Идиоте́к: История Песни Radiohead

2000 song by Radiohead

"Idioteque" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released on their fourth album, Kid A (2000). Radiohead developed it while experimenting with modular synthesisers. It contains samples of two 1970s computer music compositions. "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. In 2021, Rolling Stone ranked it number 48 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". A live version appears on the 2001 EP I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings. "Idioteque" was included on Radiohead: The Best Of (2008).

The Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke, described "Idioteque" as "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage". The song began with an electronic rhythm created by Jonny Greenwood. Yorke said: "Some of it was just 'what? ', but then there was this section of about 40 seconds long in the middle of it that was absolute genius, and I just cut that up." In the second chorus, Yorke's vocals are rearranged so that he seems to say "the first of the children" in 5/4, creating a grouping dissonance against the original 4/4 chorus.

Greenwood could not remember where the four chord synthesiser phrase had come from, and assumed he had played it himself. He later realised he had sampled it from mild und leise, a computer music piece by the American composer Paul Lansky. Lansky wrote mild und leise in 1973 at Princeton University on an IBM mainframe computer using FM synthesis. It was released on the 1975 compilation First Recordings – Electronic Music Winners, which Greenwood discovered in a second hand record shop while Radiohead were touring the US. Lansky allowed Radiohead to use the sample after Greenwood wrote to him with a copy of "Idioteque". In an essay about the experience, Lansky wrote that he found Radiohead's use of the sample "imaginative and inventive" and that he had himself "sampled" the chord progression by using the Tristan chord.

"Idioteque" was named the eighth best song of the decade by Pitchfork and the 56th best by Rolling Stone. In 2018, Rolling Stone ranked it the 33rd greatest song of the century so far. In 2021 and 2024, Rolling Stone ranked "Idioteque" number 48 on its lists of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", describing it as "the foreboding, spellbinding centrepiece of Kid A".

In July 2010, Amanda Palmer released a cover of "Idioteque" as the first single from her Radiohead covers album; her cover was National Public Radio's Song of the Day for January 11, 2011. In 2010, Yoav used a loop pedal to build a layered acoustic version.