While Radiohead’s latest album, Amnesiac, is destined for RIAA certification after selling more than 232,000 copies its first week, the Oxford-based quintet is also going for the gold with the song “I Might Be Wrong.”
The International Olympic Committee will use the track in upcoming TV spots for the Winter Games taking place in Salt Lake City in February, according to drummer Phil Selway. The spots will feature narration over segments depicting snowboarders, skiers, ice skaters and other winter athletes in action.
If marrying the geeky genius of Radiohead to sports seems odd, well, it is.
“It’s a bit of a departure, Radiohead and sports,” Selway said after the band’s Red Rocks show last week. “They’ve never really gone side by side, but we’re getting there.”
Fans wondering if the commercialized “I Might Be Wrong” will set a precedent for using other Radiohead tunes in advertisements can rest assured they won’t be hearing “High and Dry,” from 1995’s The Bends, hawking Speed Stick or OK Computer’s “Airbag” plugging Volvo safety features any time soon.
“It’s not a money thing,” guitarist Ed O’Brien explained. “We don’t do adverts for socks or aftershave. The Olympic committee is a charitable organization. That’s why we’re doing it. If it’s sponsored by MasterCard, we’re not interested. But it’s advertising the spirit of the games.
In other Radiohead news, the sonic sophisticates lower their perceived high brows in order to appear on an upcoming episode of Comedy Central’s animated “South Park” series, according to a network spokesperson. In the episode titled “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” premiering July 11, the group becomes vital to Cartman’s plot to get back at a fellow student who sold him pubic hair the pudgy fourth grader hoped to pass off as his own.
