In Defense of Radiohead

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.

Here’s how it works: Every hour on the hour, the record was played for a select group of journalists in a suite at the Soho Grand, one of downtown New York’s swankest hotels. Fortunately for the journalists — but unfortunately for Kid A — these listening parties end up being just that: a party. While the record plays in the background, people shoot the breeze, network, attempt to sound important and repeat the phrase, “It sounds like they’ve been listening to a lot of Aphex Twin.” Drinks are served; finger sandwiches are consumed. (Rather excellent finger sandwiches, I might add. But I digress.)

All of which makes for a nice party but makes for a rather bad atmosphere to take in a record — especially one as user-unfriendly as Kid A. So what happened was journalists were forced to make a snap judgment on a record that would have seriously benefited from a week of listens. There are deadlines to be met — I wrote my extremely positive Kid A review the day after I heard it, based on the two listens I got at the hotel, as I imagine many others did. Snap judgments tend to be extreme, and as Radiohead enjoyed critical darling status post-OK Computer, it’s not surprising that most of the initial reactions (in the American press anyway) were overwhelmingly positive.

Later on, when the record is out and said journalists finally have an opportunity to sit down with it, they realize that it’s not quite as good as their first impression led them to believe. It’s a fine record, but no one’s going to be saving rock with it. (That, Radiohead might say, was the point.) Then the embarrassment sets in: “Why did I give this record such a good review? People are going to realize it’s not as good as I said it was and then we’re going to look dumb.” So the backlash sets in to counter it. (There’s also a suspicion running through the industry that a lot of the backlash had to do with Radiohead’s now-notorious stubborness towards the press. There’s something to be said for several rather large magazines that turned on the record after being denied interviews, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Finally, the charges of “artsy-fartsiness” should be addressed. What’s wrong with being artsy-fartsy? There’s not a whole lot of art going on in the mainstream music business anymore, people. Sure, Godspeed You Black Emperor! is making some great experimental music, but they’re not being given the chance to foist a big slab of art on MTV, where prepackaged teen divas and nu-metal slop are the order of the day. Every critic who complains about Radiohead being too artsy should take a glance at the charts and thank their lucky stars that there’s still a major-label band willing to take a chance on art — when bands like that are gone, music criticism is out of a job.