Radiohead Denies "Wholly Inaccurate" Sales Figures, Ready "In Rainbows" CDs, First Single

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When they weren't teasing us with a Webcast that's taking forever to play on our computers, Radiohead were very busy making other headlines today. For one, the band's management attacked a widely cited report by comScore claiming that 62 percent of people who downloaded In Rainbows didn't pay a cent. "In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group's representatives would like to remind people that, as the album could only be downloaded from the band's website, it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales," the statement reads, adding that the band "confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project."

In other news, it's been confirmed that the CD and vinyl release of In Rainbows will become available in non-North American music stores on December 31st. The album's ninth track, "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," will also serve as the first single, which will be released on January 14th. No details regarding the single's B-sides or formats have been announced. The CD and vinyl In Rainbows will hit shelves a little more than three weeks after the discbox — which costs $80 and contains the CD, vinyl and a bonus disc — hits mailboxes on or around December 3rd.

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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