High_and_Dry

High and Dry / Planet Telex

High and Dry / Planet Telex

1995 single by Radiohead


"High and Dry" and "Planet Telex" are songs by the English rock band Radiohead. They were released as a double-A side single from Radiohead's second album, The Bends (1995), on 27 February 1995.

Quick Facts Single by Radiohead, from the album The Bends ...

"High and Dry" was recorded as a demo during the sessions of Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey (1993), and remastered for inclusion on The Bends. It is credited as an influence on the bands Travis and Coldplay. "Planet Telex" developed from studio experimentation with drum loops. Two music videos were produced for "High and Dry".

"High and Dry"

The Radiohead songwriter, Thom Yorke, performed an early version of "High and Dry" with another band, Headless Chickens, while attending the University of Exeter in the late 1980s.[4] He said the lyrics were about "some loony girl I was going out with", but became "mixed up with ideas about success and failure".[5]

In 1993, Radiohead recorded a demo version at Courtyard Studios, Oxfordshire, with their live engineer, Jim Warren.[6] They dismissed it as "too Rod Stewart".[5] The demo was rediscovered and remastered for inclusion on their second album, The Bends (1995).[6] In 2006, Yorke said that Radiohead's record label at the time, EMI, had pressured him to release it and that it was a "very bad" song.[7]

"Planet Telex"

Radiohead wrote and recorded "Planet Telex" in a single session at RAK Studios while working on The Bends. It developed from experiments with a drum loop taken from another song, the B-side "Killer Cars", to which Radiohead added piano processed with multiple delay effects. The band had recently returned from a restaurant, and Yorke recorded the vocals drunk, slumped in a corner. According to the producer, John Leckie, "We had the whole thing down within a couple of hours, which was really refreshing and fun to do."[8] The original title was "Planet Xerox", but Radiohead were denied permission to use the Xerox trademark.[8]

Music videos

The first music video for "High and Dry" featured Radiohead performing at the Vasquez Rocks outside Los Angeles.[8] For the American market, Radiohead's American record label, Capitol, commissioned a new video inspired by the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, set in a roadside diner. After MTV objected, the video was edited to remove a shot of an exploding car.[8]

Legacy

Pitchfork credited "High and Dry" and another Bends song, "Fake Plastic Trees", for influencing the "airbrushed" post-Britpop of Coldplay and Travis.[9] The Irish Times said that "High and Dry" had "essentially invented Coldplay".[10]

Track listing

More information No., Title ...
More information No., Title ...
More information No., Title ...
More information No., Title ...

Personnel

Charts

More information Chart (1995–1996), Peak position ...

Certifications

More information Region, Certification ...

References

  1. "New Releases: Singles" (PDF). Music Week. 25 February 1995. p. 43. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
  2. Partridge, Kenneth (13 March 2015). "Radiohead's 'The Bends' at 20: Classic Track-By-Track Review". Billboard. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
  3. Barker, Emily (26 January 2015). "30 Albums That Made 1995 A Vintage Year For Music". NME. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
  4. Bambarger, Bradley (17 February 1996). "The Modern Age". Billboard.
  5. Plagenhoef, Scott (16 August 2006). "Pitchfork: Interviews: Thom Yorke". Pitchfork. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
  6. Randall, Mac (1 February 2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-1-4584-7147-5.
  7. "The 50 Best Britpop Albums". Pitchfork. 29 March 2017. Archived from the original on 2 June 2017. Retrieved 30 May 2017.
  8. Power, Ed (12 March 2020). "Why Radiohead's The Bends is the worst great album of all time". The Irish Times. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
  9. Ryan, Gavin (2011). Australia's Music Charts 1988–2010 (PDF ed.). Mt Martha, Victoria, Australia: Moonlight Publishing. p. 228.
  10. "Eurochart Hot 100 Singles" (PDF). Music & Media. Vol. 12, no. 11. 18 March 1995. p. 27. Retrieved 13 September 2020.
  11. "Íslenski Listinn Topp 40 (15.4. '95 – 21.4. '95)". Dagblaðið Vísir (in Icelandic). 12 April 1995. p. 62. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  12. "Canada's Top 200 Singles of 2001". Jam!. Archived from the original on 26 July 2002. Retrieved 28 March 2022.
  13. "Italian single certifications – Radiohead – High and Dry" (in Italian). Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana. Retrieved 2 November 2021. Select "2021" in the "Anno" drop-down menu. Select "High and Dry" in the "Filtra" field. Select "Singoli" under "Sezione".

Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article High_and_Dry, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.