Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates
(3:56)916,927 plays (178,752 listeners)
alternative, electronic, rock, radiohead, experimental… see all
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Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates video
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Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates (live)
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Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates (piano)
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Radiohead - Like spinning plates
About this track
“Like Spinning Plates” is a song written by the English band Radiohead that appears on their 2001 album Amnesiac. It also appears on their live album, I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings.
The song is built over the reversed backing track of an electronic version of the then unreleased
I Will (which would later be released in a much different form on Hail to the Thief). According to Thom Yorke, in an interview with The Wire, “We’d turned the tape around , and I was in another room, heard the vocal melody coming backwards, and thought, ‘That’s miles better than the right way round’, then spent the rest of the night trying to learn the melody.”
To achieve the song’s distorted vocals, Yorke learned to sing the vocals backwards. Then, after hearing them back, he sang the backwards vocals backwards again, giving them an uneasy sound. This technique is similar to ones used by The Beatles and The Stone Roses on some of their songs.
Colin Greenwood said of the vocals, “In Copenhagen, I was listening to Woman’s Hour. They were talking about this English composer, whose name I can’t remember, who wrote a piece of music for a singer where all the phrasings were backward but she sung it forward. Thom sung the backwards melody. It was recorded forward then listened to backwards and he did the phrasing so as to create backward sounding words but it’s sung forwards. It’s kind of my favourite track.”
On Amnesiac, the song segues into the final track on the album,Life in a Glasshouse through the electronic noises at the start of the latter.
The song is built over the reversed backing track of an electronic version of the then unreleased
I Will (which would later be released in a much different form on Hail to the Thief). According to Thom Yorke, in an interview with The Wire, “We’d turned the tape around , and I was in another room, heard the vocal melody coming backwards, and thought, ‘That’s miles better than the right way round’, then spent the rest of the night trying to learn the melody.”To achieve the song’s distorted vocals, Yorke learned to sing the vocals backwards. Then, after hearing them back, he sang the backwards vocals backwards again, giving them an uneasy sound. This technique is similar to ones used by The Beatles and The Stone Roses on some of their songs.
Colin Greenwood said of the vocals, “In Copenhagen, I was listening to Woman’s Hour. They were talking about this English composer, whose name I can’t remember, who wrote a piece of music for a singer where all the phrasings were backward but she sung it forward. Thom sung the backwards melody. It was recorded forward then listened to backwards and he did the phrasing so as to create backward sounding words but it’s sung forwards. It’s kind of my favourite track.”
On Amnesiac, the song segues into the final track on the album,
Life in a Glasshouse through the electronic noises at the start of the latter.
Albums featuring this track
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Shouts
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Cannsaw wrote:
Live version beats the hell out of Amnesiac version.
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3fingeredben wrote:
awesome track. both versions.
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paulxne wrote:
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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xsavexusxdjrx wrote:
Trippy
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SirNeilGlen wrote:
both versions are incredible, but live version's piano is BEAUTIFUL! Ah i can't get enough of this track!
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PatriciaKuiper wrote:
Best. One of the best.
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Knifymoloko wrote:
Listen to it backwards.
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dddaaaccc wrote:
shimmering juttering magical
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ragnhildtorsten wrote:
my all time favourite song :D
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mcmarley wrote:
super metroid.
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earplugs4ever wrote:
oh lol i thought it wuz an extraterrestrial bud, not a rat thx ninjarat0 (no sarcasm here, its juz silly me)
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yomanhiphopper wrote:
polly top3 of my favorite radiohead tracks
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ninjarat0 wrote:
That is an awesome rat picture! Also, Like Spinning Plates is the best.
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testspecimen wrote:
i like both
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GucciPiggy90 wrote:
"While you're making pretty speeches, I'm being cut to shreds" I Might Be Wrong version is much better than the Amnesiac version. The dark lyrics fit really well with the piano.
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Corblimeyguvnor wrote:
Sound of a TV being turned on a 1:41
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alimanmaid wrote:
i love this fucking tune its well bloody brilliialiant
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Knifymoloko wrote:
Experimental Radiohead is fucking awesome.
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LittleMissDarko wrote:
haunting
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siyahkedi wrote:
Mesmerising...
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