Screamadelica vs Kid A

Also I wonder if Tori had listened to Ruby's Salt Peter. OMG Lex did you ever hear that album?

Oh I just checked the relevant thread and you very much did. Of course!

yeah Is This Desire? and Salt Peter both sounded way more innovative and strange than Kid A, too - Salt Peter and TVAB have been almost totally written out of history though

I couldn't even say what electronic music Tori was listening to in order to come up with her arrangements, which is one of those actually-neutral-in-itself facts that can be framed as a positive or negative depending on yr aim - either she "got electronic music wrong" or she "got electronic music wrong in a way that was right, or at least more interesting."

me neither! apart from obviously BT and Armand Van H?

literally unbelievable that apparently no one actually asked her this at the time.

xpost Historical developments very much in character.

Actually a sonically and historically plausible explanation is The Downward Spiral?

My sense from the time is that anyone who tried to do use looped drums and electronic textures was boxed by the media as ripping from Portishead and Tricky regardless of whether they sounded even remotely similar..

Again, same thing as saying Kid A is "just" a rock band ripping ideas from IDM.

It's an unfortunate feature of rock crit that rock band influences are allowed in all their subtlety and nuance and infinitesimal degrees of individuation but any attempt to incorporate electronic music sees everyone leaping for the laziest analogies possible.

But then I guess this is expressive of that general truth of music reception, that the less familiar you are with a particular style then the more examples of it will appear alike to the point of redundancy.

Oh god, so many x-posts which I won't read but this was in response to Tim F's first 2 posts.

Firstly, thank you very much but I'm very well aware of the history of non-dancing electronic music. But my opinions have also been formed by reading a lot of interviews with Thom Yorke and his own particular history with music, and dance music in particular (stuff like, he was a DJ while at college, and he used to incessantly play "house records" to the great annoyance of his housemates/future bandmates while they were trying to listen to Pale Saints. Another interview where Jonny was taking the piss out of Thom and saying "Thom basically wants to be Madonna" and Thom not understanding why this might even be considered to be an insult, because he would actually love to be Madonna) There has been a tension, within Radiohead, between Thom's love of club music and other members of the band (and a large segment of their fanbase!) who do have a contempt towards dance music, and would have preferred that they remain a more traditional rock group - or would prefer to be the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Jonny's case. That's part of what makes them interesting, to me, the ways that they tried to resolve this tension before they just went off in the end and diverted those conflicting impulses to solo work/collaborations.

It's ironic, because the dialogue over that "standing in a pulpit" argument was exactly what triggered my bout of trolling.

It's always kind of a shock going on a Radiohead forum, because I'm used to discussing music in an atmosphere like ILM, where most people have a pretty good comprehensive knowledge of the history of music, even if they have prejudices or just concentrate on their own particular branch of expertise. This is a group of music obsessives. And when someone tries the "it's lazy swiping ideas from IDM' argument here, they will get called on it, as I have been doing since late 2000.

But a forum for a band like Radiohead will contain a core group of music obsessives with an ILM-like musical library, and also contain a huge number of, well... I get called a snob if I refer to them as "12 CD people" but people for whom Radiohead really are the *most* out-there band they know. When you have a band that are that popular, you will get a large proportion of fans who are not music obsessives. It happens. Which is fine, people like what they like. But there *are* some people in that group of people who have, literally, never heard an Autechre record, and insist that Radiohead are somehow groundbreaking or experimental or even avant-garde. This is not straw-manning, these people exist and one of those threads happens like clockwork every few months.

And I would hate to take that pulpit-y attitude because bands like Radiohead are doing something different and equally valid - they are popularisers of ideas, rather than innovators. I think it's actually much harder to take ideas *from* the cutting edge and get them to have the kind of mass popular appeal and exposure that RH have. But they didn't invent those ideas, and the claim that they did (as people do) is just ludicrous.

I get really wound up by the idea of "innovation" obsession. I basically stopped reading the Aphex Twin vs Autechre thread because of that obsession with "innovation" and newness, I find it just perplexing and totally alien. Yes, I recognise that being overly derivative in music is a bad thing, but it doesn't seem like the solution is that constant churning search for "newness" - that race to be "FIRST!" Because that innovation obsession is just treating music like a race, and whoever happens to be the first to stumble into a new technique or piece of technology is often random, and the person who does it first is not always going to be the first. That the artist who refines or popularises or mutates the innovative idea has as much to contribute as the very first person that discovers what happens if you flick that particular switch.

