Pitchfork

No, the seas have not run red, nor is it raining frogs, but John Mayer has covered a Radiohead song. On top of that, he's picked one as far from a conventional rock context as you can get: the title track from Kid A. But really, is this match so unlikely for a track that is, in its execution and sentiment, essentially soulless? The dry, isolated echo from Mayer's guitar strings is such an appropriate fit to the song that you begin to forget it's a complete 180 from Radiohead's version. Mayer's taken no other liberties, and for better or worse, has limited himself to his comfort zone-- just mucho Mayer and acoustic guitar. And remarkably, even though his voice isn't electronically obscured, he manages to sound as flat and lifeless as Yorke's Macintalk vocal, save for a touch of his James-Taylor-cum-Dave-Matthews inflection on the "standing in the shadows at the end of my bed" bit.

But John Mayer seems like a smart enough kid-- is the irony lost on him? Does he understand his niche in the music marketplace, or is he oblivious to the fact that the pied-piper theme of "Kid A" could just as easily apply to a shruggingly successful pop star like himself? If he does, I can only wonder if he sees Sony/BMG as his own ventriloquist, or the teenage crowds in front of him as the heads on sticks and himself behind the strings. Perhaps his nervous slurring of the final lyric, "Come on, kids," indicates the latter assumption. While Mayer seems unwilling or even incapable of taking the same sonic risks that Radiohead did when recording the original, his version remains tastefully executed, and comes closer to the original intent than maybe even he'd expected.