Man of War (song)

Radiohead wrote "Man of War" during the sessions for Radiohead's second album, The Bends (1995).[1] It had the working title "Big Boots".[1] Radiohead performed "Man of War" several times on tour in 1995.[2] The singer, Thom Yorke, said it was a "melodramatic" homage to James Bond themes.[3] On the same tour, Radiohead covered "Nobody Does It Better", the theme from the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.[4]

Radiohead considered recording "Man of War" as a B-side for the Bends single "Street Spirit (Fade Out)".[3] They recorded a version in the first sessions for their third album, OK Computer (1997), with their producer, Nigel Godrich. However, it went unreleased.[5] In March 1998, Radiohead and Godrich recorded another version in Abbey Road Studios for the 1998 spy film The Avengers, but this was abandoned. Footage of the session appears in the 1998 documentary Meeting People Is Easy.[6] This version contained electronic elements.[7] Yorke said: "We were so messed up and we went in, tried to do the track, but we just couldn't do it. It was actually a really difficult period of time. We had a five-week break and all the shit was coming to the surface ... It was a real low point after it."[8]

Years later, Radiohead were commissioned to write the theme song for the 2015 James Bond film Spectre, and submitted "Man of War".[9] In September 2015, the conductor Robert Ziegler, who had worked with Radiohead on their 2011 album The King of Limbs, tweeted photos of the band recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.[10] The Spectre production team liked the song, but rejected it when they discovered it had not been written for the film and so would be ineligible for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.[9] The director, Sam Mendes, said that "you want to feel like it's written just for the movie".[11] Radiohead suspended work on their ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool (2016), to record another song for the film, "Spectre", but the film producers rejected it as too melancholy.[12][9]

In June 2017, Radiohead released "Man of War" on the OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017 alongside two other previously unreleased tracks: "I Promise" and "Lift".[13]

Rolling Stone described "Man of War" as a "crisp mid-tempo ballad" with strings, piano, and "shards of distressed electric guitar".[13] It opens with a guitar figure before a distorted chorus.[14] The lyrics are "anxious" and "nerve-racking", with the refrain "the worms will come for you".[13]

The "Man of War" music video, directed by Colin Read, was released in June 2017 on YouTube. The video alternates from day to night, with the mood shifting from "cheerful to paranoid". It follows a man walking from a park who appears carefree by day but "seems to be hiding something" at night.[13]

PopMatters praised "Man of War" as the strongest of the new tracks released on OKNOTOK, and argued that it could have appeared on the original OK Computer.[14] The PopMatters critics awarded it an average score of 8.3 out of 10.[15] Drowned in Sound described it as "grandiose-bordering-on-OTT" and the "opposite" of Radiohead's other Bond theme, "Spectre".[16]