Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. Departing from their earlier sound, Radiohead incorporated influences from electronic music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, with a wider range of instruments and effects. The singer, Thom Yorke, wrote abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animations and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate sponsors.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the US Billboard 200. It was certified platinum in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, France and Japan. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, derivative or wilfully obscure. However, it was later named one of the greatest albums by numerous publications; Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and The Times ranked it the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Kid A won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
Radiohead released a second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, in 2001. In 2021, they released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that." He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre, and said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment."
Recording
thumb|Jonny Greenwood performing on an [[ondes Martenot in 2010|alt=]]After the success of OK Computer, Radiohead bought a barn in Oxfordshire and converted it into a recording studio. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it.
The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". O'Brien began using sustain units on his guitar, which allow notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.
In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks,
Radiohead moved to their newly completed studio in Oxfordshire in September. By 2000, six songs were complete. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense, and decided that a series of EPs would be a "copout". He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing. The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
thumb|upright=0.75|Radiohead recorded the strings for "How to Disappear Completely" in [[Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire.]]Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." In November 1999, Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings. Greenwood gave 50 minutes of improvisation to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke said it was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage". and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Critics identified elements of electronica, post-rock, art pop, ambient, post-prog, and electronic rock. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, it was used on most tracks. Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.
The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke described the lyrics as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken", and said he was not trying to communicate anything specific. and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. Whereas the pair had previously created album artwork through collage, photography and digital manipulation, for Kid A they used paint for the first time. Donwood used canvases measuring six square feet. He painted on them with knives and sticks and used Artex to create textured surfaces, which Yorke photographed and manipulated with Photoshop. Donwood focused on painting, while Yorke focused on digital editing. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".
Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.
Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
thumb|right|[[Phil Selway discussing Kid A in 2000]]
thumb|Kid As promotional campaign introduced the "Modified Bear" logo, used for later Radiohead marketing and merchandise.|alt=|172x172pxRadiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".
No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album. Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them. by 2000 online music promotion was not yet widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio.
The commercial success of Kid A suggested that leaks might not be as damaging as many had assumed. The music journalist Brent DiCrescenzo argued that the Napster leak profoundly affected the way Kid A was received, surprising listeners who would patiently download new tracks to find they comprised "four minutes of ambient noise". Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.
In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. Radiohead resumed touring the next year in support of Amnesiac. selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs".
Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" appeared "clumsy and dated".
AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who".
Yorke said Radiohead had not attempted to alienate or confound, but that their musical interests had changed. He said Radiohead felt "incredibly vindicated and happy" after Kid A reached number one in the US. Record Collector, Spin, NME and the Village Voice. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Sheffield likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency to venerate rock music over other genres.
In a 2011 Guardian article about his negative Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lynskey wrote in The Guardian that Kid A was sometimes dull, with incoherent lyrics, and that Radiohead should have merged it with the best tracks from Amnesiac.
Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of the "challenging" Kid A established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run". In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork In 2025, Rolling Stone named it the second-greatest album of the century so far, writing that it "foresaw a darker 21st century, one marked by fear, loneliness, dislocation, and technological advancements that only divide us further ... And 25 years later, there's near-universal sentiment that Kid A is not only a towering achievement by the greatest band of its time, but also a warning call that went completely unheeded." "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|+Accolades for Kid A
