Amnesiac (album)
Amnesiac is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 30 May 2001 by EMI. It was recorded with the producer Nigel Godrich in the same sessions as Radiohead's previous album Kid A (2000). Radiohead split the work in two as they felt it was too dense for a double album. As with Kid A, Amnesiac incorporates influences from electronic music, 20th-century classical music, jazz and krautrock. The final track, "Life in a Glasshouse", is a collaboration with the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band.
Amnesiac
30 May 2001
4 January 1999 – 18 April 2000
- Guillaume Tell, Paris
- Medley, Copenhagen
- Radiohead studio, Oxfordshire
43:57
- Nigel Godrich
- Radiohead
After having released no singles for Kid A, Radiohead promoted Amnesiac with the singles "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out", accompanied by music videos. Videos were also made for "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates", and "I Might Be Wrong", which was released as a promotional single. In June 2001, Radiohead began the Amnesiac tour, incorporating their first North American tour in three years.
Amnesiac debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number two on the US Billboard 200. By October 2008, it had sold over 900,000 copies worldwide. It is certified platinum in the UK, the US and Canada, and gold in Japan. Though some critics felt it was too experimental or less cohesive than Kid A, or saw it as a collection of outtakes, it received positive reviews. It was named one of the year's best albums by numerous publications.
Amnesiac was nominated for the Mercury Prize and several Grammy Awards, winning for Best Recording Package for the special edition. "Pyramid Song" was named one of the best tracks of the decade by Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone ranked Amnesiac number 320 in their 2012 "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Artwork and packaging[edit]
The Amnesiac artwork was created by Yorke and the longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood.[30] For inspiration, Donwood explored London taking notes, likening the city to the labyrinth of Greek mythology.[31] He scanned blank pages of old books and superimposed onto them photos of fireworks and Tokyo tower blocks, copies of Piranesi's Imaginary Prisons drawings, and lyrics and phrases printed by Yorke on a broken typewriter.[32]
The cover depicts a book cover with a weeping minotaur.[31] The minotaur, a motif of the Amnesiac artwork, represents the "maze" Yorke felt he had become lost in during his depression after OK Computer;[33] Donwood described it as a "tragic figure".[33] Figures included in the album booklet include faceless terrorists, self-serving politicians and corporate executives. Yorke said they represented "the abstracted, semi-comical, stupidly dark, false voices that battled us as we tried to work".[34]
For the special edition, Donwood designed a package with a hardback CD case in the style of a mislaid library book. He imagined that "someone made these pages in a book and it went into drawer in a desk and was forgotten about in the attic ... And visually and musically the album is about finding the book and opening the pages."[31] The special edition won a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package at the 44th Grammy Awards.[35]
Release[edit]
Radiohead announced Amnesiac on their website in January 2001, three months after the release of Kid A.[36] It was released in Japan on 30 May by EMI,[37] in the UK on 4 June by Parlophone and in the US on 5 June by Capitol, both subsidiaries of EMI.[38]
Amnesiac debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart.[39] On the US Billboard 200, it debuted at number two, with sales of 231,000, surpassing the 207,000 first-week sales of Kid A.[40] It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan for shipments of 100,000 copies across Japan.[41] By October 2008, Amnesiac had sold more than 900,000 copies worldwide.[42] In July 2013, it was certified platinum in the UK for sales of more than 300,000.[43]
Promotion[edit]
Singles and videos[edit]
Radiohead released no singles from Kid A. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons. He regretted the choice, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.[44] For Amnesiac, Yorke said Radiohead would have "singles, videos, glossy magazine celebrity photoshoots, children's television appearances, film premiere appearances, dance routines, and many interesting interviews about my tortured existence".[44] "Pyramid Song" was released as a single in May,[45] followed by "Knives Out" in July,[46] backed by music videos.[4] Two videos were created for "I Might Be Wrong",[47] which was released as a radio-only single in June.[48]
Radiohead reworked "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates" for a computer-animated video directed by Johnny Hardstaff. The video premiered on November 29, 2001, at an animation festival at the Centre For Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. It features imagery of killer whales swimming under UV light, a machine taking shape and conjoined babies spinning in a centrifuge.[49] The video received little airplay from MTV, who felt it was "of a sensitive nature" and would only broadcast it with a warning. Hardstaff said: "The irony is that you can't move on MTV for bland R&B and the empty boasts of 'artists' effectively fixated with their own flaccid showbiz cocks, but any piece of film with an ounce of real emotion isn't going to get seen."[47]
Tour[edit]
Radiohead first performed Amnesiac songs on the Kid A tour, which began in June 2000.[50] They performed the electronic tracks using rock instrumentation.[51] For example, "Like Spinning Plates" was rearranged as a piano ballad.[52] On 10 June 2001, Radiohead recorded a concert for a special hour-long episode of the BBC show Later... with Jools Holland, including a performance of "Life in a Glasshouse" with the Humphrey Lyttelton Band.[39]
Radiohead began their first North American tour in three years on 18 June 2001. It comprised performances in west coast amphitheatres in June, followed by performances in the east and midwest in August.[53] The openers were the Beta Band and Kid Koala.[54] Capitol avoided traditional promotion for the tour and instead disseminated information to Radiohead's large online fanbase.[55] Tickets sold out within minutes. The Observer described this as "the most sweeping conquest of America by a British group" since Beatlemania, succeeding where bands such as Oasis had failed.[55]
Radiohead hoped to tour the US using a custom-built tent as they had for the Kid A tour in Europe, but met opposition from Clear Channel Entertainment and Ticketmaster, which Yorke said had a monopoly on American live music. Radiohead considered abandoning touring in the US, but felt this would have been a defeat.[7] They instead chose unusual venues, such as Grant Park in Chicago and the bank of the Hudson River in New York.[7][55] Recordings from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours were released on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings in November 2001.[28]
Reissues[edit]
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003.[86] In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Amnesiac.[87] After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Amnesiac was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums.[88]
On 25 August, EMI reissued Amnesiac in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. The first CD contains the original studio album; the second CD collects B-sides from Amnesiac singles and live performances; the DVD contains music videos and a live television performance. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.[89] The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue was transferred to XL Recordings in 2016.[90] In May 2016, XL reissued Radiohead's back catalogue on vinyl, including Amnesiac.[91]
An early demo of "Life in a Glasshouse", performed by Yorke on acoustic guitar, was released on the 2019 compilation MiniDiscs [Hacked].[92] On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions.[93] Radiohead promoted the reissue with two digital singles, the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around".[94] Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on 18 November for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.[95]