Хвала Вору (Hail to the Thief)

2003 studio album by Radiohead

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 a day later through Capitol Records in the United States. 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 (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), 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 songwriter, 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 singles and music videos for "There There", "Go to Sleep" and "2 + 2 = 5". Hail to the Thief received positive reviews; it 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.

With their previous albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), 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. In early 2002, after the Amnesiac tour had finished, Yorke sent his bandmates CDs of demos. The three CDs, The Gloaming, Episcoval and Hold Your Prize, comprised electronic music alongside piano and guitar sketches. 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. 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". For some songs, he returned to the method of cutting up words and arranging them randomly he had employed for Kid A and Amnesiac. 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. 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". 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. Yorke, a new father, adopted a strategy of "distilling" the political themes into "childlike simplicity". and from children's literature and television he shared with his son, such as the 1970s TV series Bagpuss. Greenwood felt Yorke's lyrics 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" in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty Four, and the allusion to the giant of Gulliver's Travels in "Go to Sleep". Radiohead struggled to choose a title. 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 use of alternative titles was 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". 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". art rock, experimental rock and electronic rock. It features more conventional rock instrumentation and less digital manipulation than Radiohead's previous albums Kid A and Amnesiac, with prominent use of live drums, guitar and piano, and Yorke's voice is less manipulated with effects. O'Brien felt the album captured a new "swaggering" sound, with "space and sunshine and energy". and was written "in five minutes" for Yorke's infant son, Noah. "Backdrifts" is an electronic song about "the slide backwards that's happening everywhere you look". the song satirises Hollywood culture and its "constant desire to stay young and fleece people, suck their energy". and the Pixies. Radiohead sought to recreate the "frightening" detuned synthesiser sounds of 1970s and 80s new wave bands such as Tubeway Army. Jonny Greenwood described "Scatterbrain" as "simple and pretty" with chords that do not resolve. Instead, the cover art is a roadmap of Hollywood, with words and phrases taken from roadside advertising in Los Angeles, such as "God", "TV" and "oil". Donwood noted that advertising was designed to be attractive, but that there was something "unsettling" about being sold something. He took the advertising slogans out of context to "remove the imperative" and "get to the pure heart of advertising". Other artworks included with the album refer to cities relevant to the war, Early editions contained a fold out road map of the cover. The essayist Amy Britton interpreted the artwork as an allusion to the Bush administration's "road map for peace" plan for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Joseph Tate likened it to the paintings of the artist Jean Dubuffet and saw it as a portrayal of "capitalism's glaring visual presence: an oppressive sameness of style and colour that mirrors globalisation's reduction of difference".

On 30 March 2003, ten weeks before release, an unfinished version of Hail to the Thief was leaked online. The leak comprised rough edits and unmixed songs from January that year. On Radiohead's forum, Jonny Greenwood wrote that the band were "pissed off", not with downloaders but because of the "sloppy" release of unfinished work. Colin Greenwood said the leak was "like being photographed with one sock on when you get out of bed in the morning". However, he expressed dismay at the cease and desist orders sent by label EMI to radio stations and fan sites playing the leaked tracks, saying: "Don't record companies usually pay thousands of dollars to get stations to play their records? Now they're paying money to stations not to play them." EMI decided against moving the release date earlier to combat the leak. The EMI executive Ted Mico said the leak had generated media coverage, and that EMI was confident that Hail to the Thief would sell.

Hail to the Thief was released on 9 June 2003 by Parlophone Records in the UK and a day later by Capitol Records in the US. A compilation of Hail to the Thief B sides, remixes and live performances, Com Lag (2plus2isfive), was released in April 2004. Hail to the Thief reached number one in the UK Albums Chart and stayed on the chart for 14 weeks, selling 114,320 copies in its first week. In the US, it entered at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 300,000 copies in its first week, more than any previous Radiohead album. By 2008, it had sold over a million copies in the US. It is certified platinum in the UK and Canada.

According to the Guardian critic Alexis Petridis, Hail to the Thief's marketing campaign was "by [Radiohead] standards a promotional blitzkrieg". In May, planes trailing Hail to the Thief banners flew over the California Coachella Festival. Yorke asked the Bagpuss creator, Oliver Postgate, to create its music video, but he declined as he was retired. The video debuted on the Times Square Jumbotron in New York on 20 May, and received hourly play that day on MTV2. "Go to Sleep" and "2 + 2 = 5" were released as singles on 18 August and 17 November. In June, Radiohead relaunched their website, featuring digital animations on the themes of mass media culture and 24 hour cities. Yorke said Radiohead had planned to broadcast the material on their own television channel, but it was cancelled due to "money, cutbacks, too weird, might scare the children, staff layoffs, shareholders". The material was released on the 2004 DVD The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time.