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iTunes Release Radiohead Catalogue

Pablo Honey, The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A & Amnesiac Go Digital

Jun 12, 2008

The wait is finally over. Radiohead release their entire catalogue, from Pablo Honey to I Might be Wrong and Hail to the Thief, on iTunes.

Radiohead release their back catalogue on iTunes after a much talked-about delay. The band held out releasing their albums on iTunes because they didn’t agree with the company’s policy allowing users to download individual tracks.

The band’s entire catalogue has been available on the UK’s biggest download site, 7 Digital, since September 2007. However, fans could only download complete albums from that site.

But as of this week, iTunes includes the band’s entire catalogue of studio albums including their 1993 debut Pablo Honey featuring their first top 40 hit “Creep”, and the alternative smash The Bends featuring “Just”, recently covered on Mark Ronson’s album Version, as well as fan favorite “Fake Plastic Trees” which Alanis Morissette routinely covered live during her tour in support of Jagged Little Pill also released in 1995.

In Rainbows

Radiohead didn’t start a digital revolution when they released In Rainbows as a free download in October 2007, but they did popularize the idea. Soon after groups like Nine Inch Nails, Coldplay and Sigur Ros began releasing their singles and albums for free or for a small fee on the net.

So it seemed odd that a band such as Radiohead who have become musical pioneers since 1997’s weird electronic masterpiece OK Computer, a band so in tune with new ways of distributing music, would hold off releasing its material via one of the most popular download sites around, iTunes.

However, given that Radiohead releases albums meant to be experienced as a whole, not as a collection of singles, downloading individual tracks from this band negates the concept of their work.

The Computer Says “OK”

In 1997, Radiohead blindsided the music industry with their opus OK Computer. While most bands would have released an album that continued a well beaten track carved out by two successful alternative rock albums, OK Computer features strange soundscapes filled with electronica, odd bleeps and un-radio friendly music. Radiohead distanced themselves from the pack of similar sounding alternative rock bands of the era and forged a path of experimentation and invention that propelled them into a new musical stratosphere.

Kid A, the much anticipated follow-up to OK Computer, rocketed to the top of the Billboard Hot 200 albums upon its 2000 release followed closely by companion album Amnesiac 8 months later. Both albums broke new ground for the band incorporating more experimentation, electronica and tracks that defy description.

A live album soon followed. 2001’s I Might Be Wrong features live re-workings of material culled from both Kid A and Amnesiac and includes new track “True Love Waits”, an outtake from their studio sessions recorded live and released as a single.

Hail to the Thief

2003’s Hail to the Thief merged Radiohead’s love for electronic twinkling’s with a rockier sound stretching back to The Bends and includes the most straight forward material since their 1995 alternative rock album. “There, There” became a top 40 hit in the UK and the video features the oddest traipse through the woods since Bjork went for a stroll in her video for “Human Behavior”.

With the release of Hail to the Thief, Radiohead completed their contractual obligations with longstanding record company EMI and parted ways. The band continued to record new material which surfaced by surprise on October 11, 2007 with the much publicized internet-only release of In Rainbows.

Radiohead continue to use the internet and alternative ways to distribute their music as displayed by the release of the track “Nude” as separate pieces fans could re-mix. The resulting effect was a top 40 debut of the track on Billboard’s Hot 100, an accomplishment the band achieved only one other time in their long career with “Creep”

For fans and soon-to-be fans of Radiohead, the wait for them to release their albums and videos on iTunes is over. Hail to the Chiefs.

Now, if only iTunes would release the brilliant Japanese-only import, Com Lag.

The copyright of the article iTunes Release Radiohead Catalogue in Dance/Techno Music is owned by James W. Coates. Permission to republish iTunes Release Radiohead Catalogue in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.