The OK Computer/In Rainbows conspiracy

by on October 26, 2007 with 52 Comments in Radiohead News

Radiohead preceded the release of In Rainbows with nine cryptic messages. They repeatedly emphasized X, the Roman Numeral for ten, in phrases such as “March Wa X”, and “Xendless Xurbia”. The tenth message was posted on October 10 with a photo of the band drinking tea. Puddlegum suspects a conspiracy over Radiohead’s emphasis of ten surrounding the release of In Rainbows.

“One theory suggests that Radiohead was typifying a binary code of ones and zeros, 1010101010. This has come to be known as the Binary Theory, also called the TENspiracy by some. [...] We have come to believe that OK Computer and In Rainbows were meant to complement each other. During the writing and recording process of OK Computer, Radiohead used the working title of Zeros and Ones. If OK Computer is represented by 01, and In Rainbows is represented by 10, then we have 01 and 10. In binary code 01 and 10 complement each other.”

Read Puddlegum’s full story on the Tenspiracy. [thx Stephan]


Radiohead news on this day..


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  • evilhomer

    *yawn*

  • gandalf

    Wow, slow news day? That’s pathetic…

    *yawn*

  • Laurent

    waht the hell are you they talking about…

  • http://www.khristopher.com Khristopher

    lol. i think someone is looking futher into things than necessary. or maybe not. who knows.

  • Cat

    I can see why OKC would represent 01 but why would IR represent 10? i think it’s bs but it’s an ok playlist.

  • jos

    Actually, the real conspiracy is that the real OK Computer was never released. In Rainbows is the real Ok Computer. They weren’t ready to release it 10 years ago. It was going to be called In Computer.

  • Rich

    I’ve made this amazing discovery that if you listen to In Rainbows it’s a bloody good album! Em that’s it!

  • whiteduck

    Yeah, and Thom Yorke never actually recovered from his depression. The real Thom Yorke committed suicide years ago, the Thom Yorke you see now is actually an intricate illusion created by a malignant supercomputer that hijacked our brains and make us believe the greatest band on the planet is still playing, so that we won’t notice that we have actually been turned into human batteries.

  • rice

    a lucky coincidence. So what if it is a real “tenspiracy”, that they actually meant to utilize the numbers 0 and 1? It’s not like that would affect anything in terms of their music or whatever.

  • http://yahoo teddy

    and did you guys know that only when
    music is burned onto a CD (and the CD
    has those 1′s and 0′s) does that CD
    get those rainbow colours when you
    aim it toward the light….fact!
    ‘In rainbows’ could actually mean
    ‘in music’….

  • bianca

    im sure thom wasted all his time planning this conspiracy..

    please dont take away from the beauty of those 2 albums.

  • Rico

    the true conspiracy is that ok computer and kid a had sex with eachother and 10 years later pops out in/rainbows. its their love child and its one fantastic album.

  • mjd180 (continued)

    Why is this crap in the new section? Some stuff is better off left in the message board…

  • http://www.myspace.com/girlwithgadgets junoXL5

    HOLY THEORIES

    If I were a chromosome X would indicate my sex – if I were a voter X would express my preference – If I were a lover X would send you a kiss – If I were an alphabet X would be my 24th letter – If I studied Geometry X would be the first coordinate – If I were a treasure hunter or a detective in a crime scene X would mark the spot – If I were a film censor I’d give your dirty, violent movie an X Rating – If I were an assassin X would have you in my sites – If I were a radiographer, I’d see right through you with me X-Rays – If I were a mathematician X would be the first unknown quantity – If I were illiterate X would mark my signature – If I were a teacher X would be the mark I’d give you for being wrong…..

    This kind of limited thinking is so typical of earthling conspiracy theorists, in that the majority of their theories can be blown apart by simply applying some common sense to their outlandish claims, which have usually arisen from their exceedingly narrow, oft ill informed person centered view of the world. And whilst you are all caught up in the likes of this and are too busy to take a ‘real’ look around, you all completely fail to see the momentous conspiracy going on all the time, right under your noses…..

