OK Computer
Encyclopedia
OK Computer is the third studio album
by the English alternative rock
band Radiohead
, released on 16 June 1997 on Parlophone
in the UK and 1 July 1997 by Capitol Records
in the US. It marks a deliberate attempt by the band to move away from the introspective guitar-oriented sound of their previous album The Bends
. Its layered sound and wide range of influences set it apart from many of the Britpop
and alternative rock bands popular at the time and laid the groundwork for Radiohead's later, more experimental work.
OK Computer was the first self-produced Radiohead album, with assistance from Nigel Godrich
. Radiohead recorded the album in Oxfordshire
and Bath between 1996 and early 1997, with most of the recording completed in the historic mansion St. Catherine's Court. On delivery to Capitol, the label lowered its sales estimates due to the album's unconventional, unmarketable sound. Nevertheless, OK Computer reached number one on the UK Albums Chart
and became Radiohead's highest album entry on the American charts at the time, debuting at number 21 on the Billboard 200
. Three singles—"Paranoid Android
", "Karma Police
" and "No Surprises
"—were released in promotion of the album.
The album built on the band's worldwide popularity and has to date sold over 4.5 million copies. It received considerable acclaim at release, and is frequently cited by critics as one of the greatest albums ever recorded. Its influence on later musicians marks the transition from Britpop to the more melancholic and atmospheric style of latter-day alternative rock. Critics and fans often remark on the underlying themes found in the lyrics and artwork emphasising views on rampant consumerism
, social disconnection, political stagnation and malaise. An LP
reissue
in 2008 contributed to a popular revival of vinyl records, and an expanded CD
reissue in 2009, released without the band's foreknowledge or permission, brought renewed attention to the album and its legacy.
, guitarists Jonny Greenwood
and Ed O'Brien
, bassist Colin Greenwood
and drummer Phil Selway
—were touring in support of their highly acclaimed second album The Bends
. Midway through the tour, Brian Eno
requested that Radiohead contribute a song to The Help Album
, a charity compilation
organized by War Child
to benefit children affected by the Bosnian War
. The Help Album sessions were to take place over the course of only a single day, 4 September 1995, and rush-released later that week. That day the band recorded the song "Lucky", which they had written while on tour, in five hours. The song was released on The Help Album and as the lead track on a promotional Help EP, but BBC Radio 1
chose not to play the track and the EP only reached 51 on the UK Charts. Yorke was disappointed with the song's commercial performance, but later said that "Lucky" crucially shaped the nascent sound and mood of their upcoming record: "'Lucky' was indicative of what we wanted to do. It was like the first mark on the wall." The song would eventually be included on OK Computer.
Radiohead found the tour to be stressful and draining and took a break in January 1996. In the aftermath, Radiohead sought to distance their new material from the musical style of The Bends. Selway said, "The Bends was an introspective album ... There was an awful lot of soul searching. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring." Yorke, the band's primary lyricist, said, "The big thing for me is that we could really fall back on just doing another miserable, morbid and negative record lyrically, but I don't really want to, at all. And I'm deliberately just writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."
The critical and commercial success of The Bends gave the band the self confidence to self-produce their third album. A number of producers, including major figures like Scott Litt
, were offered the job, but the band were encouraged by recording sessions with engineer Nigel Godrich
, who had assisted John Leckie
with The Bends and had produced several Radiohead B-sides
. Greenwood said "the only concept that we had for this album was that we wanted to record it away from the city and that we wanted to record it ourselves." The group prepared for the recording sessions by buying their own recording equipment, including a plate reverberator purchased from Jona Lewie
. Radiohead consulted Godrich for advice on what equipment to use. Although Godrich sought to shift the focus of his production work away from rock music and to electronic dance music, he outgrew his role as advisor and became co-producer on the album.
, Oxfordshire
. It was the band's first attempt to work outside a conventional studio environment. Colin Greenwood said, "We had this mobile-studio type of thing going where we could take it all into studios to capture those environments. We recorded about 35% of the album in our rehearsal space. You had to piss around the corner because there were no toilets or no running water. It was in the middle of the countryside. You had to drive to town to find something to eat."
