Radiohead's "Kid A" atop pop charts

[Don Vito Corleone]

According to this article, "Kid A" is not only the first album by an English artist to reach #1 on the Billboard charts, but also the first rock album this year to do so.

I am a bit nonplussed by this as a diehard Radiohead fan, as the album seems so defiantly noncommercial, but I imagine the hardcore fans like me all bought it the first week, leading to artificially high early sales. Still, I have to say that I love the idea of a world in which "American Beauty" wins Best Picture and "Kid A" is the best-selling album in America. All of a sudden the subversive is mainstream! I can't help but think that on some level we have the late Kurt Cobain to thank for this.

 

[DirkBelig]

Uh...you might have noticed that Britney Spears and Eminem and other pop junk have been RULING the charts this year.

"Kid A" IS NOT the epic recreation of music that the critics and drooling fans have made it out to be. I listen to Tricky, Cibo Matto, Sonic Youth, The Orb, etc. and in that context, it's pretty good.

I snagged most of it off Napster to give is a listen and I liked it enough to plan on picking it up when I come across a used copy for $8 or less.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Easy, tiger. I never said it was the be-all and end-all of music (I am actually a bit disappointed with it compared to the stellar "OK Computer&quot. I was just making an observation.

 

[Soulflare]

"Kid A" is not a bad album at all (it is still growing on me),
however I heard that they are coming out with another, more
accessible, album around spring. Thankfully for a band like
Radiohead that's creative and somewhat strange, "more accessible"
doesn't mean "commercial sellout".

To Anyone Who Owns The Album:
I highly recommend you download the MP3 version of "Motion
Picture Soundtrack" off of Napster. The file I have is a
live acoustic version and it's about 10x better than the
version included on the album.

 

[DirkBelig]

Actually, I prefer "Kid A" to "OKC". Everything I heard off it was such total bullshiz, I went into instinctive aversion to Radiohead. "Paranoid Android" was the most convoluted piece of crap with all the pointless, meaningless style changes, I lost all respect for them. (And this is coming from someone who loves Zappa's "Brown Shows Don't Make It"!)

 

[DirkBelig]

Oh, hell....I just caught the Cobain comment.

Listen up: KURT COBAIN IS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE THINK HE IS!!!!

In fact, I was cleaning the crib today and "Nevermind" was lying near the CD stereo, so I popped it in an cranked it. It hasn't aged that well, but it's still solid.

Nirvana was just the first alternative band to break thru and sell HUGE, showing the commercial viablility of that kind of music. That's all. The rock press needs gods to worship (Elvis, Lennon, etc.) and Kurt got the treatment and it drove him to his death. (That and marrying Courtney didn't help!)