So all these kinds of jumbled thoughts were what triggered the question, and it's quite irritating, Tim, to feel like you're putting words in my mouth stating the exact opposite of the line of thought that got me to asking the question.

n.b. that Ruby album was amazing and I was just listening to Tiny Meat yesterday!

I picked Primal Scream to rile Radiohead fans because they've been going long enough for 12-CD people to be aware of them, and their current reputation for awfulness.

But the conversation about overlapping waves of embarrassing indie-rock / club music crossover could go back further, to Jesus Jones and EMF but I don't think that anyone there would have heard of them to wince over.

Or further still to New Order, who did probably actually invent the whole thing, but the argument of "rock band suddenly switches to club music" would only work if you included Joy Division as part of New Order, because New Order pretty much seem to have been conceived from inception to ~include a dance element~.

I mean, the whole "there's always been a dance element to our music" joke of ageing dinosaur bands who suddenly got a remix and a makeover, when did that cliche date to?

Also, Lex, you will HATE Screamadelica, and Primal Scream will just make you gnash your teeth in general, but I do urge you to go to the top of this thread and listen to Don't Fight It Feel It, which I posted at the beginning of the thread, to get an idea of exactly how much of a deviation Screamadelica was from what was ~expected~ of a regulation Creation Revival-Rock band.

I was agreeing with you against Dog Latin re Radiohead's use of IDM.

But whatever members of the band may have personally thought, I can't listen to Kid A and think "hmm, this smacks of contempt of club culture", and I'm curious as to what musical cues you think suggest that.

Clearly there's a tension between operating as a traditional band and not, but to me it doesn't feel like club culture is at one end of that tension. Definitely more like a modern equiv of a mid to late 70s Eno record (which, similarly, had nothing to say one way or another about disco culture).

Radiohead-fans having contempt of club-culture is a different matter and I'm sure everything you say in that regard is correct.

Oh, OK, I thought that was to me and got defensive. Fair enough.

I think it's being aware that members of Radiohead themselves had contempt for club culture - and listening to Idioteque with that filter in mind. I mean, even calling the song Idioteque seems to drip with a kind of snide contempt, though Yorke's contempt is often so scattershot it's hard to tell where it's aimed at. I am probably interpreting it completely wrongly, but that song, the contrast between the music and the lyrics just seems to have this undercurrent of "how can you fuckwits be dancing round your mobiles when the polar caps are melting."

(Basically, the best way for me to actually enjoy RH is to not listen to or attempt to understand the lyrics at all, because I always get them wrong.)

Ha ha, googling "there's always been a dance element to our music" the first result is Freaky Trigger and the second is an ILX thread. It was the Soup Dragons. (Ironically on the Screamadelica poll.)

I think if I read about Radiohead (and particularly "Idioteque") I'd agree with that line.

Yorke seemed so full of contempt for everything in that era that I suspect that the more club-like the album sounded the more it would have seemed contemptuous of that culture.

Yeah, it was probably a mistake to interpret it as contemptuous as contemptuous of club culture when the record is much more contempt of everything-culture.

Got another hit on "there's always been a dance element to..." linking to discussion of U2's Zooropa. Everything on ILX is circular.

Idioteque to me always (musically) reads more to me like deliberate electronic primitivism. More Silver Apples than IDM. I suspect the title is just one of Thom's random neologisms rather than any particular criticism/commentary on any form of music. Or perhaps it's even more self-deprecating than critical. x-post

With that drumbeat? No, it's Jonny wanting to be Silver Apples with Thom wanting a BANGERZ drumbeat over the top. I guess that's what I always forget about Thom, that as contemptuous as he is, he always includes himself in his contempt, that many, many times, what reads as arrogance is actually extreme self depreciation twisted around.

Trying to figure out where The Shamen fit in all this.

But that beat is all Jonny. It was all based on a drum machine that he built from scratch.

Or perhaps it's even more self-deprecating than critical.

this is how I read it as well. A kind of preemptive self-dismissal before anyone accused them of failing to make a danceable tune.

...there *are* some people in that group of people who have, literally, never heard an Autechre record, and insist that Radiohead are somehow groundbreaking or experimental or even avant-garde. This is not straw-manning, these people exist and one of those threads happens like clockwork every few months.

