The longevity of their run is staggering, but beyond all that, they’ve formed a deeper connection with longtime fans songs such as “True Love Waits” have publicly-evolving 21 year backstories.Īnd if it rains this way for Radiohead, it seems to pour for Yorke: he maintains a freedom and resonance that Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas would surely envy. Indeed, Radiohead live the dream of many musicians, boasting platinum-selling self-releases, distributed in whatever fashion they want, marketed as hastily as they feel necessary. We don’t hear much these days from pop stars Janet Jackson (roughly contemporaneous with Pablo Honey ), Rob Thomas (roughly contemporaneous with Kid A ) or Nelly Furtado (contemporaneous with In Rainbows )-even though they all had storied careers before petering out of public consciousness. In the span of 25 years, they’ve outlasted many of their chart-besting peers in the pubic memory. Still, history suggests they’ll be remembered in a way most pop acts will never be. They haven’t kept up with people we’d consider pop successes-people like Justin Bieber (four releases in eight years), or Drake (ten releases in ten years). Yorke has done a little better, releasing four (including his work with his band Atoms for Peace). Their numbers on that site reflect a relative lateness to the party.įurthermore, keep in mind that Radiohead has released only three albums in the last 15 years. Streaming is a harder metric to pin down, but given Yorke’s attitude toward Spotify, it’s not surprising they didn’t join the service till 2016. Justin Bieber, on the other hand, sold 44 million records between 20-and that’s in America alone. By contrast, here are three number one songs from the same year: “Weak,” “Freak Me,” and “Again.” Off the top of your head, can you remember the artists behind those songs?Īs for album sales, consider this: between 19, Radiohead sold around 30 million records worldwide. None of their singles charted as high ever again in the States. But while they’ve certainly done well, neither Yorke nor his band boast such success-at least, not as we often define it.Ĭonsider the singles, and their State-side performances: Lovers of 90s rock think of “Creep” as ubiquitous in fact, it peaked at number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100. One would think you’d need a foundation of inarguable commercial success to make that happen. It’s even rarer for a band and its front-man to achieve complete artistic freedom, to take risks both financial and artistic without fear of blowback. It’s rare when both a huge act and its front-man have comparable, though discrete careers. As Yorke and his producer (Nigel Godrich) coaxed “Black Swan” and “Cymbal Rush” into existence, Tarik Barri created an interactive visual show behind them, making use of scratchy color blocks often reminiscent of a failing VHS tape, as well as geometric patterns that played to the beat. Instead, Yorke frequently reworked tunes from a back catalogue of his independent material, doing so in droning, spartan, and sometimes unrecognizable ways. Now, there is a relatively new Thom Yorke record out there-a soundtrack for the film Suspiria -but that project received little attention at the Kings. All of this was done in support of Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, a record released four years ago via BitTorrent at the time, it garnered more press for its anti-music business roll-out than its musical content. He played to thousands of adulating fans. He was backed by two men, largely on laptops (one on music, the other on visuals). This week, Thom Yorke wrapped two sold-out shows at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn.
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