The Music and Art of Radiohead provides compelling close readings of the English band's music, lyrics, album cover art and music videos as well as critical commentary on interviews, reviews and the documentary film Meeting People is Easy. Established and emerging academic scholars engage with Radiohead's music and art via concerns of broader implication to contemporary cultural studies. Topics range from the band's various musical and multivalent social contexts to their contested situation within a global market economy; from asking the question, 'how free is art?' to considering the band's musical influences and radical sonic explorations. Together, the essays form a comprehensive discussion of Radiohead's entire oeuvre, from Pablo Honey to Hail to the Thief, with a special focus on the critically acclaimed best-selling albums Kid A and Amnesiac.

Contents: Foreword, Kevin J.H. Dettmar; Introduction, Joseph Tate; Kid Adorno, Curtis White; 'We got heads on sticks/you got ventriloquists': Radiohead and the improbability of resistance, Davis Schneiderman; The aura of authenticity: perceptions of honesty, sincerity and truth in 'Creep' and 'Kid A', Carys Wyn Jones; Radiohead and the negation of gender, Erin Harde; To(rt)uring the Minotaur: Radiohead, pop, unnatural couplings and mainstream subversion, Greg Hainge; 'Ice age coming': apocalypse, the sublime, and the paintings of Stanley Donwood, Lisa Leblanc; Radiohead's antivideos: works of art in the age of electronic reproduction, Joseph Tate; Deforming rock: Radiohead's plunge into the sonic continuum, Mark B.N. Hansen; 'Sounds like teen spirit': identifying Radiohead's idiolect, Allan F. Moore and Anwar Ibrahim; Public schoolboy music: debating Radiohead, Dai Griffiths; My Radiohead adventure, Paul Lansky; Hail to the thief: a rhizomatic map in fragments, Joseph Tate; Bibliography; Track listing; Index.

Reviews: '... this collection proves that Radiohead are worth a little goatee-twiddling.' www.hero.ac.uk

‘… a worthwhile venture for readers eager to explore Radiohead's artistic and cultural dimensions…’ Popular Music

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Index

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