And I would hate to take that pulpit-y attitude because bands like Radiohead are doing something different and equally valid - they are popularisers of ideas, rather than innovators. I think it's actually much harder to take ideas *from* the cutting edge and get them to have the kind of mass popular appeal and exposure that RH have. But they didn't invent those ideas, and the claim that they did (as people do) is just ludicrous.

― They have fangs, They have teeth! (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Sunday, May 13, 2012 1:29 AM (23 minutes ago)

i have problems with the "innovators" vs "popularizers" construction here. synthesis can be innovative, can be avant-garde. i'm sure that autechre were influenced by other artists just as radiohead were influenced in turn. i credit radiohead not for inventing their music out of whole cloth, but for the ways in which they used their influences to express their own ideas - ideas that would go on in turn to influence others. that strikes me as sufficiently innovative to earn the descriptor.

That surprises me, Melissa. But Silver Apples didn't use that kind of drumbeat at all, they had a live drummer who played very busy, shuffly jazz influenced stuff, which it what I'd expect from Jonny. It's not even an early electronica kind of drumbeat, and TBF it's the distortion on it that reminds me of early Classics-era Aphex Twin specifically.

I just want Lex to come back and listen to Don't Fight It Feel It. And watch the perplexed struggle across his face. I'm really curious as to what he would make of it.

I didn't say that the Silver Apples used that kind of drumbeat? It's just that between the Paul Lansky sample and building a primitive drum machine from scratch out of white noise, I think what they were going for there was considerably older than people seem to think. People comparing Idioteque to IDM always seem way off the mark to me. And obviously it is dance music influenced, but not I think in such a way where it's coming from anywhere but their attempt to make a paranoid dance-y track out of analogue elements.

xxpost trying to find the ground zero of these sounds is basically trying to follow an infinitely receding horizon.

I'm just making stuff up now but arguably it's tempting to over-credit 90s IDM acts like Aphex Twin and Autechre because their general sound-design (as opposed to - or at least as distinct from and in addition to - actual ideas) proved so influential in a more general "sound of now" sense.

Cont, that's right back to the beginning of this thread. Someone was trying to argue that Radiohead were "innovators" because they mixed krautrock with club music, and that that was somehow such an original synthesis that it qualified them as innovators. And my argument was that Primal Scream were singing Can lyrics over the top of club music as far back as Screamadelica, so that particular synthesis was just not indicative of ~innovation~ at all.

Innovation is not the same thing as quality. Not being particularly innovative does not make something *bad*. It's only this worship of novelty and "race to FIRST!" obsession that makes people think that innovation is so inherently good, that if something is good, it must therefore be innovative. And it's just not the case.

Though I would certainly argue that finding a new/different angle on a pre-existing synthesis can be innovative in and of itself, though I'm not sure I'd ever even argue that Radiohead's innovation (whether or not it exists) hinges on synthesis of krautrock and club music specifically (in fact, I definitely wouldn't).

i guess my point is that innovation doesn't have to be so a+b obvious as "they mixed krautrock with club music". i think radiohead's notable innovation was the way that they mixed a great many things together (including but not limited to krautrock and club music) in order to articulate a musical, philosophical and aesthetic "vision" that was distinctly their own, perfectly suited to its moment, and hugely influential. tim is right, though, that bjork had paved the way with homogenic.

I would argue that Radiohead are hugely innovative - when it comes to marketing strategies, packaging, presentation, promotion, how they present themselves. I'm not being facetious at all, I think they're absolutely brilliant at that, through their hatred/distrust of traditional media, they raised different forms of promotion, especially through technology, and interaction with their fans to a kind of artwork. Which is really innovative and creative.

But I do genuinely believe that anyone who thinks that their *music* is actually innovative just hasn't had a very wide exposure to enough music, whether that's Aphex Twin *or* the obscure early electronic composers that Jonny likes to namedrop in the same way that he likes to pretend he's never been influenced by Pink Floyd, oh no, not at all, ever.

But I think that's an incredibly narrow definition of music innovation, then? I mean, for better or worse, I think what I would give Radiohead the most credit for is hitching all of those influences both structurally and sonically to plain old pretty songs in a way that actually worked.

I suppose the broader problem is the attempt to locate definitive firsts.

I'm sure someone will come up with some evidence to make me look like a hypocrite but I don't really think of music in these terms anymore.

If an artist's aesthetic is worth grasping then it's worth grasping in its totality as opposed to the sum aggregate of influences.

