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  • This Isn't Happening

  • Radiohead's "Kid A" and the Beginning of the 21st Century
  • By: Steven Hyden
  • Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
  • Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (28 ratings)

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This Isn't Happening

By: Steven Hyden
Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
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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
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Critic reviews

"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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    5 out of 5 stars

Not a Kid A fan - loved this book

A really interesting look into Radiohead and their influences on the world and vice versea

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A good listen

Enjoyed the book. Will have to go back through it to take more out. Only issue I had was it sounded like it was read by Rod Serling and we were about to go into The Twilight Zone.... I kept waiting ....maybe I'm in it.. feels like it actually

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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant.

This is a very well-written account of not only the way in which ‘Kid A’ came to be, but also the broader musical landscape at the time of its creation.

I was too young to experience the release of ‘Kid A’, and have never been a particularly avid Radiohead fan; but the contextual references to other artists such as Aphex Twin, U2, Linkin Park, Brian Eno and many others really help to illustrate how experimental Radiohead were in the creation of this album in relation to their peers, and also in relation to their prior material.

The narrator also does an amazing job!

Cannot recommend enough! :)

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Tiring

Sounds like it’s been written by an over-excited 12 year old fan. The over dramatised delivery doesn’t help. ‘Thom gets on train! Tom goes back on the train! It’s a nervous breakdown! It’s unbelievable!’ type thing. Tiring.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great read for fans and music lovers alike!

Extremely readable - finished it in one sitting! Essential reading for any Radiohead fan made accessible and entertaining with a varied, albeit anecdotal, coverage of broader rock history.

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    4 out of 5 stars

a great listen despite a well known story !!!

i thought I'd listen this to wile away the long , painful hours at work and I'm actaully quite surprised at how much I really enjoyed this . Of course I am a Radiohead fan and even though I knew most of the stories behind kidS's creation & it's reception at the time ( I can recall the whole maddness that ensued at the time , it was quite bonkers ) it is still a very well threaded together story that I imagine most if not all fans will enjoy .... there was a little bit of Suede bashing along with their 'dog man star' album wich seemed a little .... I don't know .... at odds with Radiohead and KidA. It was just a bit of an random moment . I can't even remember the context this all happened in and couldn't disagree more , 'dog man star' is an amazing piece of work!!! .... but that aside a really captivating and well researched book . bravo 👏👏👏👏

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    5 out of 5 stars

excellent read/listen for Radiohead fans

this is a seriously deep dive and analysis of my favourite Radiohead album, Kid A. highly recommended for fans of Radiohead in general.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Clumsy and joining the wrong dots

This book is a tour-de-force in cliché rock journalism with a reader that sounds like a pound-shop Billy Zane.

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