For almost 20 years, London’s O2 Arena has hosted some of the biggest names in music, beginning with a Bon Jovi concert in 2007 and continuing on through the present day. Recently, Radiohead held down a four-night residency at the venue, turning in performances like the one that NME‘s Andrew Trendell hailed as “a far more intimate and immersive experience than most corporate enormo-dome shows allow.”
Radiohead’s string of concerts at the arena weren’t just critically and commercially successful, though — they were also record-setting. As Liberty Dunworth reported at NME, the fourth night saw 22,355 fans in attendance, breaking the previous record for the venue, which was set at a Metallica concert in 2017.
It isn’t all that frequently that Radiohead and Metallica are mentioned in comparison to one another — though it is serendipitous that Radiohead unseated a Metallica record in the year that members of both bands contributed to the soundtracks of two of the year’s most acclaimed films. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood wrote the music for One Battle After Another, while Metallica’s Lars Ulrich can be heard playing drums on the Sinners soundtrack.
“It’s been a true honour to host them, and each night they played different set lists spanning their incredible back catalogue. These shows will be remembered for years to come,” O2 Arena Senior Programming Director Christian D’Acuna told NME.
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No, that’s not a musical metaphorBased on the reviews the O2 Arena concerts received, these four nights were not to be missed. In a review of one concert at Consequence, Nicole Alvarez addressed one of the benefits of the band’s evolution. “Radiohead sounds older in the honest way, not the diminished way,” Alvarez wrote. “The sharpness is still there, but the delivery is cleaner. It’s more comfortable in its skin.” And for four nights, thousands of people were able to experience that in the flesh.
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