Hein Cooper's Love Letter To Radiohead's 'In Rainbows'

Music Feeds’ Love Letter to a Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Australian indie artist Hein Cooper shares a heartfelt ode to Radiohead’s seventh studio album, ‘In Rainbows’.

It comes as Cooper toasts the release of his own fourth studio album ‘My Own’ —a raw, self-produced body of work recorded entirely in his mother’s garage, which marks a bold step into creative independence for the beloved folk artist. Cooper will also be embarking on national tour to celebrate the new LP from tonight, co-headlining all dates with Gaudion. Suss all those dates, stream ‘My Own’ in full and read Cooper’s love letter to Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ LP down below.

Hein Cooper – My Own

Hein Cooper on Radiohead’s In Rainbows: “Honestly this record changed my life. I knew Radiohead and was already a big fan but this record took me into a new level of what I thought was possible with music. Which is also how I feel about their album Amnesiac but we’ll stick with this one for now.

I used to live in a share house in Bondi with a bunch of creative types and almost any day I wasn’t playing a gig or working on my own music I’d hang with a friend who lived downstairs who was around 10 years older. We’d sit on his porch drinking and smoking whilst he showed me all this music I’d never heard of yet until my mind had melted…

One day, he showed me ‘All I need’ from In Rainbows and it was super stormy and had just cleared up and it was like we were in slow motion. I’ll never forget it. I think i asked for him to spin the whole record from start to finish and that was it. Every single song is incredible.

And I just love how this was their 7th album, and they had progressively evolved and tried new things on each record to get to this point. It’s really helped me be brave enough to keep following my inspiration through different genres over the years despite the push back of algorithms wanting the same thing again and again.

As an artist, I feel like sometimes I’ve got this bias to the music I like based on the artist themselves and how much I relate to their story. But when I really think about it, I’m probably the most unbiased because my taste is almost always based on how much I can tell whether the artist really did put the art first, and the business second. That’s when it feels real and I feel like it can be heard, and this record is that for me. It made me look further into Radiohead’s story to see that it’s true that they really did make what they were feeling and refused to be influenced by the industry. That’s what I have always strived for in my own art and I wish I could say I’ve always had a hard line on that. In Rainbows is one of those records that’s pushed me in that direction and I’m so grateful for that.