"Lotus Flower" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released on their eighth studio album, ''

The King of Limbs ''The King of Limbs'' is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was self-released on 18 February 2011 as a download, followed by a physical release on 28 March through XL Recordings internationally and TBD Records in Nor ...

'' (2011). It features singer

Thom Yorke Thomas Edward Yorke (born 7 October 1968) is an English musician and the main vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Radiohead. A multi-instrumentalist, he mainly plays guitar and keyboards and is noted for his falsetto. He has been descri ...

's falsetto over syncopated beats and a synthesiser bassline. Its music video, featuring Yorke's erratic dancing, attracted millions of views and inspired an internet meme. Though it was not released as a commercial single, "Lotus Flower" entered charts including the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

, the US Alternative Songs chart, and the ''Billboard'' Japan Hot 100. It received positive reviews and was nominated for Best Rock Performance,

Best Rock Song The Grammy Award for Best Rock Song is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality songs in the rock music genre. Honors in several ...

and Best Music Video at the

54th Annual Grammy Awards The 54th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 12, 2012, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles being broadcast on CBS honoring the best in music for the recording year beginning October 1, 2010 through September 30, 2011. LL Cool J hosted t ...

Recording

Radiohead singer

debuted a solo version of "Lotus Flower" at the

Echoplex The Echoplex is a tape delay effect, first made in 1959. Designed by Mike Battle, the Echoplex set a standard for the effect in the 1960s—it is still regarded as "the standard by which everything else is measured." It was used by some of the ...

in Los Angeles on 2 October 2009, while on tour with his band

Atoms for Peace "Atoms for Peace" was the title of a speech delivered by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City on December 8, 1953. The United States then launched an "Atoms for Peace" program that supplied equipment ...

. Like the rest of ''The King of Limbs'', "Lotus Flower" was possibly recorded in the house of actress

Drew Barrymore Drew Blythe Barrymore (born February 22, 1975) is an American actress, director, producer, talk show host and author. A member of the Barrymore family of actors, she is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a ...

. On 24 January 2010, Radiohead suspended recording to perform at the

Music Box Theater The Music Box Theatre is a Broadway theater at 239 West 45th Street ( George Abbott Way) in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1921, the Music Box Theatre was designed by C. Howard Crane in a Palladian-inspir ...

, Hollywood, to raise funds for Oxfam responding to the

2010 Haiti earthquake A catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. The epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, Ouest department, approximately west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's c ...

; at the show, Yorke performed "Lotus Flower" alone on acoustic guitar. The show was released free online in December 2010 as '' Radiohead for Haiti''.

Composition

According to ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

'', "Lotus Flower" combines the electronic instrumentation of Radiohead's album ''

Kid A ''Kid A'' is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and their hometown of Oxford. After th ...

'' (2000) with the "sonic warmth" of their album ''

In Rainbows ''In Rainbows'' is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was self-released on 10 October 2007 as a pay-what-you-want download, followed by a physical release internationally through XL Recordings and in North America ...

''(2007)''.'' It features Yorke's "

Prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. T ...

-like" falsetto over syncopated beats and a "propulsive" synthesised bassline. Though the main beat is in

common time The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note val ...

, the handclaps are in

quintuple meter Quintuple meter or quintuple time is a musical meter characterized by five beats in a measure. They may consist of any combination of variably stressed or equally stressed beats. Like the more common duple, triple, and quadruple meters, it ma ...

, creating a metric dissonance. "Lotus Flower" has a more traditional song structure than other songs on ''The King of Limbs''; Luke Lewis of the ''

'' said it was "probably the only song on ''The King of Limbs ''with an actual chorus". Lewis speculated that the lyrics are about transcendence, self-effacement and "the magic of losing yourself in music and the senses".

Release

"Lotus Flower" was released on Radiohead's eighth studio album, ''

'' (2011). Though it was not released as a commercial single, it entered charts including the

, the US Alternative Songs chart and the ''Billboard'' Japan Hot 100. Remixes of "Lotus Flower" by various artists were released later in 2011 and compiled on the album ''

TKOL RMX 1234567 ''TKOL RMX 1234567'' is a remix album of songs from the album ''The King of Limbs'' (2011) by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released on 16 September 2011 in Japan and on 10 October 2011 internationally by XL Recordings. The album compi ...

.'' A performance of "Lotus Flower" was included on the 2012 live video '' The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement''.

Reception

''Billboard'' and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' praised "Lotus Flower" as the best track on ''The King of Limbs''. ''

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...

'' described it as "a sensually slinky come-on that's one remix away from being a dance-floor favourite". ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'' said it was "not exactly a singalong anthem" but "just blank and cryptic enough to sustain various interpretations". ''NME'' called it "subtle but powerful", and the ''Austin Chronicle'' called it "a commanding piece of modern electro-pop". It was nominated for Best Rock Performance and

at the

. Note: reader must define awards year parameter as 2011.

Music video

Radiohead released a

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...

for "Lotus Flower" on their

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

channel on February 18, 2011. It was directed by

Garth Jennings Garth Jennings (born 9 July 1972) is an English director, screenwriter and actor. Films he has directed include ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', ''Son of Rambow'', ''Sing'', and ''Sing 2''. He co-founded the production company Hammer ...

and choreographed by Wayne McGregor, and features black-and-white footage of Yorke dancing erratically. Yorke said of the video: By 2013, the video had been viewed over 20 million times. It sparked the "Dancing Thom Yorke" internet meme, whereby people replaced the video's audio or edited the visuals, and led to the hashtag "#thomdance" trending on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. Yorke said about the response: "It's a massive kick. That's what everybody wants. If it's something you've worked at and it goes over the edge like that then that's great."

IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...

wrote that Jennings had turned Yorke's "spastic" dancing into art that it was "bizarrely compelling ... with Yorke's flailing, curiously spellbinding limbs as the main attraction". ''Metro'' praised Yorke's performance, writing that "somehow, even though he seems to be a mass of tangled limbs in the grip of an attack of some sort, it works", but criticised the video set as "sparse to say the least". The video was nominated for Best Music Video at the

Track listing

Chart performance

Notes

{{authority control Radiohead songs Song recordings produced by Nigel Godrich Songs written by Thom Yorke Songs written by Colin Greenwood Songs written by Jonny Greenwood Songs written by Philip Selway Songs written by Ed O'Brien 2011 songs Internet memes introduced in the 2010s Electropop songs Black-and-white music videos Internet memes introduced in 2011