(the above directed at the hypothetical fans WCC talks about rather than people ITT)

eh, i've listened to a lot of aphex twin, early electronic composers and pink floyd. kid a still strikes me as one of the most successfully and satisfyingly "innovative" big rock albums of the last quarter century, with little competition. i suppose framing it as rock is a cheat in certain respects, but i don't think they ever fully escaped that context.

this all seems like eye of the beholder stuff, tbh

I mean, obviously Radiohead have a lot of fans who think they invented music in general. Their fanbase is enormous, so obviously there are a ton of 12-cd types and a ton of actual teenagers who have yet to be exposed to much music. But I don't think that that means you have to take what they say and run in the total opposite direction, either. Or feel like you have to apologize for being a fan of Radiohead because some of their fans aren't particularly musically knowledgeable and might make ridiculous claims about them. They also have a ton of fans who have a deep knowledge of music who still think that Radiohead put a new or interesting spin on things. I don't think claiming that nothing they have done is remotely innovative is particularly perceptive either, and it just reads as apologism or shame at being a Radiohead fan to me.

Oh quite a lot of discussion since my earlier post. WCC - I don't hear In Rainbows as a rawk album per se; I mean 15 Step is still very much electronic and only Bodysnatchers feels like a return to rock traditionalism. The rest is ambient mixed with songwriting, but assimilated well whereas Kid A sounds like a clunky experiment at times.

The only thing this thread is telling me is that I really ought to give XTRMNTR a better chance. Always thought Vanishing Point was their true masterpiece.

Also this whole 'calling out Radiohead for ripping off IDM is bad and wrong' thing - well I can see how it's an argument that's been driven into the ground, but Kid A really IS MAJORLY influenced by Autechre et al. There's no denying it. In retrospect though, there is a lot more going on in there than mere warpmania as I'd originally thought back when I first heard it. It's easier to recognise this nowadays because Warp and the IDM sound is generally less pervasive whereas back in 2001, Aphex was releasing 'Druqks', Autechre 'Confield', Plaid 'Double Figure' etc, so Radiohead, this big rock band, coming in and saying 'look at us, we can do this too' (and arguably doing it worse) felt like tokenism at the time. In that way it's aged considerably better for me, now I cAn stand back and appreciate it for more than the sum of its parts.

I think it's a mistake to equate stated influence with being an attempt to actually BE that thing. Autechre certainly influenced their direction but I hardly think that's equivalent to them trying to transliterate LP5 into being a rock record and somehow failing or somehow only creating a weak copy or only pasting the influence on.

There's little of Kid A that actually reminds me of the IDM that people often compare it to. It's an ingredient, but far from the only one. I think people took Radiohead speaking openly about their influences as a convenient opportunity to tear down the album by comparing it unfavorably to music it honestly sounded very little like. Songs like "The National Anthem," "How to Disappear Completely," "Morning Bell," & "In Limbo" are emblematic of the record's sound, but obviously couldn't be remotely compared to AFX or Autechre.

Agree with this. There's more to it than that yes. Although when I walked into the record shop that October morning and heard the track 'Kid A' playing over the tannoy (it being my first impression of their hailed new direction), my immediate reaction was one of suspicion, and it took a good while to shake it off. As I say, it wasn't until I dug it out again many years later that I was able to appreciate it outside of that zeitgeisty context.

I think what I would give Radiohead the most credit for is hitching all of those influences both structurally and sonically to plain old pretty songs in a way that actually worked.

I would completely agree with this. It's the fundamental basis for creating good quality music.

But that is not "innovation" in any understanding of the word.

And if it *does* count as innovation, then, quite frankly, Primal Scream qualify as just as innovative as Radiohead, and that's just crazy talk.

...

...

But I'm kind of curious as to why Radiohead continue to get so much credit for "innovation" when anyone who suggested that Primal Scream were innovative would get laughed out of the room. Is it because of the wider audience, that the majority of people who listen to Primal Scream are already familiar with Can and club music and free jazz? I don't think that Radiohead hide their thefts better - Thom pretty much admits flat out that when he's stuck for a melody he goes to REM or U2 - is it that the things they nick are more or less cool or naff (depending on who you ask)? Thom Yorke spouts easily as dodgy political views as Bobbie Gillespie, but Bobby gets called on it, while Thom gets made a spokesman? I guess with Primal Scream it's the drugs and the steady run of terrible albums. While Radiohead avoided drugs like the nice middle class boys they were, and had the middle-management-shake-hands-and-unit-shift approach to cracking the States?