To avoid the tension that accompanied the recording sessions for The Bends, EMI did not impose a production deadline on Radiohead. The band still ran into difficulties, which Selway blamed on their choice to self-produce the album: "[W]e're jumping from song to song, and when we started to run out of ideas, we'd move on to a new song ... the stupid thing was that we were nearly finished when we'd move on, because so much work had gone into them." The members developed nearly equal roles in the production and formation of the music, and Selway said "we give each other an awful lot of space to develop our parts, but at the same time we are all very critical about what the other person is doing." Radiohead eventually decided that Canned Applause was an unsatisfactory recording location. Yorke attributed the discontent to its proximity to the band members' homes, while Jonny Greenwood cited its lack of dining and bathroom facilities. In spite of these difficulties, the group had nearly completed recording four songs—"Electioneering", "No Surprises
", "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "The Tourist"—when they left Canned Applause.
At their label's request, the band took a break from recording to embark on a 13-date American tour, opening for Alanis Morissette
, where they performed early versions of several of their new songs. During the summer 1996 tour one of the new songs, "Paranoid Android
", evolved from a fourteen-minute song featuring long organ
solos to one closer to the six-minute album version. During the tour, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann
commissioned Radiohead to write a song for his upcoming film Romeo + Juliet. Luhrman gave the band footage of the final 30 minutes of the film, and Yorke said "When we saw the scene in which Claire Danes
holds the Colt 45
against her head, we started working on the song immediately." Soon afterwards, the band wrote and recorded "Exit Music (For a Film)
"; the track plays over the film's end credits
but was not included on the soundtrack
at the band's request. Yorke later said that the song helped shape the direction of the rest of the album, and that it "was the first performance we'd ever recorded where every note of it made my head spin – something I was proud of, something I could turn up really, really loud and not wince at any moment."
Radiohead resumed their recording sessions in September 1996 at St Catherine's Court
, a historic mansion near Bath owned by actress Jane Seymour
. The group made much use of the different rooms and atmospheres throughout the house: the vocals on "Exit Music (For a Film)" featured an echo effect achieved by recording on a stone staircase, and "Let Down" was recorded at 3 AM in a ballroom. The isolation from the outside world allowed the band to work at a different pace, with more flexible and spontaneous working hours. O'Brien said that "the biggest pressure was actually completing [the recording]. We weren't given any deadlines and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. We were delaying it because we were a bit frightened of actually finishing stuff." Yorke was ultimately satisfied with the quality of the recordings made at the location, and later said "In a big country house, you don't have that dreadful '80s 'separation
'. ... There wasn't a desire for everything to be completely steady and each instrument recorded separately." O'Brien was similarly pleased with the recordings, estimating that 80 per cent of the album was recorded live. He noted, "I hate doing overdubs, because it just doesn't feel natural. ... Something special happens when you're playing live; a lot of it is just looking at one another and knowing there are four other people making it happen."
Radiohead returned to Canned Applause in October for rehearsals, and completed most of the album during further sessions at St. Catherine's Court. By Christmas, they had narrowed the track listing down to 14 songs. The album's string
parts were recorded at Abbey Road Studios
in London in January 1997. The album was mastered
at the same location, and mixed
over the next two months at various studios around the city.
.jpg)
Yorke explained that the starting point for the record was the "incredibly dense and terrifying sound" of Bitches Brew
, a 1969 avant-garde
jazz fusion
album by Miles Davis
. He described the sound of Bitches Brew to Q
: "It was building something up and watching it fall apart, that’s the beauty of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer." Yorke has identified "I'll Wear It Proudly" by Elvis Costello
, "Fall on Me
" by R.E.M.
