Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ is Pitchfork’s nr. 1 album of the 2000s

by on October 4, 2009 with 40 Comments in Radiohead News

radiohead kid aThe staff of Pitchfork have been counting down to number 1 in their Top 200 Albums of the 2000s, the best albums of the past decade. Radiohead’s ‘Kid A‘ topped the list.

We will probably see more lists like these in the coming months when the first decade of this century ends. It’s time to look back at the best albums of this decade. Radiohead released 4 full length albums this decade; ‘Kid A’ (2000), ‘Amnesiac’ (2001), ‘Hail To The Thief’ (2003) and ‘In Rainbows’ (2007). Thom Yorke released ‘The Eraser’ in 2006 and Jonny Greenwood released the soundtrack albums ‘Bodysong’ (2003) and ‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007). Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’, ‘Amnesiac’ and ‘In Rainbows’ made the cut. ‘In Rainbows’ ended up at 21 and ‘Amnesiac’ was number 34. Radiohead is also one of the five acts (with Daft Punk, Sigur Ros, the Avalanches, and the Knife) on Pitchfork’s list that are not from North America.

Pitchfork writes: ‘No other record captured the complex feeling of the era in such an elegant and beautiful way’. Read the full review at Pitchfork.com.

Pitchfork’s top 21 of the 2000s:

01. Radiohead – Kid A
02. Arcade Fire – Funeral
03. Daft Punk – Discovery
04. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
05. Jay-Z – The Blueprint
06. Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica
07. The Strokes – Is This It
08. Sigur Ros – Ágætis Byrjun
09. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
10. The Avalanches – Since I Left You
11. Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele
12. The White Stripes – White Blood Cells
13. Outkast – Stankonia
14. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
15. The Knife – Silent Shout
16. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
17. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
18. Kanye West – Late Registration
19. Spoon – Kill the Moonlight
20. Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights
21. Radiohead – In Rainbows


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  • steven

    i personally hate these lists but this one is kinda alright

  • IstvanTM

    Amnesiac is 34th

  • Pedro

    Actually ‘Hail to the Thief’ was the only Radiohead album that didn’t make the cut:
    21 – In Rainbows
    34 – Amnesiac

  • IstvanTM

    And in rainbows is 21st

  • http://www.chelseyshelley.com Chelsey Shelley

    Very cool to see Kid A, In Rainbows, and Amnesiac on the list.

  • http://www.ateaseweb.com adriaan

    i stand corrected istvan and pedro ;) thx

  • http://www.christianmack.com gahan

    Jonny also released Bodysong!!!!

  • http://www.51designs.tk Evelyn

    I like more In Rainbows but yeah Kid A is a masterpiece

  • Steve

    Great.. but pitchfork are still eliteist snobs

  • http://corbucorbu.com trip fontaine

    the only thing i don’t like is how they feel they have to space albums apart by the same band. i can’t believe they really feel some bon iver record is better than amnesiac, for instance.

    other than that, sometimes i love pitchfork and this is one of those times.

  • http://punko.com.ar fran

    hey trip fontaine, your songs are awesome! i want the ep but the links are broken

  • http://www.samanthasorell.com Samantha

    I’ve listened to this album hundreds of times. Good call – too bad ‘Hail to the Thief’ wasn’t in there, I love that one too.

  • sv

    Funny, I was saing to a friend lately that I though I could never choose a #1 record of all times, but yet I did, and…it’s Kid A. :-)

  • Anne

    Hail To The Thief is my favourite album!

  • http://www.myspace.com/einarstraymusic Einar Stray

    i’m missing a A Silver Mt. Zion-album here.

  • OK_Kid

    Pitchfork doesn’t like Hail to the Theif, but I still feel like it’s Radiohead’s best album. Can’t argue much with that list, though.

  • zach

    Thinking that people can’t possibly like other albums more than Amnesiac — wtf???

    Saying that there are only five artists from outside North America on this list — even bigger wtf???

  • Joshman

    Weird this is up on Kid A’s 9th anniversary

  • Thief

    ‘Hail to the Thief’ is the best Radiohead album period. It gets no respect. It is layered, complex and stylistically cohesive. I love them all but Amnesiac and Kid A were rough sketches for this masterpiece. I agree these things are subjective, but this is my 2 cents.

  • Nega

    I like their Radiohead selections, and the fact that Daft Punk, Modest Mouse and Jay-Z show up in the top 10 with deserving work, but Thom Yorke himself would have a big problem with this list. I mean let’s see, their idea of greatness in electronic based pop music appears to be The Knife, while Burial is way down in the 40s and M.I.A.’s Arular doesn’t even make the top 50? (Even Kala is far too low, appearing behind a typically well-made White Stripes album that was only actually enjoyable for about a day and albums by Spoon and the Strokes that I can’t believe anyone would still listen to when the hype is gone, since those wanting solid old fashioned rock music have plenty of access to the classics of the Stones and the Stooges.) The hysterical platitudes of Funeral constitute the second best album of the 2000s, while Portishead’s transcendent lesson in real music, Third is only the 71st best? Kanye’s worst effort, Graduation, is one of the best hip hop albums of the decade? (hell, Carter III is way better than Graduation, and so is Hell Hath No Fury and any number of records Pitchfork has hyped over the years in an effort to appear street) Feist is now officially better than Cat Power’s The Greatest? Sufjan Stevens wasn’t invented by Pitchfork at a weak moment, and someone (more than one person!) actually still listens to him?