I know it's kind of random to "compare and contrast" the careers of any two bands or two albums in that way, but it's just this sense that these two albums did similar things, yet one band ended up canonised and the other ended up a laughing stock - even thought the laughing stock's album, to my prejudiced ears, is the better album. But I guess that's it. Primal Scream's reputation almost entirely hangs on Screamadelica, while Radiohead have not put out a dodgy album since their debut.

I dunno. I don't feel like I'm being apologetic. It's just that sometimes loving a band means accepting their limitations and not over-romanticising them.

Radiohead have never u-turned on their chosen style/aesthetic the way Primal Scream did throughout the nineties (and, as far as I'm aware, thereafter, though I haven't actually heard the subsequent albums). Rightly or wrongly that gets held against PS.

Rock crit tends to consider innovation and fashion as very separate and, typically, diametrically opposed - that is, it's impossible to be innovative by being fashionable. If something is innovative that is also fashionable, then it is because the fashion coalesced around it.

Of course this is nonsense: fashion and "innovation" (however you choose to define it) are in dialogue with one another, and as much innovation is produced by following the dictates of fashion as is produced by striking out on your own or swimming against the tide.

I think you and I have very different ideas of innovation then, because frankly I don't think it's even in short supply. I would happily call Primal Scream innovative, I just don't like their innovations. x-post

I don't think it would be laughable to suggest Screamadelica was innovative. Sure there were tracks that had sounded like its tracks before, but as a complete package, released by an indie rock band and having mainstream success - I can't think of another example prior to its release.

I guess also I should have raised the issue of innovation as perceived marker of quality on the Autechre vs Aphex Twin thread, when several people were saying that they preferred Autechre to Aphex Twin ~because they were more innovative~ or words to that effect. (I'm paraphrasing, which I shouldn't do on ILM, because my memory is poor.)

I do think that there has been so much Autechre discussion on ILM recently that Autechre *would* will a poll against a kitten picture at the moment, while we're (read: I) am mostly talked out about Aphex Twin, that I have done my revisiting and have nothing left to say about him until he releases another album.

But it's that idea of "innovation" as marker of quality, rather than accepting that something can be good without being particularly innovative, and still be incredibly good. Maybe this is a straw man, but I just seem to forever be encountering that argument, especially on IDM threads, and it's just perplexing to me.

I dunno, I guess I need to think about this dialogue of innovation and fashion. I don't think that innovation comes from striking against fashion *or* from following fashion. Innovation, genuine innovation, is something that occurs when a new element enters the picture - like I said, new technology or new techniques. Or that kind of weird quantum leap. It's kind of distinct, to me, from the process of synthesis, refinement, reaction against but which most musical genres form, splinter, regroup. Therefore I think of innovation as something genuinely rare.

x-post I guess that's it. That it's not laughable to think of Screamadelica as "innovative" but it is laughable to think of Primal Scream that way.

While, with Radiohead, it feels like it's almost the opposite. Like, when it comes down to it, there isn't a single Radiohead album that I can point to and say "that's genuinely innovative" in the way I can with Screamadelica, but they still somehow have this ~reputation~ for being somehow "innovative"?

(Yes, it's Rockist to speak of albums, but these are the most Rockist of Rock bands we are discussing.)

I find your stance a bit weird in the sense that you argue that innovation isn't important but at the same time it's fairly clearly an important issue to you?

it's a recovering catholic kind of thing maybe?

Well, the main reason I was comparing Screamadelica to Kid A rather than XTRMNTR was because those were the albums that happened at the same point in the bands' relative careers

I've never actually thought about it like this. To me, Screamadelica is Primal Scream's OK Computer - bolt from the blue, instantly canonized album. If I had to compare Kid A to any one Scream album, in terms of the bands' career arc, it would be Give Out But Don't Give Up, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Kid A in terms of musical intention but they share something in common, namely following up the hugely successful career-defining album with a record whose critical reception was more along the lines of "why have they done this?" The idea that both bands were sullying their legacy by doing the opposite of what critics wanted at the time.

