"High and Dry" and "Planet Telex" are songs by the English rock band Radiohead, released on their second album, The Bends (1995). They were released as a double A-side single on 27 February 1995 by Parlophone and Capitol Records.
"High and Dry" was recorded as a demo during the sessions for Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey (1993), and remastered for The Bends. It is credited as an influence on the bands Travis and Coldplay. "Planet Telex" developed from studio experimentation with drum loops. Two music videos were produced for "High and Dry".
Recording
Radiohead's songwriter, Thom Yorke, performed an early version of "High and Dry" with another band, Headless Chickens, while attending the University of Exeter in the late 1980s. He said the lyrics were about "some loony girl I was going out with", but became "mixed up with ideas about success and failure".
In 1993, Radiohead recorded a demo at Courtyard Studios, Oxfordshire, with their live engineer, Jim Warren. They dismissed it as "too Rod Stewart".
Radiohead wrote and recorded "Planet Telex" in a single session at RAK Studios while working on The Bends. It developed from experiments with a drum loop taken from another song, the B-side "Killer Cars", to which Radiohead added piano processed with multiple delay effects. The band had recently returned from a restaurant, and Yorke recorded his vocals drunk, slumped in a corner. According to the producer, John Leckie, "We had the whole thing down within a couple of hours, which was really refreshing and fun to do."
Music videos
The first music video for "High and Dry" was directed by David Mould and features Radiohead performing at the Vasquez Rocks outside Los Angeles. For the American market, Radiohead's American record label, Capitol, commissioned a new video set in a roadside diner, inspired by the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. It was directed by Paul Cunningham. After MTV objected, the video was edited to remove a shot of an exploding car. In 2017, Pitchfork credited "High and Dry" and another Bends song, "Fake Plastic Trees", for influencing the "airbrushed" post-Britpop of Coldplay and Travis. The Irish Times said that "High and Dry" had "essentially invented Coldplay".
Track listing
Personnel
Radiohead
- Colin Greenwood
- Jonny Greenwood
- Ed O'Brien
- Philip Selway
- Thom Yorke
Production
- John Leckie – production (except "High and Dry"), mixing ("Maquiladora")
- Nigel Godrich – engineering (except "High and Dry")
- Steve Osborne – remixing ("Planet Telex (Hexidecimal Mix)")
- Chris Brown – engineering ("Maquiladora")
- Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie – mixing ("Planet Telex", "High and Dry", "Killer Cars")
Artwork
- Stanley Donwood
- Thom Yorke
Charts
Weekly charts
{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
!Chart (1995–1996)
!Peak<br/>position
|-
!scope="row"|Australia (ARIA)
| 62
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Europe (Eurochart Hot 100)
| 70
|-
!scope="row"|Europe (European Hit Radio)
| 25
|-
!scope="row"|Iceland (Íslenski Listinn Topp 40)
| 15
|-
!scope="row"|Italy Airplay (Music & Media)
| 6
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|}
Year-end charts
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
!Chart (1996)
!Position
|-
!scope="row"|US Modern Rock Tracks (Billboard)
| 84
|}
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
!Chart (2001)
!Position
|-
!scope="row"|Canada (Nielsen SoundScan)
| 120
|}