Rolling Stone: Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ best album of the 2000s

Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ has been named the best album of the past decade by Rolling Stone. The list compiled by more than 100 artists, critics and industry insiders picked the band’s fourth album as their number one.

The album seemed like commercial suicide when it got released in October 2000, but it was the first number one record for Radiohead in the USA. The record also topped Pitchfork’s list of the 00′s. Billboard put the album on number two and NME on number 14.

Rolling Stone: “In texture and structure, Kid A, Radiohead’s fourth album, renounced everything in rock that, to Yorke in particular, reeked of the tired and overfamiliar: clanging arena-force guitars, verse-chorus-bridge song tricks.

With producer Nigel Godrich, Yorke, guitarist Ed O’Brien, drummer Phil Selway, bassist Colin Greenwood and guitarist Jonny Greenwood created an enigma of slippery electronics and elliptical angst, sung by Yorke in an often indecipherable croon. The closest thing to riffing on Kid A was the fuzz-bass lick in “The National Anthem”; the guitars in “Morning Bell” sounded more like seabirds.”

All of the other albums released in the past decade made the list. With Amnesiac (2001) on 25, In Rainbows (2007) on 30 and Hail To The Thief (2003) on 89. On Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Songs of the decade, three tracks made the cut (two from Kid A): Everything In Its Right Place (24), Idioteque (56), Pyramid Song (94). Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ topped the list.


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  • http://www.jobubabin.com in a little rowboat

    Ive been saying it for years…cept i think amnesiac should get its due out of this–same sessions

  • Banco

    Could be the definitive choice!!!

  • http://www.blurcentral.co.uk Dezz

    It’s full of top tracks. Idioteque and The National Anthem are utterly astonishing creations.

  • evilhomer

    How is it possible for Rolling Stone to (correctly) pick Kid A as best album, and then (erroneously) pick that Gnarls Barkley song as top song?! Now THAT’S “crazy”.

  • musation

    Most professional opinion makers, musicologists, radio-, TV-personalities or journalists, just give me the impression that their status/stature as a celebrity or an employee of a (leading) media outlet and protecting its market share is more important then the effort to understand the musicians reasons why and try to formulate an inisght in those reasons so they would actually have an opinion that is worth being a reference.
    They have the privileges to meet “the stars” but just seem to get off on the convenientness of those privileges and just produce opinions that anyone can form and keep any debate worth having marginal.

    These opinion makers are probably the last people you wan’t to hear making music

  • anon

    Intresting how this album was blasted at the time
    but now the critics have done a complete 180- figures. Radiohead have been and always WILL be ahead of their time- they are visionaries and kid a is one of my all time favorite albums –full stop!
    full stop!

  • stefano

    Kid A es definetely Radiohead’s best album so far…. my favourite since it’s release. Deserves this space.

  • Lel

    Kid A? Best album of the 2000′s? Everything In It’s Right Place.

  • http://www.myspace.com/qualityfridgebuzz Quality Fridge Buzz

    I remembering hearing it for the first time on the radio played in full before it came out. And thinking this is the greatest album ever. and then later that year, critics blasted it as a nothing exciting. and now everybody kisses Radiohead’s ass for it. I want my ass kissed as well.

  • Justin

    I like Crazy by Gnarls Barkley, but for some reason it really surprises me that it’s made number 1 on two lists now (Pitchfork and Rollingstone), out of hundreds, or thousands, of great songs that have come out of the decade. How do they all settle on one song?

  • reverse engines

    Where is OK computer? That was the allure and the most interesting hints at change. OK C was a character study which is typically more genuine than the blockbuster that kid A was. Both are loved by different people, but in this case there is an egg and it must be recognised.

  • Cdgilbert

    reverse engines – Wrong Decade mate. Me thinks Ok would have made the list otherwise ;)