House of Cards (Radiohead song)


"House of Cards" is a song by English rock band Radiohead from their seventh studio album In Rainbows. The song was serviced to American modern rock radio on April 6, 2008 as the third single from the album. It was initially released promotionally alongside "Bodysnatchers" in the United Kingdom. The music video for "House of Cards", directed by James Frost, was produced using lidar technology and released in June 2008.

Writing

Singer Thom Yorke first performed "House of Cards" in an acoustic rendition at the 2005 Trade Justice rally in London. An early version had a bass riff written by guitarist Jonny Greenwood, which his brother, bassist Colin Greenwood, likened to R.E.M. Yorke and drummer Philip Selway reworked the song with the rhythm on the final version.

Music video

The music video, directed by James Frost, was produced in a minimal set in Florida. It features rendered images of Yorke's face as well as those of several other people, interspersed with images of suburban landscapes and people attending a party. In lieu of traditional cameras, the video was made with lidar technology, which detects the proximity of objects from the sensor. The use of lidar technology gives the video a grainy and grid-like appearance. Sheets of acrylic glass and mirrors are passed in front of the lasers to create scenes in which the image appears distorted, partially disappears, or begins to disintegrate as if being carried by wind. The data used to make the video was released as open source under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license and is available at Google Code as both CSV raw data and Processing code.

Critical reception

At the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, "House of Cards" was nominated for the Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Best Rock Song and Best Music Video.

Track listing

;Promotional CD-R single
  1. "House of Cards" – 4:35
  2. "Bodysnatchers" – 4:01

    Personnel

Radiohead
Production
Artwork

Release history