    It’s a surprising list, in how utterly predictable it is as a reflection of past Pitchfork lists. It doesn’t seem like anyone sat down and thought some more about what really were their favorite records of the decade before submitting the list- it seems like they all decided certain music would be invested with importance based on nostalgia and other factors. As a reflection of the lowest-common-denominator taste of the entire staff, no wonder the list is so middle of the road, but I think people should bear that in mind when praising them for loving Radiohead. We don’t know how many individual staff lists had a Radiohead at number one. Perhaps even none. It’s nice that some music critics collectively recognize Radiohead’s ability to make powerful music, but for me it’s outweighed by a rather disgustingly limited, and on top of that, Haagen Dazs-sponsored list. I realize there’s no conflict of interest here, since it’s not a list of their favorite ice cream stores, but if I’m supposed to be a good indie kid and laugh at bands and artists that may actually be suffering for cash and whore themselves out this way, why the hell should I not laugh at a group of CRITICS whose only strength over some random person on the Internet is supposed to be that they have some integrity in terms of not being beholden to anyone else and expressing their real opinions- even the intriguing essay by Nitsuh Abebe on what “indie” means today was horribly marred by an odd absence of discussion of economics and how the concept of “selling out” has evolved as indie acts have become adept at what used to be called that- I think after this stunt we can all agree that Pitchfork themselves are closer to making a mockery of any critical integrity they have. This is clearly the Rolling Stone of our generation, with the ’90s and early ’00s- rather than the ’60s and early ’70s- now being retroactively seen as the “best” time for music. Way too many of the albums listed in the top 20 are from 2000-2002. I love that time too, but not at the expense of the years since.

    Finally, why the hell do they insist on saying Person Pitch (lazy Brian Wilson pastiche) is better than anything by Animal Collective? Just because they were the only people to say it and they need to stick with their opinion now so it looks less ridiculous?

    There is a lot of good music in the list, that much is true. It reminded me to get a few things I had forgotten all about, which surely put to shame Funeral, Silent Shout, and all the other bullshit albums clogging the list.

    Number 34 is a very nice place for Amnesiac, too.

  • Nega

    I also don’t get their eagerness to publish this three entire months before the end of the decade. In fact Pitchfork’s own list of best 1970s albums would have been lacking two out of its top 10 (London Calling and Off the Wall, which came out in November and December 1979) under such a strategy. Maybe we all kinda feel like an amazing album is unlikely to come out in the next three months and totally shock us with its quality or define what’s left of our decade, but that disinterest/pessimism in the future of music speaks badly for the site which is supposed to, at the very least, keep up an interest in what’s going on today.

  • poisoned_dwarf

    Hail to the Thief isn’t on there because Pitchfork only allowed up to three albums per artist on the list. And they don’t hate Hail to the Thief. The album originally got a score of 9.3 out of 10.

  • musation

    I think these list proove it ain’t worth it being SO-CALLED open-minded within a determined period of time. It just means listening to a bunch of now or then contemporary crap. Yeah sure, every artist can sound interesting or have some good tunes but it ain’t worth dealing with the rest of their poorly “conceived” or conceived stuff….

  • R.a.

    Nega, while I agree with many of your points, the top 3 make perfect sense to me. Funeral was a great album imo, I’m not sure why you seem to think it was “bullshit.”

    Sufjan stevens is also amazing, you could pick much worse acts to critisize (the strokes, white stripes, jay Z, and kanye all shouldn’t be up there…)

  • vesper8

    just thank god Coldplay isn’t on the list

  • Isaac

    Person Pitch is the reason I love Animal Collective. Panda Bear is a Genius and deserves much more respect. With out him Animal Collective is nothing. I would put KID A #1 Person Pitch #2. That’s just me though…. p.s Fuck Coldplay!!!

  • http://facebook.com/SirNeilGlen SUNIL GLEN

    i’m PROPERLY love this list! some of the greatest albums ever made. Was well surprised Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise got in..such an underrated album. KID.A.FTW!!!

  • http://facebook.com/SirNeilGlen SUNIL GLEN

    i’m PROPERLY loving this list! some of the greatest albums ever made. Was well surprised Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise got in..such an underrated album. KID.A.FTW!!!

  • http://ntwproductionsnow.blogspot.com/ Nick

    It’s good but #1? Hmm I don’t know about that.

  • lifeonthehorizon

    I agree with most of this list except that I think Spoon’s “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga” takes the cake over “Kill The Moonlight” any day.

    Kid A deserves that spot. Such a perfect record = )

  • none

    I know all of you in your mid 20′s or older listened to Coldplay’s Parachutes. Don’t lie. I know its easy to bag on coldplay now that they are mega rock stars but that was a good pop record.

  • Chris Martin

    Viva La Vida should be on that list. We don’t get the recognition we deserve. Pitchfork sucks!

  • David

    I’m surprised by some of the names on this list, but very pleased with them. It makes me want to check out the names I’m not familiar with.

  • Ross

    Turn on the Bright Lights should be higher…

  • Martin A

    I got “Kid A” tattooed on my arm so, yeah, i kind of agree with that.. but I also feel, that the rest of the list is somehow disappointing. Why’s there a Strokes records in the top 10 and “I’m wide awake it’s morning” by bright eyes isn’t??

  • anon

    I always knew that kid a would be seen differently after a period of time. People (i.e the critics) just didnt understand it at the time its amazing how its getting great reviews now but rh have always been ahead of their time. It’s arguably their BEST album of all time.

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  • http://facebook.com/SirNeilGlen SUNIL GLEN

    AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME list. so many of my favourites of all-time – http://www.last.fm/user/SirNeilGlen

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