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  • This Isn't Happening

  • Radiohead's "Kid A" and the Beginning of the 21st Century
  • Written by: Steven Hyden
  • Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
  • Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (10 ratings)

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This Isn't Happening

Written by: Steven Hyden
Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
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Publisher's Summary

The making and meaning of Radiohead's groundbreaking, controversial, epoch-defining album, Kid A.

In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future.

For more than a year, they battled writer's block, inter-band disagreements, and crippling self-doubt. In the end, however, they produced an album that was not only a complete departure from their prior guitar-based rock sound, it was the sound of a new era, and embodied widespread changes catalyzed by emerging technologies just beginning to take hold of the culture.

What they created was Kid A. At the time, Radiohead's fourth album divided critics. Some called it an instant classic; others, including the U.K. music magazine Melody Maker, deemed it "Tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory...whiny old rubbish". But two decades later, Kid A sounds like nothing less than an overture for the chaos and confusion of the 21st century.

Acclaimed rock critic Steven Hyden digs deep into the songs, history, legacy, and mystique of Kid A, outlining the album's pervasive influence and impact on culture, in time for its 20th anniversary. Deploying a mix of criticism, journalism, and personal memoir, Hyden skillfully revisits this enigmatic, alluring LP and investigates the many ways in which Kid A shaped and foreshadowed our world.

©2020 Steven Hyden (P)2020 Hachette Books

What the critics say

"Hyden provides a thorough primer on the sound of Kid A...But Hyden truly excels at illuminating the context of Kid A, from the prerelease expectations to the oft-rapturous reviews to the music's ultimate legacy." (The Ringer)

"This Isn't Happening is beyond a mere analysis of Kid A. It is a vast and contextual examination of the world, both inside and outside of Radiohead, leading up to and flowing away from the creation of Kid A and its impact on both the band and culture as a whole. Connecting the record to film, politics, current events, and the cultural morass that comprised the final moments of the '90s, Steven Hyden gleefully and with meticulous absurdity dissects, deconstructs, and decodes the first great artistic enigma of the new millennium." (Alex Ross Perry, writer/director of Her Smell, Listen Up Philip and The Color Wheel)

"This Isn't Happening not only is an excellent way to revisit Kid A but also a springboard for thinking about the shifting fortunes of rock music, the Internet, and the uneasy century we've been living in for the past 20 years." (Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend)

What listeners say about This Isn't Happening

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Way better than I expected.

Goes deep into Radiohead and beyond. I was a big fan of RH but learned a lot, the writing is great and all the chapters on other material were interesting.

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