    Take the ridiculous amount of store that was set in the ‘spooky’ way that all of the remaining metal girders from the fallen Twin Towers, were of the same length, pointing towards ‘explosions’ on each floor. These idiots have clearly never been on a building site in their lives – did they think that girders were hundreds of feet long, or notwithstanding that, surely they would realise that when any kind of structure comes under pressure, it’s most likely to break at the joints….. Anyway, I’m sure you catch my drift, and concede that your binary ‘theory’ is full of 0000000 wholes, and will now perhaps go and visit a lonely old person and make their day, instead of wasting anymore time on this matter – who knows what goes on inside the radioheads of popstars…..

    JunoXL5 (ps – and just in case you were wondering, my name doesn’t mean juno65 or juno11 – the juno is after a Roland synthesiser, and the XL5 comes from the name of an American motor oil in the 1960’s, which was taken by filmmaker Gerry Anderson, and used in the title of his brilliant 60’s TV space puppet show, Fireball XL5 – there’s always at least 10 sides to every story)

  • evilhomer

    LOL at JunoXL5

    Settle down, man. This silly conspiracy doesn’t deserve such a long-winded response. Most people won’t care enough to read all of that.

  • T

    1+1=10 ?????

  • http://TheBrokenHandle.com Eric

    I wonder if they did that on purpose. Cool Post

  • http://www.myspace.com/elitebanda imatumbler

    OKC=LP3
    IR=LP7

    3+7=10!

    and to the skeptics, CHILL THE FUCK OUT & LET US HAVE OUR FUN!

  • http://myspace.com/okoz okoz

    Somewhere over the rainbow…

    http://myspace.com/okoz

    read the blogs

  • myquietson

    @imatumbler… Excellent! Awsome use of the numericals ;()-

  • Raymond Swartz

    What if we put the cd in rainbows and the cd ok computer in a bag and added water and come back in two days and they would multiply to 10 albums with all new songs so we would have something to listen to while we read these cool theories of why when you put two socks in the dryer only one comes out. Or perhaps… :)

  • Raymond Swartz

    When I get my Boxset i’m playing the whole album all the way through, the next album all the way through, the record till the very end… both of them… and then playing them backwards… I have a good feeling that there are secret songs all over the Boxset. Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Hildur

    Don’t forget that the CD has 10 songs and was released on 10/10.
    But yeah, yawn. Most people can’t be arsed with conspiracies.

  • anon

    There are 10 types of people in the world: Those that understand binary, and those that don’t.

  • Johnny K

    C’mon now…
    Recording great albums is an art form.
    Contributing over-thought, senseless theories to supplement them is not.
    People will always try to ride the coat tails of successful acts, and it’s bordering on ridiculous.
    Can’t a band’s work stand on it own without unnecessary context and publication over it?

  • pirus

    whatever. i’m listening to all the 7 albums now with shuffle & 10-sec crossfade on. adding all the singles, eps, live versions, etc would be too much.

  • pirus *note that there are 10 ?’s

    just noticed the drum effect in videotape sounds just like the sound when you press shift+delete to perma-delete email in microsoft outlook. has mr gates got somethin to do with ir??????????*

  • Donovan

    “In Rainbows” consists of 10 letters.

    What does it all mean? On a scale of 1-10, the album is obvioulsy a 10.

  • Maybe

    Key transitions from song to song work pretty well.

    THey may have picked a song order that would work in this way. Not that another order wouldn’t have worked.
    But note
    Airbag= A major
    15=G sharp minor (half step descent)
    ends on C minor
    Paranoid= C minor! ends on A
    Bodysnatch= D (V-I relation)
    SHA= starts on Dm ends on D major
    Nude= E major (whole step up)
    Exit=B minor
    They’re all harmonically smooth.
    Could be coincidence, maybe not. They’ll probably never say but It works….

  • http://www.martop.net Carlos

    I made a playlist based on that hypothetic theory of same chords… and I got this : http://puddlegum.net/radiohead-01-and-10/ comment 112.

  • Really

    the real conspiracy is if you listen to inRainbows 10 times in a row you will crap your pants.

