1. History

2. Composition and lyrics

3. Reception

4. Charts

5. Personnel

6. References
    Sources  Footnotes 

7. External links

"True Love Waits" is a song by the English alternative rock band Radiohead. Radiohead first performed it in 1995, and singer Thom Yorke performed it solo on acoustic guitar or Rhodes piano in the following years. The band and producer Nigel Godrich attempted to record the song for the albums OK Computer (1997), Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), but could not settle on an arrangement, and it became one of their best-known unreleased songs.

A recording of "True Love Waits" from the Amnesiac tour was released on Live Recordings (2001). In 2016, a studio version was finally released as the closing track on Radiohead's ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, rearranged as a minimal piano ballad. Both versions received positive reviews; several critics felt the long wait made the studio version more powerful. Though it was not released as a single, "True Love Waits" entered the French SNEP and US Billboard Hot Rock Songs singles charts.

History

Radiohead first performed "True Love Waits" in December 1995 in Brussels while touring for their second album, The Bends.^[1] In this arrangement, singer Thom Yorke performed on acoustic guitar accompanied by an "airy" keyboard melody.^[2] He performed the song unaccompanied several times in the following years; it became a fan favourite and one of Radiohead's best-known unreleased songs.^[3][4]

Radiohead recorded a version of "True Love Waits" for their third album, OK Computer (1997), but discarded it.^[2] They worked on it again during the joint sessions for Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001),^[2] hoping to find an arrangement beyond "just acoustic guitar".^[7] Guitarist Ed O'Brien kept an online diary of the band's progress, and wrote in January 2000:^[2]

One month later, he wrote:^[2]

The song remained unreleased.^[2] However, Radiohead's efforts led to new material, such as the electronic track "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" on Amnesiac, which uses elements of a version of "True Love Waits" recorded in the OK Computer sessions.^[5]

Yorke performed "True Love Waits" solo several times on acoustic guitar during Radiohead's 2001 Amnesiac tour. A recording of one performance was released on Live Recordings (2001).^[2] He performed it six more times in 2003.^[2] From 2006, he began performing a slower version on Rhodes piano as an introduction to performances of "Everything in its Right Place".^[1] Yorke performed "True Love Waits" on acoustic guitar again on several occasions, including his solo performances at the 2009 Latitude Festival^[2] and the Cambridge Corn Exchange in 2010.^[6]

In 2016, more than 20 years after it was written, "True Love Waits" was released as the last track on Radiohead's ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, in a minimal piano arrangement.^[7] Radiohead performed this arrangement on the Moon Shaped Pool tour, until their 2018 tour of South America, when Yorke performed "True Love Waits" on acoustic guitar again.^[8]

Composition and lyrics

The live version of "True Love Waits" released on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings has Yorke performing the song alone on acoustic guitar.^[2] According to Pitchfork, it features unexpected chord changes^[9] and "vehement" guitar strumming.^[10] The Phoenix New Times likened the "earnest" and "simple" arrangement to Radiohead songs from the same era, such as "Fake Plastic Trees".^[1]

The studio version, released as the final track on A Moon Shaped Pool, features no guitar; instead, it uses a minimal, four-note piano figure, over which pianos are gradually overdubbed,^[7] creating polyrhythmic loops and textures.^[10] Bass enters in the second verse.^[1] Chart Attack described it as "slow and melancholy" and in the tradition of Radiohead album closers such as "Videotape" from In Rainbows (2007).^[11]

According to Yorke, the first verse — "I'll drown my beliefs / To have your babies / I'll dress like your niece / And wash your swollen feet" — addresses the "difference between young and old", when people grow out of childish behaviour; the narrator is offering not to grow up to keep someone they love.^[2] The lines "And true love lives / On lollipops and crisps" were inspired by a story Yorke read about a child who was left alone by his parents for days and survived by eating junk food.^[2] The song has a "pleading" refrain: "Don't leave, don't leave."^[7]

Reception

Reviewing I Might Be Wrong in 2001, Matt LeMay of Pitchfork wrote that "True Love Waits" is "absolutely gorgeous ... it can hold its own against any song on OK Computer". He felt that the song, along with the performance of "Like Spinning Plates", "justified the existence" of the EP.^[9] Ted Kessler of the NME praised Yorke's vocals as "clear and true".^[12] Nicholas Taylor of PopMatters described the song as "a bittersweet victory of love" that "shows that behind all of Radiohead's modernist nightmares is a fragile, desperate desire to connect, fully and meaningfully, with just one person".^[13]

Though Quietus critic Mike Diver was critical of A Moon Shaped Pool, he praised "True Love Waits" as Radiohead's most affecting song since their 2008 single "Nude".^[18] Steve Jozef of the Phoenix New Times felt the new arrangement captured the best elements of Yorke's guitar and Rhodes piano performances, saving it from sentimentality, and was "the most straightforward, unpretentious, and emotionally raw composition on the album".^[1] GQ critic Jake Woolf, however, felt that the studio version was "a disappointment", with "mushy piano that weighs the song down emotionally ... the guitar version had a brightness that the studio version lacks".^[4]

Several critics felt that having waited years for a studio version of the song made it more powerful. Pitchfork critic Jillian Mapes wrote of the "sense that an older, wiser man" was singing, and that the lyrics were more heartfelt "now that he seems resigned to haunting the afterlife".^[10] Nina Corcoran of Consequence of Sound wrote that the long wait "allowed Radiohead to peel its words when riper than ever".^[19] Phoenix New Times writer Jozef speculated that the studio version was influenced by Yorke's recent separation from his partner of almost 25 years, Rachel Owen; whereas the early arrangement, likely written shortly after Yorke met Owen, has a "hopeful, proud character", the Moon Shaped Pool version sounds "resigned, isolated, lost".^[1] Rolling Stone critic Andy Beta wrote that "the effect is like stumbling upon an old love letter years after a relationship has grown cold", and that whereas the "Don't leave" refrain once suggested redemption, it now sounded like a goodbye.^[14]

Charts

Personnel

• Colin Greenwood
• Jonny Greenwood
• Ed O'Brien
• Phil Selway
• Thom Yorke

• Jim Warren – engineering, mixing^[20]

• Nigel Godrich – production, engineering, mixing^[21]
• Sam Petts-Davies – engineering^[21]
• Maxime LeGuil – assistant engineering^[21]
• Bob Ludwig – mastering^[21]

References

Sources

• Letts, Marianne Tatom. [https://books.google.com/books?id=3HSuhm6DRGgC Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely], 2010. {{ISBN|978-0-253-22272-5}}

Footnotes

External links

• {{MetroLyrics song|radiohead|true-love-waits}}

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