And yes, as mentioned upthread the contemporary critical reception of Kid A was lukewarm at best although it's worth remembering that UK musical criticism was on the verge of a hugely reactionary period that Kid A just didn't fit into. It fits much better if you look at it in the context of current music - I don't think anyone anticipated how integrated into the dance music 'conversation' Radiohead would become, albeit the FACT Magazine Big Serious Face end of dance music. When Thom Yorke DJs he's usually playing people like Martyn and Untold, you'll routinely hear Eraser-era Thom songs cropping up on commercial mix albums by Ellen Allien or whoever, the last Apparat album was basically his attempt to make a Radiohead album. There's an exchange of musical ideas going on that feels current, whereas the whole Warp/IDM thing was pretty much played out by the time Kid A came out (and I don't even think Kid A sounds like Warp, particularly). I wasn't in a position to be paying any attention in 1991 but Screamdelica retrospectively feels much more of a piece with what was going on at the time than Kid A, but maybe that's because it's Weatherall's album really, not Primal Scream's.

Also, Kid A should have come as a surprise to absolutely no one in 2000, there is an absolute shit-ton of electronic music DNA in OK Computer, and even Big Rock era Radiohead had a better appreciation of rhythm than they're usually given credit for.

And Primal Scream, during the Kevin Shields/Mani era, when they hit a really good night, were actually the better live band

They were an exceptionally good live band around that time. I remember them doing evil, evil things to Kowalski which involved huge amounts of bass and guitar noise and enormous thudding drums. I've seen them at festivals intermittently since and they haven't come close to that, although any rock band's sound would suffer from suddenly removing Kevin Shields from the equation.

xposts - Screamdelica certainly feels innovative from within the context of rock music, but then so does Kid A. Viewing either from an electronic or dance music context doesn't strike me as being a particularly fruitful approach.

Also, Kid A should have come as a surprise to absolutely no one in 2000, there is an absolute shit-ton of electronic music DNA in OK Computer, and even Big Rock era Radiohead had a better appreciation of rhythm than they're usually given credit for.

Agreed.

xpost I dunno, I think Screamadelica is a useful album from a dance music perspective. Even dance fans occasionally want the big celebratory narrativistic ties-everything-together album qua album.

Which may also be part of why so many people (including but, crucially, not limited to rock fans) overrate The Chemical Bros' Surrender vis a vis the other of the duo's first 4 albums.

Radiohead were also an exceptionally good live band around 2000 though. One of the reasons I've never really liked Kid A that much is that a lot of it feels half-finished, most of those songs sounded much better and more developed and in some cases completely different when they played them live.

I had never thought anyone overrated Surrender particularly. Hey Boy, Hey Girl yes, but not the album as a whole, although it is very consciously reaching for Screamadelica territory without getting there (the same is true for most of the subsequent Chems albums).

Oh it seems everyone I've ever met IRL thought Surrender their best album by a mile.

And it seemed everyone at my school who took music seriously pronounced it the album of 1999.

It's that bit at about 3:25 where, after the "I'm gonna get deep down, deep down, woo, hey" spoken bit, and then there's this groovy bit of house piano and then suddenly THE BIGGEST MOST REVERBED OUT GUITAR CHORD IN THE WORLD COMES IN about twice as loud as anything else on the track, and everything else is silent but the bongos and the kick drum, and I have heard that a million times over the past 20 years and it still scares the shit out of me every time. Such a spine-tingling moment.

I used to think that 'just what is it you want to do" and all that was from that episode of Star Trek where the enterprise got 'invaded' by hippies.

like, "We're gonna have a pardee.." was Kirk being sarcastic and getting some bongos out.

Not Knowing the film, obv.

Still, when I hear that dude say "and that's what we're gonna do" etc, and the kid in the background gets all keen..

It always sounds like it's gonna end really badly!

I have no idea if that's what happens in the film or what.

That would be an understatement.

But, still, Nancy Sinatra's hair stays amazing through the whole thing.

Oh, is that where she's called "Mike"?

I just read about the 'influences' of 69 love songs, it mentions her on the "Papa was a rodeo" song page.

Wow! Close!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i voted for the winner with literally 1 minute left in the poll

thank you, some dude

closer than i expected. Wrong, but I figured on a Kid A rout.

Solipsism wins on the Internet. Who would have thought.

i voted Screamadelica but know deep down that Kid A is a better record. just have better memories for the former, fair results.

I did not expect it to be that close! Neither did I expect that winner!

I do actually think Screamadelica is the better record, but I think it's probably an age thing, that both Kid A and RH are more fresh in ppl's minds.

It's good to be surprised by a poll you thought was a lock-in though!