In 1998, when she was just 12-years-old, Charlotte Church released an album of religious songs, Celtic trad standards and classical arias called Voice Of An Angel which went double-platinum in both the US (2 million sales) and UK (600,000 sales). But as she moved from her teenage years to adulthood, the Cardiff-born singer developed an interest in much noisier, left-field ‘alternative rock’, becoming a fan of Neutral Milk Hotel, The Van Pelt, The Hold Steady and more.
In an entertaining 2013 interview with The Quietus, Church singled out Radiohead as her favourite band, telling music writer Simon Price, “I love Radiohead more than I could possibly love anything other than my kids.”
The singer recalled seeing Thom Yorke’s band play a “mindblowing” at Coachella festival the previous year, and admitted “I just lost my shit.”
“I got hysterical,” she remembered. “I was in floods of tears…. I’m not a crier, so I was like, Christ this is a bit embarrassing! And then I fell asleep for five minutes, because it got way too much for me.”
Asked to nominate her favourite Radiohead album, Church plumped for the band’s 2007 album In Rainbows.
“I find In Rainbows Radiohead’s most succinct record,” she said. “Everything about it is inescapably ‘Radiohead’. Of all their albums from Pablo Honey through to King Of Limbs, In Rainbows is the one that’s most ‘Radiohead’, if you know what I mean. It’s so lean and yet manages to pack the same punch as their more elaborately arranged records. It’s hopeful and joyous and uplifting, and I can cry my fucking eyes out to this record, and it feels bloody wonderful.
“I love Nude and the whole idea that they had this song kicking around for ages that they didn’t know how to make it work, and then they finally did it.”
Church admitted to Price that by the time the feature was published on the Quietus site, she might well wish she’d chosen to select Kid A as her favourite record by her favourite band, “or the back end of Hail To The Thief dovetailed onto the My Iron Lung EP.”
“Basically I really like Radiohead,” she concluded. “But I guess I’m not alone in that.”