What will Radiohead play at the O2? Our data team predicts the setlist <\/p>\n
, The Times<\/p>\n
Radiohead are a nerd\u2019s dream \u2014 or, to use the title of track six from The Bends, a song that they have played three times on their present tour, a nerd\u2019s Nice Dream. We are eight shows into Thom Yorke and co\u2019s reunion jaunt around five European cities and their fans are having the time of their lives. Every night, on their Reddit page, diehards update fellow obsessives with what is being played, the minute that the first note is struck. Music, in this way, has become like following your football team\u2019s score on an app \u2014 you are not there, but it feels as if you might be. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Radiohead review \u2014 hail to a band at the peak of its powers<\/a><\/p>\n And on Friday Radiohead play London \u2014 their first of four gigs at the O2 that will be the Oxford group\u2019s first in more than eight years in Britain. The scramble for tickets left millions disappointed, and what\u2019s bizarre about this band is that even those who turn up might feel like they have missed out. Not because the fivesome are anything but sensational \u2014 I saw the opening night in Madrid and the euphoria and absurdly gifted technical playing was in force from start to finish. Yet, unlike other big touring acts, Radiohead have been mixing up their setlists every night, meaning that, essentially, we have no idea what they will play this weekend, and, indeed, it is incredibly likely that they will not play your favourite song.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, we\u2019re contrary bastards,\u201d the guitarist Ed O\u2019Brien told me<\/a> when I met the band before their tour a couple of months ago. He explained that they have a \u201csetlist committee\u201d consisting of himself, Yorke and the drummer Philip Selway, who decide which songs they will play in the afternoon before the show. \u201cIt sounds like a school society, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d Selway says of a committee that the Greenwood brothers, Colin and Jonny, are banned from, owing to their penchant for indecision. On their last tour, Radiohead played Glasgow on an up-for-it Friday and, O\u2019Brien says, adjusted their set accordingly to ditch obscurities and focus on bangers. <\/p>\n \u2022 Radiohead interview: \u2018The wheels had come off a bit. We had to stop\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n This tour? Well, God love them, they have been mixing it up again. In the eight shows played so far, in Madrid and Bologna, every setlist has included 25 songs with just seven the same each night. So in London you can expect 2+2=5, Everything In Its Right Place, Let Down, Paranoid Android, There There, Weird Fishes and You and Whose Army? Or can you? A few songs have been in all but one show, while crowd favourite Idioteque was centre stage for the first five gigs, but randomly ditched for two nights in Bologna. As the saying goes: \u201cIt\u2019s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.\u201d Sure, but it\u2019s even harder to predict what Radiohead will play.<\/p>\n Which, by the way, is incredibly rare for big acts. And Radiohead are huge \u2014 more monthly Spotify listeners than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Oasis. Most play it safe \u2014 the Oasis tour<\/a> this year was identical each night, while Taylor Swift<\/a>\u2019s Eras Tour was 94 per cent the same for each gig and Coldplay\u2019s latest flit around the globe 61 per cent the same. Radiohead? A measly 28 per cent. <\/p>\n \u2022 Read music reviews, interviews and guides on what to listen to next<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cFor one, we have too many songs,\u201d Yorke said. \u201cAnd two, we\u2019ve always had that attitude of, \u2018Let us just drop this one in and see if we fall apart.\u2019\u201d So far, so good \u2014 the reviews are ecstatic. But is there anything more Radiohead than the fact that they still have not played their biggest hit, Creep? Or High and Dry, which is their second most played song on UK radio? Or that another genuine hit, Karma Police, is only played every other night? <\/p>\n So, the first night \u2014 the Friday. Going by some graphs on the Reddit page, looking for patterns, I would bet that fans will get the seven that turn up each evening, plus Fake Plastic Trees, No Surprises, Karma Police, The National Anthem, Videotape, 15 Step, The Gloaming, Bloom and Daydreaming. But who knows? On night three in Bologna they played Talk Show Host, a B-side from the soundtrack of Romeo + Juliet, for seemingly no other reason than the fact Romeo himself \u2014 Leonardo DiCaprio \u2014 was in the crowd. Now that\u2019s taking requests. <\/p>\n \u201cWell, I\u2019d love to play Spectre, Ill Wind and Lift,\u201d Colin Greenwood said last month of three rarities, one of which has never really been released. They haven\u2019t turned up yet, but rule nothing out. And if they do, the boffins will go into overdrive, patterns will be destroyed, the spreadsheets broken. For diehards, this band are like a full-time job, but is that obsession not the best way to enjoy music?
Radiohead play the O2 Arena<\/a>, London, Nov 21, 22, 24, 25<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What will Radiohead play at the O2? Our data team predicts the setlist , The Times Radiohead are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-305019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}