Radiohead - The Binary Code Theory - Explained

Published by Reblogs - Credits in Posts, July 17th, 2023

The most devoted followers of Radiohead have come up with a multitude of fan theories surrounding the release of In Rainbows, elusively dubbed the ‘TENspiracy’ or the ‘Binary Code Theory’.

Fans were taken by surprise by the release of their seventh album when, in September 2007, guitarist Johnny Greenwood announced the LP was ready for release – in only ten days time. Shrewd fans started to notice that in lieu of promotional material, the band had begun to send messages littered with the letter X, which many believed represented the Roman numeral for ten.

The cryptic moves continued when the band leaked the album online across ten servers for download for whatever prices listeners saw fit – ranging from nearly £100 to entirely free.

They did this on October 10th, exactly ten years after the 1997 release of OK Computer.

But the ten correlation didn’t stop there – even the title, In Rainbows, was ten letters. It was enough to pique the curiosity of fans across the globe, who unearthed a bizarre link between the two albums that might just be one of rock music’s most well-thought-out Easter egg hunts.

As the theory posits, OK Computer and In Rainbows were engineered to complement each other. During the writing and recording process of OK Computer, Radiohead used the working title of ‘Zeroes and Ones’, so fans noticed that it could stand for 01 in binary code, which is naturally complemented in code by 10, which every clue pointed to In Rainbows signifying.

The logical end of the theory is to combine the two albums to create one mega-album, which fans naturally did straight away. They found that from the music to the lyrics, the transitions between the songs on both records were seamlessly transitioned, so opener ‘Airbag’ from OK Computer drifted into ‘15 Step’ from In Rainbows, and so on until both albums finish.

During an interview with Pitchfork, Thom Yorke explained that his mental state was pretty fragile during the recording of OK Computer, at one point becoming convinced ghosts were telling him to cut his hair – which he did with a penknife. That fraught headspace is interrogated on the album, with him explaining: "The paranoia I felt at the time was much more related to how people related to each other. But I was using the terminology of technology to express it."

Equally, In Rainbows and its intentionally leaked release came at a time labels were getting more and more concerned about the rise of streaming, given that fewer people were buying fewer CDs. During an interview with David Byrne, Yorke elaborated that everything was done by design, saying: "Every record for the last four, including my solo record, has been leaked. So the idea was like, we’ll leak it, then."

Their manager Chris Hufford devised the optional pricing idea, and they were in business. "We all thought he was barmy," continued Yorke.

"As we were putting up the site, we were still saying, ‘Are you sure about this?‘ But it was really good. It released us from something. It wasn’t nihilistic, implying that the music was not worth anything at all. It was the total opposite. And people took it as it was meant. Maybe that’s just people having a little faith in what we’re doing."