Why Kid A Matters

Googling for reviews of Radiohead’s Kid A is always an interesting experience. Rolling Stone asks “This is pop?” — then answers itself, affirming that it is in fact “a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there.” The Onion’s AV Club remarks that “the alien soundscapes are so foreign that it’s easy to get lost,” deciding finally that “Kid A is the sound of a rock band continuing to rewrite the rules so that the old rules (critical, musical, commercial) no longer apply.” The always-lofty Pitchfork Media reviewer uses a story about Florence as a springboard to a series of drastic statements: that Kid A is “an album which completely obliterates how albums, and Radiohead themselves, will be considered;” that it’s an “emotional, psychological experience” that “sounds like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction.” Or that “the experience and emotions tied to listening to Kid A are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax.”

Music snobs and critics can unwittingly create an atmosphere around an album, or a band, that begs to be rejected. That Kid A managed to bring this level of pretentiousness to bear on itself is really too bad. Because it, in just 49 minutes, is almost without a doubt the most influential and most important album of the ten years before it, and probably for another ten years to come. It draws from influences that define all modern music, and has even in the 5 short years since its release had a direct influence on a huge number of rock, pop, and electronic artists and producers. Pretentious or not, Kid A has literally redefined a generation of music.

Influences to Kid A

Radiohead - OK Computer. Kid A is as much evolution as it is revolution. Many of the tracks on it, and the sister album Amnesiac, are holdovers from Radiohead’s OK Computer sessions. Thematically, and on tracks like Fitter Happier or the ephemeral Paranoid Android, the progression is easy to trace.

Bjork - Homogenic. Radiohead’s front man, Thom Yorke, hooked up with Bjork for a duet on her 2000 release Selmasongs. But Bjork’s influence on Thom (and their friendship) goes back further than the exceptional single “I’ve Seen It All”. Homogenic is characteristic Bjork, mixing early-90s electronic breaks with sweeping strings and the characteristic wail that makes her unmistakable. The parallels to Kid A’s How To Disappear Completely and Idioteque are obvious.

Autechre - Chastic Slide. Here Autechre could easily be replaced by any band from Warp Records’ catalog, which is about as bleeding-edge as electronic music gets. The band listed Autechre as a direct influence on Idioteque, which was a track really paved the way for the electronification of rock music in general. Bassist Colin noted that “”One of the things Thom was into was Warp Records, and the different sounds. He was sick of the same sounds, the same things make the same noises on similar records.” Autechre is nothing if not different-sounding.

Aphex Twin - The Richard D. James Album. Another Warp Records posterboy, Aphex Twin has made a name for himself by being at once impossibly, unlistenably complex and strangely beautiful. Kid A’s Treefingers is part Yellow Calx, part Eno’s Music For Airports, and Everything In Its Right Place can almost echo parts of Girl-Boy Song.

REM - Monster. Yorke and REM’s Michael Stipe toured together in the early 90’s, and when the band was feeling down after the OK Computer tour, Thom apparently got a lot of sound advice from Stipe, and credits him to this day with helping keep Radiohead together. Treefingers as a musical interlude owes REM some credit, but really the connection here is personal rather than audible.

Talking Heads - True Stories. Radiohead always listed this album among their favorites, even when they were known as On A Friday in the early 90’s. In fact, they took their name from it. The influence on Kid A is more dramatic than on any other album.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew. The band directly cited Alice Coltrane as an influence, but on tracks like The National Anthem or, to a lesser extent, Motion Picture Soundtrack, the “free jazz” sound that Davis created with Bitches Brew shines through. It’s a sound that’s more prominent on the follow-up Amnesiac.

Influenced By Kid A

Evanescence - Fallen. Radiohead made it okay to mix rock and electronica and have the result be popularly palatable. While Evanescence might not be a particularly good band, they clearly blend nu-metal with the 21st century sound that was forged by Kid A.

Coldplay - X&Y. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin once famously described his band as “eager dogs yapping at Radiohead’s heels.” Coldplay has always been formulaic Brit rock, and since Radiohead started to evolve away from The Bends they have been happy to fill the space left behind. But listen to the first thirty seconds of OK Computer, then Kid A, then do the same with A Rush of Blood or Parachutes, and X&Y. If you’re anything like me, the similarity is astounding.

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Wayne Coyne has always really done his own thing, but charting the progress between The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi draws a number of obvious parallels to the OK Computer / Kid A transition. Yoshimi is upbeat where Kid A is melancholy, but they follow the same paths and use many of the same techniques: both have heavily electronic backing. (Now when can we see Kid A Battles the Hip Hop Robots?)

DJ Shadow - The Private Press. Like Bjork, DJ Shadow worked with Yorke on his UNKLE project’s Psyence Fiction album. That effort - Rabbit In Your Headlights - is really worth your time, and the video is probably one of the best videos ever made. On the subject of The Private Press, Shadow said that he “was also influenced by Kid A and Amnesiac, in the respect that those albums are so diverse musically, and I really wanted to hear that, and I wanted my album to reflect that as well.”

Britney Spears - In The Zone. When Kid A debuted at #1 on the charts, you can bet Britney (or at least her people) were watching. You can’t listen to Toxic and pretend the guy who produced that track didn’t spend a long time with Idioteque and a pair of headphones.

Madonna, Trent Reznor, Michael Jackson. They each listed Kid A as their #1 album a year after it was released.

Vanilla Sky. The movie opens with Everything In Its Right Place, and Kid A even features prominently in the plot.

Kid Rock. Maybe not influenced in the classic sense, but when asked about his opinion on Kid A, Mr. Rock opined “more power to ‘em, but I do not get it. If you like Radiohead’s record, don’t buy mine.” I don’t think this will be a problem.