Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	75/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Entertainment Weekly	C+
The Guardian
Los Angeles Times
NME	8/10
Pitchfork	9.0/10
Q
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Spin	7/10

Amnesiac is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 5 June 2001 internationally by Parlophone. Recorded during the same sessions for the band's previous album Kid A (2000) with producer Nigel Godrich, the album incorporates similar influences of electronic music, 20th century classical music, jazz and krautrock. Singer Thom Yorke described it as "another take on Kid A, a form of explanation." Its lyrics and artwork explore themes influenced by memory and reincarnation, with influences from ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology.

Three singles were released from the album: "Pyramid Song", "I Might Be Wrong" and "Knives Out". Amnesiac debuted at #1 on the UK Albums Chart and #2 on the US Billboard 200 chart and had sold over 900,000 copies worldwide by October 2008. Though many critics considered it inferior to Kid A, Amnesiac received positive reviews and in 2012 Rolling Stone ranked it number 320 in their updated version of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Almost all of Amnesiac was recorded during the same sessions as its predecessor, Kid A, released eight months earlier in October 2000. The sessions took place in Paris, Copenhagen, and in Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio from January 1999 to mid-2000. Unlike Radiohead's previous "anthemic" rock albums, the sessions saw influences from electronic music, classical music, jazz and krautrock, using synthesisers, drum machines, ondes Martenot (an early electronic instrument), strings and brass. Drummer Phil Selway said the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions had "two frames of mind ... a tension between our old approach of all being in a room playing together and the other extreme of manufacturing music in the studio. I think Amnesiac comes out stronger in the band-arrangement way." Strings, arranged by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's studio.

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