According to the NME, "Lotus Flower" combines the electronic instrumentation of Radiohead's fourth album Kid A with the "sonic warmth" of their seventh album In Rainbows . The song features Yorke's "Prince-like" falsetto over syncopated beats and a "propulsive" synthesised bassline. Though the main beat is in common time, the handclaps are in quintuple meter, creating a metric dissonance. "Lotus Flower" has a more traditional song structure than other songs on The King of Limbs. Luke Lewis of the NME described it as "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, The King of Limbs. Though it was not released as a commercial single, it entered charts including the UK Singles Chart, 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 albumTKOL RMX 1234567.
Reception
and The New York Times praised "Lotus Flower" as the best track on The King of Limbs. The A.V. Club described it as "a sensually slinky come-on that's one remix away from being a dance-floor favourite". The Independent said it was "not exactly a singalong anthem" but "just blank and cryptic enough to sustain various interpretations". The 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 Best Rock Song at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.
Music video
Radiohead released a music video for "Lotus Flower" on their YouTube channel on February 18, 2011. It was directed by Garth Jennings 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. 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 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 54th Annual Grammy Awards.
