Radiohead’s Self-Sufficient Revolution: How ‘In Rainbows’ Shaped Their Latest Release
If there’s one thing Radiohead has gifted the music industry over the course of its majestic career, it’s the idea that an album release can be a fully-fledged theatrical event. This year alone has seen a barrage of surprise albums rain down upon the internet like a pop music hailstorm, transfixing the cultural conversation for days or weeks at a time. It’s been hard to ignore the clamoring that followed Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, Rihanna’s ANTI or even James Blake’s The Colour in Anything.
There’s a certain awestruck factor that occurs when a record descends from the sky unprovoked. They often feel like gifts materializing at random, and the frequency at which they’ve appeared lately gives one the impression of holidays come early. But lurking behind the idea of “pulling a Beyoncé,” which refers to the out-of-nowhere release of Bey’s self-titled album in 2013, is the band that pioneered the surprise album drop almost a decade ago. The rollout of Radiohead’s newest endeavor, the lucid 11-track LP A Moon Shaped Pool, offered just a taste of what happened in 2007, when the band sent a jolt down the music industry’s spine.
1h 17m
2m
9m
41m
20m
22m
10m
1m
43s
1m
10m
2m
21m
20m
20m
3m
2m
20m
21m
13m
2m
20m
59m
5m
5m
6m
5m
2m
20m
1m
44s
20m
1m
30s
49s
2m
9m
20m
1m
45m
41m
6m
6m
9m
41s
24m
22m
8m
1h 11m
20m
1h 5m
20m
21m
44m
22m
21m
22m
21m
10m
2m
9m
14m
21m
20m
3657s
1h 28m
23m
20m
1h 43m
22m
44m
1h 25m
9m
10m
2m
2m
2m
1m
1m
56m
1h 3m
1h 23m
1h 23m
1h 2m
18m
2m
2m
47m
2m
2m
2m
1m
1m
20m
1m
1m
9m
1m
20m
1m