radiohead and philosophy

If you haven’t heard John Mayer’s cover of “Kid A,” here it is:

Compare this version to the below original off of Kid A:

Interesting competing versions, are they not?

In Chapter 16 of Radiohead and Philosophy, entitled “The Mutilation of Voice in Kid A (Or, My John Mayer Problem),” Adam Koehler takes the task of comparing these two versions as an important philosophical problem concerning contemporary culture. Looking to German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Koehler asks why Yorke’s voice on “Kid A” is so disconcerting, yet so familiar. He finds the answer in the electronic saturation of technology that surrounds us. As he relates, Kid A

at once shows us how popular rock music can point us toward the synthetic, technological textures of our lives that we’ve come to depepend on while at the same time enacting how we have come to accomodate the dangers and anxieties that such dependencies produce.

In a sense, it is the avoidance of these dangers in Mayer’s cover that gives Koehler such difficulty in accepting it. Yorke’s “Kid A,” on the other hand, embraces “the will to face the technological saturation of our cultural moment and to try not only to make sense out of it, but to make it sing.”

Interesting in learning more about Koehler’s argument?

Read all of Chapter 16: “The Mutilation of Voice in Kid A (Or, My John Mayer Problem)”

Buy Radiohead and Philosophy