Hey, I'm Brian Hyatt, and this is Rolling Stone Music Now.

I have with me Stephen Hyatt, who's going to talk with us about Radio Heads Kid A, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

He is the author of a new book.

This isn't happening.

Radiohead's Kid A in the beginning of the 21st century. He's also a cultural critic for

up rocks and the host currently of a podcast called Rivals. That's a lot of fun.

Stephen, welcome. Brian, it's always a pleasure pleasure always good to have you and I was saying before the show what's amazing is you managed to write a fun book about Radiohead's Kid A which isn't necessarily congruent with the album itself.

It's a fun, riffy book about an album not designed to spark fun, although I find it fun to listen to.

It's not the normal.

It's not fun like the Brittany Spears album

that came out the same year that probably were the two albums

that I spent the most time listening to that year,

which says a lot perhaps about the split in my personality but how did you

come to realize that you want to write this book let's start there well you know

we're coming up now it's been 20 years into this new century that we're in. I mean, it's not a new century.

We've been living in the 21st century for a while now. And it just seems like a natural time to look back and not only reflect on culture but all the things that we've that we've gone through in the past two decades and I think you're right I mean I think the book is fun hopefully people laugh when they're reading, but you know there are a lot of things in there

that I'm writing about that are pretty dark and depressing. Not just the album, but again, like just

how crazy the last two decades have been you know I I think one of the

attractions of Kid A along with it just being this landmark great album is it came out you know at the beginning of the 21st century really before like the new century I think really began

You know it comes out in October of 2000 the next month you have the Gore v Bush election, which of course ends up being this debacle

that is decided by the Supreme Court.

So I think that is, I think for a generation of people the beginning of this like political disillusionment

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