Released: 2000

Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. On the verge of a breakdown after promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, songwriter Thom Yorke envisioned a radical change in direction. Radiohead replaced their rock sound with synthesisers, drum machines, the ondes Martenot, string orchestras and brass instruments, incorporating influences from genres such as electronic music, krautrock, jazz, and 20th-century classical music. They recorded Kid A with OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and their hometown Oxford, England. The sessions produced over 20 tracks; Radiohead saved many of them for their subsequent album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Radiohead released no singles or music videos to promote Kid A and conducted few interviews and photoshoots, instead becoming one of the first major acts to use the internet as a promotional tool. The album was made available to stream and was promoted with short animated films featuring music and artwork. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services and the album was leaked before release. Kid A debuted at the top of the charts in Britain, where it went platinum in the first week, and it became Radiohead's first number-one album in the United States. Like OK Computer, it won a Grammy for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for Album of the Year. Its departure from Radiohead's earlier sound initially divided fans and critics, but it later attracted widespread acclaim; at the turn of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2012, Rolling Stone ranked it number 67 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Read more on Last.fm.