Hail to the Thief
Hail to the Thief is the sixth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released on 9 June 2003 through Parlophone internationally, and through Capitol Records in the United States on 10 June. It was the last album released under Radiohead's record contract with EMI, the parent company of Parlophone and Capitol.
After transitioning to a more electronic style on their albums Kid A and Amnesiac, which were recorded through protracted studio experimentation, Radiohead sought to work more spontaneously, combining electronic and rock music. They recorded most of Hail to the Thief in two weeks in Los Angeles with their longtime producer, Nigel Godrich, focusing on live takes rather than overdubs. The singer, Thom Yorke, wrote lyrics in response to the election of the US president George W. Bush and the unfolding war on terror. He took phrases from political discourse and combined them with elements from fairy tales and children's literature. The title is a play on the American presidential anthem, "Hail to the Chief".
Following a high-profile internet leak of unfinished material ten weeks before release, Hail to the Thief debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number three on the US Billboard 200 chart. It was certified platinum in the UK and Canada and gold in several countries. It was promoted with the singles "There, There", "Go to Sleep" and "2 + 2 = 5", and short films, music videos and webcasts streamed from Radiohead's website. Hail to the Thief was the fifth consecutive Radiohead album nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, and won for the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Album.
The band members later expressed regrets about Hail to the Thief, feeling it was overlong and unfinished. It was followed by 2004 B-sides compilation Com Lag and the 2025 live album Hail to the Thief . Yorke reworked the music for Hamlet Hail to the Thief, a production of Hamlet that opened in Manchester in 2025.
Background
With their previous albums Kid A and Amnesiac, 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. The singer, Thom Yorke, said: "Even with electronics, there is an element of spontaneous performance in using them. It was the tension between what's human and what's coming from the machines. That was stuff we were getting into." Radiohead did not want to make a "big creative leap or statement" with their next album.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
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. Yorke said: "We were like, 'Do we want to fly halfway around the world to do this?' But it was terrific, because we worked really hard. We did a track a day. It was sort of like holiday camp." Godrich later said his clearest memory of the sessions was Yorke repeatedly saying how much he hated Los Angeles.Kid A and Amnesiac were created through a years-long process of recording and editing that the drummer, Philip Selway, described as "manufacturing music in the studio". 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". Radiohead tried to work quickly and spontaneously, avoiding procrastination and overanalysis. Yorke was forced to write lyrics differently, as he did not have time to rewrite them in the studio. For some songs, he returned to the method of cutting up words and arranging them randomly he had employed for Kid A and Amnesiac.
The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, used the music programming language Max to manipulate the band's playing. For example, he used it to process his guitar on "Go to Sleep", creating a random stuttering effect. 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. Radiohead struggled to record "There, There"; after rerecording it in their Oxfordshire studio, Yorke was so relieved to have captured it he wept, feeling it was their best work. Radiohead had recorded an electronic version of "I Will" in the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions, but abandoned it as "dodgy Kraftwerk". They used components of this version to create "Like Spinning Plates" on Amnesiac. For Hail to the Thief, they sought to "get to the core of what's good about the song" and not be distracted by production details or new sounds, settling on a stripped-back arrangement.
Radiohead recorded most of Hail to the Thief in two weeks, 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". However, mixing and choosing the track list created conflict. According to Yorke, "There was a long sustained period during which we lived with it but it wasn't completely finished, so you get attached to versions and we had big rows about it." 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,Yorke, a new father, adopted a strategy of "distilling" the political themes into "childlike simplicity". He took phrases from fairy tales and folklore such as the tale of "Chicken Little", and from children's literature and television he shared with his son, such as the 1970s TV series Bagpuss. Parenthood made Yorke concerned about the condition of the world and how it could affect future generations. Greenwood said Yorke's lyrics embraced sarcasm, wit and ambiguity, and expressed "confusion and escape, like 'I'm going to stay at home and look after the people I care about, buy a month's supply of food'."
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 considered using The Gloaming, but this was rejected as too poetic and "doomy" and so became the album's subtitle. 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". Radiohead chose the title partly in reference to Bush, 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". The title also references the leak of an unfinished version of the album before its release, and Yorke's insecurity over Radiohead's success. 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.