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“Nude” is a song by the English rock band , released in March 2008 as the second single from their seventh album, (2007).
Yorke said he did not enjoy singing “Nude” when it was first written, as it was “too feminine, too high”. After it was finished, he said: “Now I enjoy it exactly for that reason – because it is a bit uncomfortable, a bit out of my range, and it’s really difficult to do. And it brings something out in me.” He said he also once felt the lyrics were too intimate and sweet, but now “seem to make sense”. In 2008, Godrich said that songs “have a window where they are really most alive – and you have to capture it”, and that “Nude” had missed its window. By reinventing the song, Radiohead were able to “capture it again in a way that resonated for the people playing it”. He said the song had not changed, only the performers.
Early versions of “Nude”, recorded in the period, were included in the special edition of the 2017 reissue and the 2019 compilation . wrote that the solo acoustic demo from Yorke on was “spectral and difficult to make out, but therein lies its allure: it allows you to trace its journey from this demo to the song we know”.
“Nude” reached number 21 on the , outperforming the previous single, “”. In the US, it reached number 37 on the , making it Radiohead’s second top-40 hit after their debut single, “”, reached number 34 in 1993. It was also the first Radiohead song to make the . Sales included sales of the remix stems, boosting the single’s chart performance.
In 2020, the writer Jazz Monroe named “Nude” the seventh-greatest Radiohead song, writing: “After kicking around in Radiohead lore for more than a decade, ‘Nude’ … found stunning form, first by channelling – choppy coos, weeping strings – and then in a finale as bright and penetrating as dawn.”
