Saw this remix of The National Anthem by Radiohead for the Napoleon film trailer. As the expert on Kid A, I need to complain about why this is a bad remix. Long post incoming, likely will be boring to most, but I said I’d post whatever I want, so yeah. If you wanna hear the remix, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/YUISPYzz90k and you can hear the original here: https://youtu.be/NfQD1QiQ9o4

The remix doesn’t understand what makes the track work. The whole idea of the original is repetition, the song is chaotic, with eerie radio samples and other sounds hanging around, later on, a brass section bursts into the track, drowning out the rest of the track with an organised assortment of jazzy chaos. However, throughout the whole song, the iconic, heavy bassline loops, no matter how wild the music gets, the bassline is there, even the drums drop out here and there, allowing the chaos to swallow the song whole, but the bassline never falters. The remix ignores this, the bassline is barely there, the horns are gone, the chaos is gone. The whole point of the organised chaos is to fit with the lyrics, Thom Yorke’s voice is filtered to sound nervous, he sings “Everyone is so near” and “Everyone has got the fear”, showing a sense of anxiety, partly to do with Yorke’s fears about how big Radiohead got after OK Computer, like packing arenas. The film’s subject just don’t fit the song, they have nothing in common. It feels like it was added because it’s called The National Anthem.