Motion Picture Soundtrack
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Motion Picture Soundtrack" | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Song by Radiohead | ||
| from the album Kid A | ||
| Released | 2 October 2000 | |
| Recorded | January 1999 - April 2000 | |
| Genre | Art rock | |
| Length | 6:59 | |
| Label | Parlophone | |
| Producer(s) | Nigel Godrich and Radiohead | |
| Kid A track listing | ||
| Morning Bell (9) |
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" (10) |
|
- This article is about a song by the English music band Radiohead. For music heard in motion pictures, see Film score and Soundtrack.
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" is the tenth and final song on Radiohead's album Kid A (2000).
The song was written in the early 1990s, and debuted on solo acoustic guitar by singer Thom Yorke at a live radio station session in 1996. "Motion Picture Soundtrack" was expected to be included on 1997's OK Computer, but the band decided against it. It is unknown whether a recorded version was ever completed at this time. Despite this, the song was played by Thom a few times as an acoustic encore during the OK Computer tour.[1]
The album version of "Motion Picture Soundtrack" differs from the original versions in lacking both a final verse ("beautiful angel pulled apart at birth/limbless and helpless/I can't even recognize you") and acoustic guitar accompaniment. Instead it features Yorke playing the organ, and sampled harp glissandi by Jonny Greenwood.[2] The band commented that they had given up on the song in its old form, until finding the new "Walt Disney" style arrangement. Some have compared its orchestration to the Beatles' "Good Night," the final song on the white album.
Around the time of the release of Kid A, the song was featured in most concert sets, with Yorke on organ and sampled harps toward the end of the song. The live performances were nearly identical to the album version, in comparison with other songs from the period which were radically reinvented live. It has not been played in any form since 2001.
On Kid A the song itself fades out at around 3:18 into the track (#10), and is followed by 2 minutes of silence, then a 30-second instrumental and 2 more minutes of silence, which brings the total length of the album to exactly 50 minutes (some MP3 ripping programs remove the 2 minutes of silence at the end of the track). The instrumental "hidden track" in the interlude after the song ends is sometimes mistaken to be a separate song named "Genchildren," because this was the name of the group that originally leaked Kid A to the internet. In fact, the brief untitled fragment most likely samples the harp sounds of "Motion Picture Soundtrack" itself, forming a delayed coda.
The song was covered by Mull Historical Society as a b-side on the single How 'Bout I Love You More.