, "Dress
" by PJ Harvey
and "A Day in the Life
" by The Beatles
as being particularly influential on the album's songwriting. Radiohead drew further inspiration from the film soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone
and the krautrock
band Can
, musicians Yorke described as motivated by "abusing the recording process". According to Yorke, the band hoped to achieve an "atmosphere that's perhaps a bit shocking when you first hear it, but only as shocking as the atmosphere on The Beach Boys
' Pet Sounds
." The band expanded their instrumentation to include electric piano
, Mellotron
, cello
and other strings, glockenspiel
and electronic effects. The band's more exploratory approach to instruments was summarized by Jonny Greenwood as "when we’ve got what we suspect to be an amazing song, but nobody knows what they’re gonna play on it." One reviewer characterised OK Computer as sounding like "a DIY
electronica
album made with guitars". Many of Yorke's vocals were first takes; he felt that if he made other attempts he would "start to think about it and it would sound really lame."
Yorke's lyrics on the album are more abstract compared to his personal, emotional lyrics for The Bends. Critic Alex Ross said the lyrics "seemed a mixture of overheard conversations, techno-speak, and fragments of a harsh diary" with "images of riot police
at political rallies, anguished lives in tidy suburb
s, yuppie
s freaking out, sympathetic aliens
gliding overhead." Themes that pervade the album include transport, technology, insanity, death, modern life in the UK, globalisation and political objection to capitalism
. Yorke said, "On this album, the outside world became all there was... I'm just taking Polaroids
of things around me moving too fast." He explained that "It was like there's a secret camera in a room and it's watching the character who walks in—a different character for each song. The camera's not quite me. It's neutral, emotionless. But not emotionless at all. In fact, the very opposite." Many of Yorke's lyrics were inspired by books he read at the time, including Noam Chomsky
's writings, Eric Hobsbawm
's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton
's The State We’re In, Jonathan Coe
's What a Carve Up! and Phillip K. Dick's VALIS
. Although the songs have common themes, any clear story is unintentional and Radiohead do not deem OK Computer to be a concept album
. However, the album is intended to be heard as a whole; O'Brien said, "We spent two weeks track-listing the album. The context of each song is really important... It's not a concept album but there is a continuity there."
and is underpinned by an electronic drum beat programmed from a seconds-long recording of Selway's drumming. The band sampled the drum track with an Akai S3000XL
and edited it with a Macintosh
, but admitted to making approximations in emulating Shadow's style due to their programming inexperience. The bassline in "Airbag" stops and starts unexpectedly, and according to Colin Greenwood "I thought I'd probably think of something to put in the gaps later, but I never got around to it." The song's references to automobile accidents and reincarnation
, were inspired by a magazine article titled "An Airbag Saved My Life" and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yorke wrote "Airbag" about "the idea that whenever you go out on the road you could be killed."
"Paranoid Android" is the band's second-longest recorded studio track as of 2011 at 6:23. The unconventional multi-section structure of the song was inspired by similarly structured rock songs, such as The Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun
" and Queen
's "Bohemian Rhapsody
". The song's musical style was also inspired by the music of the Pixies. Colin Greenwood said that the song is "just a joke, a laugh, getting wasted together over a couple of evenings and putting some different pieces together." The song was written by Yorke after an unpleasant night at a Los Angeles bar, particularly a woman who reacted violently after someone spilled a drink on her. Its title and lyrics reference Marvin the Paranoid Android
from Douglas Adams
's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
.
The use of electric keyboards in "Subterranean Homesick Alien" is an example of the band's attempts to emulate the atmosphere of Bitches Brew. The title is a reference to the Bob Dylan
song "Subterranean Homesick Blues
", and the song has a science fiction
-theme in which the isolated narrator longs to be abducted
by extraterrestrials
to see "the world as I'd love to see it". Upon returning to Earth, the narrator speculates that his friends would not believe his story and he would remain a misfit. The lyrics were inspired by a school assignment from Yorke's time at Abingdon School
to write a piece of "Martian poetry
", a British literary movement of works that humorously recontextualizes mundane aspects of human life from an alien "Martian
" perspective. Yorke says the song explores his fascination with "the idea of someone observing how we live from the outside ... and sitting there pissing themselves laughing at how humans go about their daily business."
