20 Facts About Kid A

Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone.

Kid A was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media.

Kid A became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course".

Kid A began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Autechre.

For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator.

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Kid A gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song.

Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on this and several other Kid A songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes.

Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop.

Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes.

Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster.

In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time.

Kid A was widely anticipated; Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero.

Kid A predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.

Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's "best and bravest" album.

Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty".

Kid A concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who".

The piece was one of the first Kid A reviews posted online; shared widely by Radiohead fans, it helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.

At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.

Kid A described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend".