Hail to the Thief

With their previous albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), recorded simultaneously, Radiohead replaced their guitar-led rock sound with a more electronic style. For the tours, they learned how to perform the music live, combining synthetic sounds with rock instrumentation. In early 2002, after the Amnesiac tour had finished, Yorke sent his bandmates CDs of demos. The CDs, titled The Gloaming, Episcoval and Hold Your Prize, comprised electronic music alongside piano and guitar sketches. Radiohead had tried to record some of the songs, such as "I Will", for Kid A and Amnesiac, but were not satisfied with the results. They spent May and June 2002 arranging and rehearsing the songs before performing them on their tour of Spain and Portugal in July and August. ==Recording==

. Hollywood culture influenced the lyrics and artwork.|alt= In September 2002, Radiohead moved to Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, Los Angeles, with their longtime producer, Nigel Godrich. The studio was suggested by Godrich, who had used it to produce records by Travis and Beck and thought it would be a "good change of scenery" for Radiohead. For their next album, Radiohead sought to capture a more immediate, "live" sound. Most electronic elements were not overdubbed, but recorded live in the studio. The band integrated computers into their performances with other instruments. Yorke said "everything was about performance, like staging a play". For some songs, he returned to the method of cutting up words and arranging them randomly he had employed for Kid A and Amnesiac. He also continued to use modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin. After having used effects pedals heavily on previous albums, he challenged himself to create interesting guitar parts without effects. Inspired by the Beatles, Radiohead tried to keep the songs concise. The opening track, "2 + 2 = 5", was recorded as a studio test and finished in two hours. with additional recording and mixing at their studio in Oxfordshire, England, in late 2002 and early 2003. The guitarist Ed O'Brien told Rolling Stone that Hail to the Thief was the first Radiohead album "where, at the end of making it, we haven't wanted to kill each other". He said later that finishing the record was "particularly messy and fraught, we were very proud of it but there was a taste left in our mouths, it was a dark time in so many ways". According to Selway, "We started quickly. Then it... had more requirements." Godrich estimated that a third of the album comprises rough mixes from the Los Angeles sessions. ==Lyrics and themes==

Pitchfork described the lyrics as "almost unrelentingly bleak, a violent dispatch bursting with Orwellian zombies, automatons incapable of seeing warning signs, 'accidents waiting to happen''". The lyrics were influenced by what Yorke called "the general sense of ignorance and intolerance and panic and stupidity" following the 2000 election of the US president George W. Bush. Yorke, a new father, adopted a strategy of "distilling" the political themes into "childlike simplicity". and from children's literature and television he shared with his son, such as the 1970s TV series Bagpuss. Greenwood said Yorke's lyrics embraced sarcasm, wit and ambiguity, Yorke also took phrases from Dante's Inferno, the subject of his partner Rachel Owen's PhD thesis. Several songs, such as "2 + 2 = 5", "Sit Down. Stand Up", and "Sail to the Moon", reference Christian ideas of heaven and hell, a first for Radiohead's music. Other songs reference science fiction, horror and fantasy, such as the wolves and vampires of "A Wolf at the Door" and "We Suck Young Blood", the reference to the slogan "two plus two equals five" of the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in "2 + 2 = 5", and the allusion to the giant of ''Gulliver's Travels in "Go to Sleep". He sometimes chose words for their sounds rather than meanings, such as the title "Myxomatosis" or the repeated phrase "the rain drops" on "Sit Down. Stand Up".Radiohead struggled to choose a title. They also considered the titles Little Man Being Erased, The Boney King of Nowhere and Snakes and Ladders'', which became the alternative titles for "Go to Sleep", "There, There" and "Sit Down. Stand Up". The alternative titles were inspired by Victorian playbills showcasing moralistic songs played in music halls. The phrase "hail to the thief" was used by anti-Bush protesters as a play on "Hail to the Chief", the American presidential anthem. Yorke described hearing the phrase for the first time as a "formative moment". but also in response to "the rise of doublethink and general intolerance and madness ... like individuals were totally out of control of the situation ... a manifestation of something not really human". Yorke worried that it would be construed solely as reference to the US election, but his bandmates felt it "conjured up all the nonsense and absurdity and jubilation of the times". In 2025, Yorke said Jonny Greenwood had "begged him" not to use it. ==Music==

