Reading the initial reviews of Radiohead’s Kid A, you would have thought that Jesus Christ himself had risen from the dead, listened to a whole lot of Aphex Twin and delivered unto the world a masterpiece the likes of which it had never seen. Four-star reviews leapt from every music magazine; large, positive adjectives were bandied about. “Challenging.” “Difficult.” “Experimental, ambient, difficult challenges.” “Not unlike an experimental, ambient Can meets the difficult, challenging soundscapes of…”
Upon the record’s release months later, a mysterious phenomenon began to surface: the backlash. The same magazines that had praised Radiohead for being so daring began to slam them for being too pretentious, too arty. In my humble opinion, here’s why.
Things would have been different if the band had allowed journalists a promotional copy of the record to listen to for a while before reviews went out. This is the way it usually works, in a nutshell: Writers receive a copy of a record months before it’s actually released, partly so that they have time to form an opinion about it before they write about it, but mostly because magazines have ridiculously large lead times. (As you read this, the magazine I work at is working on its March issue.) The Kid A promo push didn’t work like this. Instead, for fear of the mighty Napster, press were forced to get their first listens at listening parties sponsored by the band’s publicity company. I was fortunate enough to go to one. Read the remainder of this entry »