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The Daily Mail / Staircase

2011 single by Radiohead From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Daily Mail / Staircase
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"The Daily Mail" and "Staircase" are songs by the English rock band Radiohead, released as a download on 19 December 2011. Both recordings are taken from the live video The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement (2011), and feature the additional drummer and percussionist Clive Deamer.

Quick Facts Single by Radiohead, from the album ...
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Recording

Both songs are taken from the live video The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement (2011), and feature the additional drummer and percussionist Clive Deamer.[1][2]

"The Daily Mail" was written six years before release. When Radiohead decided to perform it for From the Basement, they completed the arrangement within a week, featuring a brass section arranged by the guitarist Jonny Greenwood.[3] The song criticises the Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper, with lyrics such as "the lunatics have taken over the asylum" and "we'll feed you to the hounds / to the Daily Mail".[4] Vulture described it as a "piano ballad that grows, bolstered by fury ... into a swaggering anthem".[5]

"Staircase" features "atmospheric" synthesisers and "busy, skittering" beats.[6] Radiohead worked on it before their eighth album, The King of Limbs (2011), but it did not progress beyond the demo stages until after the album's release.[7]

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Reception

Reviewing a performance of "The Daily Mail" on The Colbert Report, the Guardian writer Hadley Freeman wrote that it was "a funny idea" but "barely touches its nigh-on unmissable target".[8] In a 2020 Guardian article, Jazz Monroe named it the 39th-best Radiohead song, writing that while it would not fit The King of Limbs, "It's irresistible, suggesting an unlikely kinship between Radiohead and the venerable pop cynic Randy Newman: musical-theatre flair weaponised against tabloid hysteria."[9]

In 2021, Stereogum writer Chris DeVille said "The Daily Mail" was "among Yorke's most powerful piano rockers" and described "Staircase" as "like a Hot Chip song descending into purgatory (in the best way)".[10] He speculated that The King of Limbs would be a fan favourite had it included the songs along with "Supercollider" and "The Butcher", also released that year.[10]

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Track listing

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Charts

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References

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