Radiohead, the Horse, Closes in on Kentucky Derby Bid

The Kansas Jayhawks' second-round loss in the NCAA tourney had Rock Daily ditching our brackets and turning our attention to the next big sporting event on the horizon: the Kentucky Derby. Though the final field of horses in the Derby hasn't been decided, gambling sites like Sports Book are listing odds for all the potential candidates, and there's one horse that immediately caught our eye: At 20-1 odds, a horse named "Radiohead."

The English-bred Radiohead — the horse, like the band, comes from the U.K. — has put himself in a great position to compete for this year's Triple Crown after some key victories this season. Just as Radiohead the band won Rolling Stone's Best Album of the 2000s prize for Kid A, Radiohead the horse continued its namesake's winning pedigree by taking first place at a race of three-year-olds in Florida's Gulfstream Park last month, ESPN reports. The site Pedigree Query shows that Radiohead's parents are Johannsburg and Security Interest, and adding to the cool factor is that Radiohead's great-grandfather was named "Danzig."

According to the Miami Herald, the horse was named after the band and not the Talking Heads' song that the band themselves are named after. "He's a cool, happy, curious horse,'' trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. says. "He's very proud of himself. He's game, you know. He's game for an idea. He knows he's going to have to show he can run against good horses.'' Also in the Kentucky Derby running: Vale of York, which is sort of like "Thom Yorke" if you're considering wagering on a Radiohead-inspired exacta.

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Song Stories

“Too Close”

Next | 1998

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

More Song Stories entries »

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