Radiohead Say Goodbye to the Long-Form Album

Fitter. Happier. More productive.

Fitter. Happier. More productive.

With 1997’s OK Computer, Radiohead redefined the classic album for a new generation. Now the famously gloomy British band is swearing off the art form of the full-length album, at least for the time being. In a recent interview with The Believer magazine, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke that “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off,” states Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Yorke continues. “I mean, it’s just become a real drag. It worked with In Rainbows because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us…I mean, obviously, there’s still something great about the album. It’s just, for us, right now, we need to get away from it a bit.”

Yorke also said, “In Rainbows was a particular aesthetic and I can’t bear the idea of doing that again. Not that it’s not good, I just can’t… bear… that.”

Yorke also hinted that more long-form, symphonic works, like the new “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)”, might be in the band’s future. “Jonny [Greenwood] and I have talked about sitting down and writing songs for orchestra and orchestrating it fully and just doing it like that and then doing a live take of it and that’s it — finished. We’ve always wanted to do it, but we’ve never done it because, I think the reason is, we’re always taking songs that haven’t been written for that, and then trying to adapt them. That’s one possible EP because, with things like that, you think, Do you want to do a whole record like that? Or do you just want to get stuck into it for a bit and see how it feels?”

Radiohead released their last studio album, In Rainbows, in 2007.