! Publication
! Country
! Accolade
! Year
! Rank
|-
! scope="row"| Consequence of Sound
| US
| Top 100 Albums Ever
| 2010
| style="text-align:center;"| 73
|-
! scope="row"| Fact
| UK
| The 100 Best Albums of the 2000s
| 2010
| style="text-align:center;"| 7
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2| The Guardian
| rowspan=2| UK
| Albums of the decade
| 2009
| style="text-align:center;"| 2
|-
| The 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century
| 2019
| style="text-align:center;"| 16
|-
! scope="row"| Mojo
| UK
| The 100 Greatest Albums of Our Lifetime 1993–2006
| 2006
| style="text-align:center;"| 7
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2| NME
| rowspan=2| UK
| The 100 Greatest British Albums Ever
| 2006
| style="text-align:center;"| 65
|-
| The Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade
| 2009
| style="text-align:center;"| 14
|-
! scope="row"| Paste
| US
| The 50 Best Albums Of The Decade
| 2010
| style="text-align:center;"| 4
|-
! scope="row"| Pitchfork
| US
| Top 200 Albums of the 2000s
| 2009
| style="text-align:center;"| 1
|-
! scope="row"| Platendraaier
| The Netherlands
| Top 30 Albums of the 2000s
| 2015
| style="text-align:center;"| 7
|-
! scope="row"| PopMatters
| UK/US
| The 100 Best Albums of the 2000s
| 2014
| style="text-align:center;"| 1
|-
! scope="row" |Porcys
|Poland
|The Best Albums of 2000-2009
|2010
| style="text-align:center;" |2
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=4| Rolling Stone
| rowspan=4| US
| The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
| 2020
| style="text-align:center;"| 20
|-
| The 100 Best Albums of the Decade
| 2025
| style="text-align:center;"| 2
|-
! scope="row"| Spin
| US
| Top 100 Albums of the Last 20 Years
| 2005
| style="text-align:center;"| 48
|-
! scope="row"| Stylus
| US
| The 50 Best Albums of 2000–2004
| 2006
| style="text-align:center;"| *
|-
! scope="row"| The Times
| UK
| The 100 Best Pop Albums of the Noughties
| 2009
| style="text-align:center;"| 1
|-
! scope="row"| 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
| US
| 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
| 2010
| style="text-align:center;"| *
|-
! scope="row"| Musikexpress
| Germany
| The 50 Best Albums of the New Millennium
| 2015
| style="text-align:center;"| 3
|-
! scope="row"| La Vanguardia
| Spain
| The Best Albums of the Decade
| 2010
| style="text-align:center;"| 1
|-
! scope="row"| The A.V. Club
| US
|The Best Music of the Decade
| 2009
| style="text-align:center;"| 3
|}
<small>(*) designates unordered list</small>
Later releases
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A.
The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.
On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material. Radiohead promoted it with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows. A physical installation, Motion Picture House: Kid A Mnesia, opened at the 2026 Coachella festival in California and is set to tour the US. Screenings of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu set to Kid A took place in the UK in October 2025.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead. "Idioteque" samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
- "Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
- "Kid A" – 4:44
- "The National Anthem" – 5:51
- "How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
- "Treefingers" – 3:42
- "Optimistic" – 5:15
- "In Limbo" – 3:31
- "Idioteque" – 5:09
- "Morning Bell" – 4:35
- "Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
- Untitled hidden track – 0:52
Note: track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:18 until 5:10, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Production
- Nigel Godrich – production, engineering, mixing
- Radiohead – production
- Gerard Navarro – production assistance, additional engineering
- Graeme Stewart – additional engineering
- Stanley – artwork
- Tchock – artwork
- Chris Blair – mastering
Additional musicians
- Orchestra of St John's – strings
- John Lubbock – conducting
- Jonny Greenwood – scoring
- Horns on "The National Anthem"
- Andy Bush – trumpet
- Steve Hamilton – alto saxophone
- Martin Hathaway – alto saxophone
- Andy Hamilton – tenor saxophone
- Mark Lockheart – tenor saxophone
- Stan Harrison – baritone saxophone
- Liam Kirkham – trombone
- Mike Kearsey – bass trombone
- Henry Binns – rhythm sampling on "The National Anthem"
Charts
Weekly charts
{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+Weekly chart performance for Kid A
!scope="col"| Chart (2000)
!scope="col"| Peak <br /> position
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Danish Albums (Hitlisten)
|align="center"|2
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
! scope="row"| Japanese Albums (Oricon)
| style="text-align:center;"| 3
|-
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Spanish Albums (AFYVE)
|align="center"|22
|-
|-
|-
|-
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|+2000 year-end chart performance for Kid A
! Chart (2000)
! Position
|-
! scope="row"| Australian Albums (ARIA)
| align="center"|70
|-
! scope="row"| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)
| align="center"|71
|-
! scope="row"| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)
| align="center"|82
|-
! scope="row"|Canadian Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)
| align=center| 59
|-
! scope="row"| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)
| align="center"|84
|-
! scope="row"| French Albums (SNEP)
| align="center"|64
|-
! scope="row"| UK Albums (OCC)
| align="center"|50
|-
! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| align="center"|190
|}
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
- Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
- Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
- "All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.