ok computer radiohead 20 anniversary release

After these reissues, Radiohead did what it always does: move on to the next thing.

Colin Greenwood did call the reissues a “cash-grab” for a dying label in one interview, but in a fashion far less impassioned than many of Radiohead’s devotees. If any of the musicians in Radiohead shared these sentiments, they didn’t take to the web or print to pen any strongly worded rejoinders to their former label. The music press happily took up the fight on Radiohead’s behalf: Pitchfork accused Capital of “whoring out the Radiohead catalogue”, and The Guardian boldly declared that EMI had “stab Radiohead in the back catalogue”. None of the group’s five members started an all-out-war with EMI despite backlash from many publications and fans, Radiohead remained, for the most part, disinterested. After Radiohead left EMI in favor of alternative album distribution, such as the “pay-what-you-will” model employed for 2007’s In Rainbows, EMI cashed in on whatever it could of the Radiohead discography, given that it still owned rights to a large amount of the group’s music.

This indifference to revivifying the past was a focal point in the mildly controversial series of EMI/Capitol reissues of Radiohead’s back catalogue in the late 2000s. Radiohead doesn’t play “My Iron Lung” and “No Surprises” because they have to. The quintet continues to perform old tunes in their live shows - even “Creep”, the product of a much younger version of Radiohead - but seemingly never out of a sense of obligation. The leap from The Bends to OK Computer can be measured in miles rather than inches from OK Computer to Kid A, in decades rather than years. Whatever one’s view of Radiohead’s career progression, it remains undeniable that the band maintains a steady interest in self-reinvention. In the sea of exultant, almost religious sea of adjectives pinned to Radiohead and its music by fans and critics, one word never appears: “nostalgic”.

Ok computer radiohead 20 anniversary release