High and Dry

"High and Dry" was the second single taken from the Radiohead album The Bends, and appeared as a double A-side with the album opener "Planet Telex". It was released in the UK on 5 March 1995 and peaked at number 17 in the UK singles chart.

The song was actually recorded during the Pablo Honey sessions but was dismissed by the band, who thought that it sounded "like Rod Stewart".[1] However, during the sessions for The Bends it was rediscovered, dusted off and re-mastered, as it was felt that it worked well with the rest of the album's content. The version that appears on the album is simply the original demo; it was never re-recorded.

It is widely regarded as perhaps Radiohead's most accessible pop hit, and was a live favourite, though it has not been performed in a decade. There was speculation this was mostly due to the demands of the vocal part on Thom Yorke's voice. However, in a recent interview Thom said he "had his arm twisted... to put [the song] anywhere" and described it in the following words: "It's not bad, you know. It's not bad... it's very bad. [Laughs]"[2]

A cover of this song appears on pop-jazz singer Jamie Cullum's album Twentysomething. Cullum's version was also released as a single. Bilal has also covered the song. In the early 2000s as the band's style became less conventional, Moby and Courtney Love both lamented that Radiohead no longer wrote "songs like 'High and Dry'."

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "High and Dry".