Hail to the Thief incorporates alternative rock, art rock, experimental rock and electronic rock. It features more conventional rock instrumentation and less digital manipulation than Radiohead's previous albums Kid A and Amnesiac, with prominent use of live drums, guitar and piano, and Yorke's voice is less manipulated with effects. O'Brien felt it captured a new "swaggering" sound, with "space and sunshine and energy". It is Radiohead's longest album. and was written "in five minutes" for Yorke's infant son, Noah. "Backdrifts" is an electronic song about "the slide backwards that's happening everywhere you look". the song satirises Hollywood culture and its "constant desire to stay young and fleece people, suck their energy". and the Pixies. Radiohead sought to recreate the "frightening" detuned synthesiser sounds of 1970s and 1980s new wave bands such as Tubeway Army. Jonny Greenwood described "Scatterbrain" as "simple and pretty" with chords that do not resolve. Yorke described its placement at the end of the album as "sort of like waking you up at the end ... It's all been a nightmare and you need to go and get a glass of water now." ==Artwork==

The Hail to the Thief artwork was created by the longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood, Instead, the cover art is a roadmap of Hollywood, with words and phrases taken from roadside advertising in Los Angeles, such as "God", "TV" and "oil". Donwood said advertising was designed to be attractive, but that there was something "unsettling" about being sold something. He took the advertising slogans out of context to "remove the imperative" and "get to the pure heart of advertising". Other artworks included with the album refer to cities relevant to the war, Early editions contained a fold-out road map of the cover. The essayist Amy Britton interpreted the artwork as an allusion to the Bush administration's "road map for peace" plan for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Joseph Tate likened it to the paintings of the artist Jean Dubuffet and saw it as a portrayal of "capitalism's glaring visual presence: an oppressive sameness of style and colour that mirrors globalisation's reduction of difference". == Release ==

On 30 March 2003, ten weeks before release, an unfinished version of Hail to the Thief was leaked online. The leak comprised rough edits and unmixed songs from January that year. On Radiohead's forum, Jonny Greenwood wrote that the band were "pissed off", not with downloaders but because of the "sloppy" release of unfinished work. Colin Greenwood said the leak was "like being photographed with one sock on when you get out of bed in the morning". However, he expressed dismay at the cease-and-desist orders sent by label EMI to radio stations and fan sites playing the leaked tracks, saying: "Don't record companies usually pay thousands of dollars to get stations to play their records? Now they're paying money to stations not to play them." EMI decided against moving the release date earlier to combat the leak. The EMI executive Ted Mico said the leak had generated media coverage, and that EMI was confident that Hail to the Thief would sell. Hail to the Thief was released on 9 June 2003 by Parlophone Records in the UK and a day later by Capitol Records in the US. A compilation of Hail to the Thief B-sides, remixes and live performances, Com Lag (2plus2isfive), was released in April 2004. Hail to the Thief reached number one in the UK Albums Chart and stayed on the chart for 14 weeks, selling 114,320 copies in its first week. In the US, it entered at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 300,000 copies in its first week, more than any previous Radiohead album. By 2008, it had sold over a million copies in the US. It is certified platinum in the UK and Canada. ==Promotion==

According to the Guardian critic Alexis Petridis, ''Hail to the Thief's marketing campaign was "by [Radiohead] standards ... a promotional blitzkrieg". In May, planes trailing Hail to the Thief banners flew over the California Coachella Festival. The Guardian described the choice of a more conventional rock song as "diplomatic" following the divided response to Kid A and Amnesiac. Yorke asked the Bagpuss creator, Oliver Postgate, to create its music video, but he declined as he was retired. The video debuted on the jumbotron in Times Square, New York, on 20 May, and received hourly play that day on MTV2. "Go to Sleep" and "2 + 2 = 5" were released as singles on 18 August and 17 November. Rolling Stone'' suggested that EMI chose the singles to "retrench Radiohead as a big rock band" and compete with acts such as Coldplay and Muse. On May 26, Radiohead launched radiohead.tv, where they streamed short films, music videos and live webcasts from their studio at scheduled times. Visitors late for streams were shown a test card with "1970s-style" intermission music. Yorke said Radiohead had planned to broadcast the material on their own television channel, but this was cancelled due to "money, cutbacks, too weird, might scare the children, staff layoffs, shareholders". The material was released on the 2004 DVD The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time. Radiohead also relaunched their website, featuring digital animations on the themes of mass-media culture and 24-hour cities. Radiohead toured in 2003 and 2004, with performances in Europe, the US, Australia and Japan, including performances at the Field Day, Glastonbury and Coachella festivals. Radiohead rearranged some songs, such as "The Gloaming", which integrated live sampling and a new bassline. == Critical reception ==

Hail to the Thief has a score of 85 out of 100 on review aggregate site Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". Neil McCormick, writing for The Daily Telegraph, called it "Radiohead firing on all cylinders, a major work by major artists at the height of their powers". Chris Ott of Pitchfork wrote that Radiohead had "largely succeeded in their efforts to shape pop music into as boundless and possible a medium as it should be" and named it the week's "Best New Music". Andy Kellman of AllMusic wrote that "despite the fact that it seems more like a bunch of songs on a disc rather than a singular body, its impact is substantial", concluding that Radiohead had "entered a second decade of record-making with a surplus of momentum". In Mojo, Peter Paphides wrote that Hail to the Thief "coheres as well as anything else in their canon". The Q writer John Harris felt that it "comes dangerously close to being all experimentalism and precious little substance". Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote that while the album's melodies and guitar work are "never as elegiac and lyrical" or "articulate and demented" as those of Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, it flowed better. He later awarded it an "honourable mention". Hail to the Thief was the fifth consecutive Radiohead album nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, and earned Godrich and the engineer Darrell Thorp the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Album. Legacy In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked Hail to the Thief the 89th-best album of the 2000s, writing that "the dazzling overabundance of ideas makes Hail to the Thief a triumph". In 2025, GQ named Hail to the Thief the eighth-best Radiohead album, saying it was "stranded between their band's avant-garde run of OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac, and the late-career brilliance that started with In Rainbows ... The uncharitable caricature that's sometimes fixed to their music – Thom Yorke warbling vaguely political sentiments over fiddly drum patterns and melodies – probably was born here, given the lyrical focus on the war on terror." Rolling Stone said Hail to the Thief was one of Radiohead's most divisive albums, which was "part of the fun". In 2008, Yorke posted an alternative track listing on Radiohead's website, omitting "Backdrifts", "We Suck Young Blood", "I Will" and "A Punchup at a Wedding". Jonny agreed that it was too long, and said: "We were trying to do what people said we were good at ... But it was good for our heads. It was good for us to be doing a record that came out of playing live." In 2023, approaching its 20th anniversary, Selway described Hail to the Thief as a bridge between Kid A, Amnesiac and Radiohead's subsequent album, In Rainbows. In 2025, the Pitchfork critic Molly Mary O'Brien wrote that "as a timepiece, its foreboding sense of unease is quite suited for the present", citing the improved public image of George W. Bush, the presidency of Donald Trump and that year's US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. == Hamlet Hail to the Thief ==

Yorke reworked Hail to the Thief for Hamlet Hail to the Thief, a production of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company that ran at Aviva Studios, Manchester, from April to May 2025, followed by a run at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in June. The production was directed by Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett and starred Samuel Blenkin as Prince Hamlet, with music performed by a five-piece band isolated in sound booths. Yorke said the production had been a "healthy" way for Radiohead to revisit the album, which they felt unsatisfied with, and "claim back the original sentiment". The New York Times wrote that it was "a compelling spectacle", and that the singers provided "an ethereal beauty more than worthy of Yorke himself ... But it feels like a little Shakespeare has been added to Radiohead's music, rather than the other way around. The production can take a place in the pantheon of flawed but worthwhile undertakings, like those bloated concept albums of the 1970s that were forerunners to Hail to the Thief." ==Further releases==

Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Hail to the Thief. Radiohead performed some Hail to the Thief tracks for the 2008 live video In Rainbows – From the Basement. On 31 August 2009, EMI reissued Hail to the Thief in a 2-CD "Collector's Edition" and a 2-CD 1-DVD "Special Collector's Edition". The first CD contains the original album; the second CD collects B-sides and live performances previously compiled on the Com Lag (2plus2isfive) EP; the DVD contains music videos and a live television performance. Radiohead had no input into the reissue and the music was not remastered. Pitchfork gave it 8.6 out of 10, naming the "Collector's Edition" the week's "best new reissue" and "Gagging Order" the best B-side included in the bonus material. The A.V. Club gave it A-, writing that the bonus content was all "worth hearing, though the live tracks stand out". The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue was transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Radiohead's back catalogue on vinyl, including Hail to the Thief. In the process of arranging Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Yorke revisited Radiohead's live performances and was "shocked at the energy ... I barely recognised us". Radiohead released a selection of performances as Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003–2009) digitally on 13 August 2025, with CD and vinyl releases on 31 October. ==Track listing==

Adapted from the Hail to the Thief liner notes. Radiohead • Thom Yorke – vocals, words, guitar, piano, laptop • Jonny Greenwood – guitar, analogue systems, ondes Martenot, laptop, toy piano, glockenspiel • Colin Greenwood – bass, string synth, sampler • Ed O'Brien – guitar, effects, backing vocals • Philip Selway – drums, percussion Additional personnel • Nigel Godrich – recording, editing, operation, mixing • Darrell Thorp – engineering, backing up, cataloguing • Plank – instrument maintenance and rebuilding • Graeme Stewart – tape loops on "The Gloaming", engineering of preliminary sessions • Stanley Donwood – painting, packaging ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications==