10 Perfect Albums That No One Saw Coming
4. In Rainbows - Radiohead
Most of the reasons behind not seeing these albums coming is because of their dramatic shift in direction. For all that we know about our favorite artists, no one was really prepared for these albums to shift on a dime to something that was completely different. As for Radiohead though, they managed to blindside us in a bit of an unusual way.
After releasing Hail to the Thief a few years before, Radiohead fans were getting antsy for new material when the band dropped a message online saying that the album would be coming out in a week. Having that short a notice was already a bit strange, but the kicker was the scheme that the band were going about releasing it, making a pay-what-you-want policy for downloading the album off of their website, even if fans didn't want to pay anything for the record.
And the whole experiment actually worked, with the band turning over a profit for an album that showed that they hadn't begun to run short on ideas. With a decade removed from OK Computer, this album is just as cohesive and adventurous, from the synth sounds of All I Need to the perfect buildup that happens in the back half of Jigsaw Falling Into Place. Radiohead had always fit under the umbrella of alternative rock, but this album really gave us a hint at just how far they were willing to go to be against the grain.