When Yorke and Jonny Greenwood went through the album for NME in May 2003, Greenwood teased that this was another love song, and after a moment Yorke supposed that it was. It is about the space between two people, and a narrator stuck high above it who can watch but not take part. Then the tone turns and the song ends on a threat, repeated. The full title adds “(The Sky Is Falling In.)”.
sep 2003
the big noise
A demo came out on 6 September 2003 on The Big Noise, a CD given away with the Guardian for Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign, with Coldplay, R.E.M., the Chemical Brothers and Damon Albarn also on it. Two days later the paper ran an article by Yorke on trade and the world's poorest countries. In February 2005 a Leama and Moor remix turned up on white label.
Michael Nelson at Stereogum called it minor league in 2013. His colleague Ryan Leas, ten years on, disagreed.
One of their most criminally overlooked songs.
ryan leas · stereogum, 9 june 2023
2002–18
on stage
The archive has it on 111 nights: seven in 2002, 63 in 2003, seven in 2004, nine in 2006, 17 in 2008, three in 2017 and five in 2018. It has never opened or closed a show. It was in the set at Mansfield on 13 August 2003, when the North American tour opened, and it was one of three Hail to the Thief songs in the In Rainbows – From the Basement session filmed in April 2008.
After the Tokyo International Forum on 7 October 2008 it was gone for 3,102 days, until the Sprint Center in Kansas City on 5 April 2017. Its last night so far is Little Caesars Arena in Detroit on 22 July 2018. It did not come back in 2025.
A live take is track five of Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003–2009), released by XL on 13 August 2025; Pitchfork's Molly Mary O'Brien picked out its keyboard harmonies. In the 2025 stage Hamlet Hail to the Thief it drives a frantic dance just before “To be or not to be”.
on stage
A live take.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
Live history
| Times played | 111 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Wednesday 24 July 2002 · Lisbon |
| Last played | Sunday 22 July 2018 · Detroit |
| Longest absence | 8 years · back on Wednesday 5 April 2017 · Kansas City |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
sources12
- “Hot Lisbon action”, NME.com, 25 July 2002, for the debut and running order.
- Wikipedia, “Hail to the Thief”, for the ondes Martenot and New Order (citing the Parlophone interview CD, 22 April 2003) and The Big Noise.
- Wikipedia, “Jonny Greenwood”, for the Messiaen story.
- Radiohead, Hail to the Thief sleeve notes, Parlophone, 2003 (credits and thanks, read from the Discogs database), for Greenwood's instruments and the Loriod line.
- Wikipedia, “Jeanne Loriod”, and her Discogs profile, for her death and the Turangalîla recordings.
- Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, track-by-track guide to Hail to the Thief, NME, 10 May 2003, for the love song.
- The Guardian, The Big Noise CD, 6 September 2003, and Thom Yorke, “Losing the faith”, The Guardian, 8 September 2003, as logged by the site's 2003 desk; the 2005 desk for the Leama and Moor remix.
- Michael Nelson, “Hail To The Thief Turns 10”, Stereogum, 7 June 2013; Ryan Leas, “Radiohead's Hail To The Thief Turns 20”, Stereogum, 9 June 2023.
- Shawn Fitzgerald, “Radiohead @ Tweeter Center, Mansfield”, musicOMH, 13 August 2003.
- Wikipedia, “In Rainbows – From the Basement”, for the 2008 session.
- Wikipedia, “Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003–2009)”; Molly Mary O'Brien, review, Pitchfork, 15 August 2025.
- Fernando Rennis, profile of Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Rolling Stone Italia, 5 May 2025, for the dance before the soliloquy.