Thread by @jordanmoore

A short thread on why Radiohead are the closest thing we have to a modern Beatles.

Besides the obvious comparisons of seamlessly traversing musical styles and releasing controversial records at the height of their fame, both bands dabbled with something else: secrets.

1/ They had a knack for hidden messages in album artwork. They rewarded curiosity. People who looked hard enough for secrets would find them, like this message found inside OK Computer after the CD tray is removed.

2/ With their follow up album Kid A (2000) they repeated this trick and put an entire booklet behind the CD tray. The booklet contained lyrics to songs on forthcoming albums. If you discovered the booklet years later after listening to those albums as I did, it's quite something.

Images of Hunting Bears (Amnesiac 2001), a reference to You and Whose Army? and Knives Out (Amnesiac 2001), Myxomatosis and Where I End and You Begin (Hail to the Thief 2003).

And this interesting sketch with the word "Amok" the title of the 2013 debut album by Atoms for Peace, one of Thom Yorke's other projects.

3/ Burn the Witch was foreshadowed by Stanley Donwood on the Hail to the Thief album cover. The bottom left corner contains lyrics from the song 13 years before its release on 2016's A Moon Shaped Pool.

4/ Reckoner and the Golden Ratio

61.8% of the way through In Rainbows (the golden section of the album’s length) lands at 2:49 in Reckoner where Thom whispers the album title “In Rainbows” in the backing vocals.

5/ 01 and 10 theory

This one is too much of a coincidence to ignore. There is an odd relationship between Ok Computer (1997) and In Rainbows (2010) many odd details point to 1’s and 0’s - the first letters are “O” and “I” look a little like the binary 0 and 1...

... both titles have 10 letters, and In Rainbows was released on 10/10/10.

It appears to be a story 13 years in the making considering Ok Computer’s working title was “Zeroes and Ones”.

Some believe that staggering the track list for both albums leads to some odd coincidences…

...such as tracks overlapping themes, one album counting the other in for the next track, and some songs sounding like a seamless transition ending and beginning in the same key as if it was part of the same track.

6/ Heading towards their last album, A Moon Shaped Pool, the band sent promotional material to the homes of their fans with the words "We know where you live" on the envelope - a phrase from the Hail to the Thief artwork.

7/ In 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool the song “True Love Waits” finally makes its way into an album. They’ve been trying to settle on an arrangement for the song for years with the earliest attempt dating back to 1997 for Ok Computer.

It was written after Thom met Rachel Owen, his partner of 23 years. Early versions were upbeat and melodic including the live version on I Might Be Wrong - the live album from 2001.
open.spotify.com/track/6PbeGqzG…

The decision to record True Love Waits for A Moon Shaped Pool after the end of his 23 year marriage feels especially melancholy which matches its new isolated, bare arrangement.
open.spotify.com/track/01ZpFhrM…

A Moon Shaped Pool begins with the word “Stay” on Burn the Witch and ends on True Love Waits with the word “Leave”.

8/ I'll end on the song Daydreaming from the same album. It’s heavily layered with secrets. This video captures it beautifully vimeo.com/178823364

The music video shows the artist’s struggle between family life and work. Thom walks through 23 doors representative of his 23 years of marriage to Rachel Owens.

The themes of the rooms deal with motherhood, family disputes, domestic chores, the family home, intertwined with Thom’s art including Motion Picture Soundtrack, Videotape, High and Dry, Just, and No Surprises - which itself speaks of a domestic life of no alarms and no surprises

Thom was 47 at the time of recording. Like The Beatles, Thom used back-masking to hide messages in his music. The message hidden in at the end of Daydreaming speaks of the creative/domestic struggle.

23 years of marriage and 23 years of Radiohead. The video ends on the shot of Thom lying down like the man in the Just video, with the fire illuminating his face like the No Surprises video. Playing the record in reverse he repeats the phrase “half of my life”, “half of my love”.