  • imonlysleeping

    everyone is now dumber.

    i really dont understand the binary thing. 01 = 1
    10= 2
    one is complimentary to 2?

  • KevinB

    My eyes just melted from my face from reading all of this nonsense. Sure some of it works, but Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I cant listen to Radiohead ever again.. my life is ruined now. -_-

  • flom k norke

    sounds like a load of bollocks to me

  • Gabriel

    Why ‘conspiracy’? Sounds awfully ominous. Is Thom Yorke some sort of crazed 10-obsessed freemason? Is Johnny Greenwood planning on using ten sophisticated sound-weapons programmed in binary code to overthrow the BBC? Perhaps Phil Selway is one of ten specially ordained members of the Knights Templar charged with safe-guarding the holy binary code sequence which allows us to communicate with each of the ten true Gods? Ed o’Brien may currently be a vessel for ten parasitic life-forms which perpetuate their shadowy existence by moving from one host to another every ten years and could be using Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ as a sort of complex binary-based global screening initiative in order to find their next most appropriate host. Whatever the ‘conspiracy’ is, however, i am certain that Colin Greenwood is totally innocent. I just can’t imagine him ‘conspiring’.

  • Gabriel

    Related conspiracy discovered here.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2767051.ece

    I am not saying Radiohead are involved, but who can say for sure that they are not?

  • adam h

    Radiohead is so beyond other bands so its kinda fun to come up with this whacky stuff about what means what and so on but this is kinda out there. any theories on the name in rainbows? here’s my thought and it’s also a little out there…there are 7 colors in a rainbow and this is their 7th lp. my buddy thinks it’s because oil puddles show rainbows…

  • ThatHansonCover

    i like to think about radiohead

  • videotape

    what dribble

  • Lel

    If “7″ it’s a perfect number… so this is their LP7 I conclude that this record is perfect.

    A pile of trivialities… LMAO!

  • tinman

    imonlysleeping said…

    that everyone is now dumber.
    i really dont understand the binary thing. 01 = 1
    10= 2
    one is complimentary to 2?

    well…
    in four based binary number consist only of
    00 01 10 11
    unlike decimals or ten based number which consist of
    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

    which means that
    00 is complimentary to 11, and
    01 is complimentary to 01

    i think you’re the one who is dumber… :)

  • http://www.inrainbows.com GG

    “the true conspiracy is that ok computer and kid a had sex with eachother and 10 years later pops out in/rainbows. its their love child and its one fantastic album.”

    Lawlz.

  • http://LightsCameraAdam.com ae king

    NONO, you peons have it all wrong! 10 is the number of years on the planet BEBA for a sapling to reach maturity and drop egglings on fresh soil. If the soil is tilled within ten hours and within ten minutes of the tilling it rains ten and only ten drops on the tilled earth then a Rainbow shoots UP OUT OF THE EARTHEN GROUND up. If this occurs in multiple adjacent lots simultaneously, then In (the multiple) Rainbow(s) you can visually hear the sound of Radiohead’s new album playing in its entirety for the second before more saplings drop or more tilling or rain occurs.

  • tripfontaine

    i don’t think we’ve gotten it yet, but i’m sure there’s something to it. thom mentioned ok computer a lot in interviews when they were making “in rainbows,” and releasing a 10 track album on 10/10 with 10 mysterious posts is a little much to ignore.

    besides, what was the last album they recorded in an old mansion? yep.

  • raduga

    I don’t think these people understand anything about binary. 01 is one and 10 is two. So one and two “compliment each other”? Well, not really. This would be a pretty lame inside joke even if it were one.

  • raduga

    I N R A I N B O W S has ten letters

  • TinTin

    Is it not that all this ’10′ business was a clue to binary, binary code is used to transmit sound digitally (as opposed to analogue waves) and that’s exactly how the album was released, digitally.

  • Kill Me Sarah

    I would like to add that the song “Nude” is directly coming from the recording period of OK Computer… and now it’s on In Rainbows.
    Why Radiohead didn’t put this song on Kid A or Amnesiac or HTTT before ??

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