Everybody Hates Radiohead

noah | February 27, 2009 1:45 am

Poor Thom Yorke. He just wants to make his music and post cryptic blog updates, and everyone has to be getting in his face, whether it’s about his band’s digital-distribution experiments or their Grammy antics. Why can’t people just leave him alone? Ha ha, because it gets them press, of course.

First, there’s Robert Smith, who was banging on about the band’s “pay what you want for the low-quality MP3s of our album before we release it properly” experiment:

“The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want – I disagreed violently with that.

“You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all and that’s nonsense.

“If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.”

Hmm. I wonder how Bob feels about In Rainbows‘ fixed prices for all its physical formats? Oh wait, nobody asked him about that because every lazy reporter out there misunderstands the whole “Radiohead model” concept. Sigh. Someday, maybe they will learn.

Then Kanye West got into the act, whining during a taping of VH1 Storytellers that took place on the Friday after the Grammys that he was annoyed by Thom Yorke snubbing him at the awards show. Apparently these comments were so controversial they were cut from the broadcast—and yet they weren’t too controversial to be leaked to the press the day before said curiously underpromoted broadcast aired. Whew!

During the taping, according to a Reuters reporter, West was aggrieved that Radiohead singer Thom Yorke had allegedly snubbed him backstage at the Grammys five days earlier. That hurt, West told the audience, because he idolizes the British band, and considers it one of his few creative rivals.

“So when he performed at the Grammys, I sat the f—- down,” West said.

And yet West thinks that Chris Brown should get a break because “everyone makes mistakes in life.” So you tell me: Does dude need a heavy dose of perspective, or a self-esteem boost since he obviously needs more results on his personal Google News alerts?

Robert Smith blasts “idiot” Radiohead [Music Radar] Kanye West’s Radiohead tirade cut from VH1 Storytellers [Reuters]