William Shakespeare
's Romeo and Juliet
, particularly the 1968 film adaptation
, inspired the lyrics for "Exit Music (For a Film)". Initially Yorke had wanted to incorporate lines from the play into the lyrics, but ultimately the lyrics became a broad summary of the narrative. Yorke compared the opening of the song, which mostly features his singing paired with acoustic guitar, to Johnny Cash
's At Folsom Prison
. The synthesized sound of a choir and other electronic voices are used throughout the track. The climax of the song opens with drumming and prominently features distorted bass run through a fuzz pedal, which Yorke called "the most significant thing in 'Exit Music' ... It’s incredibly brutal." The second portion of the song is an attempted emulation of the sound of trip hop
group Portishead but is, according to Colin Greenwood, more "stilted and leaden and mechanical".
"Let Down" contains multilayered arpeggiated
guitars and electric piano. Jonny Greenwood plays a guitar part in a different time signature
to the other instruments. O’Brien said the song was influenced by Phil Spector
, a producer best known for his reverberating "Wall of Sound
" production style. Music journalist Tim Footman
described the style of the song as a mix of the jangling
1980s indie pop
aesthetic, exemplified by the C86 compilation, and the keyboard intro to The Who
's "Baba O'Riley
". The song's lyrics are, Yorke says, "about that feeling that you get when you're in transit but you're not in control of it—you just go past thousands of places and thousands of people and you're completely removed from it." Commenting on one of the song's lines, "Don't get sentimental/It always ends up drivel", Yorke said: "Sentimentality is being emotional for the sake of it. We're bombarded with sentiment, people emoting. That's the Let Down. Feeling every emotion is fake. Or rather every emotion is on the same plane whether it's a car advert or a pop song." Yorke felt that this skepticism toward emotion was pervasive in Generation X
and said that it informed not just "Let Down" but the overall approach to the album.
Critic Steve Huey says the structure of "Karma Police" is "somewhat unorthodox, since there doesn't seem to be a true chorus section; the main verse alternates with a short, subdued break ... and after two cycles, the song builds to a completely different ending section." The first portion is centered primarily around acoustic guitar and piano, with a chord progression indebted to The Beatles' "Sexy Sadie
". Starting at 2:10, the song transitions into a more orchestrated section with the repeated line "Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself". After this the song ends with Ed O'Brien playing guitar feedback
using an AMS
digital
delay
pedal. The title and lyrics to "Karma Police" originate from a band in-joke
during The Bends tour. Jonny Greenwood said "whenever someone was behaving in a particularly shitty way, we'd say 'The karma police will catch up with him sooner or later.'" Yorke said the song "is dedicated to everyone who works for a big firm. It's a song against bosses."
from the Macintosh SimpleText
application. Written after a period of writer's block
, "Fitter Happier" was described by Yorke as a checklist of slogans for the 1990s, which he considered "the most upsetting thing I've ever written".
"Electioneering", featuring cowbell and a distorted guitar solo, has been compared to the band's more rock-oriented style on their debut, Pablo Honey
. Yorke likened its lyrics, which focus on political and artistic compromise, to "a preacher ranting in front of a bank of microphones."
The next track, "Climbing Up the Walls", is marked by ambient insect-like noises and "metallic" drums. The song's string section, composed by Jonny Greenwood and written for 16 instruments, was inspired by modern classical
composer Krzysztof Penderecki
's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
; Greenwood said of the song that "I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn't sound like 'Eleanor Rigby
', which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years." The song is about "the monster in the closet", with Yorke drawing on a brief job as an orderly in a mental hospital, and an article in The New York Times
about serial killers, in writing it.
"No Surprises", one of the album's most melodic tracks, is layered with electric guitar inspired by the Beach Boys "Wouldn't It Be Nice
", acoustic guitar, glockenspiel and vocal harmonies. With "No Surprises", the band strove to replicate the atmosphere of Marvin Gaye
's music and the 1968 Louis Armstrong
recording of "What a Wonderful World
". The lyrics seem to portray a suicide or an unfulfilled life, and dissatisfaction with contemporary social and political order.
"Lucky" depicts a man who survives an aeroplane crash in a lake and becomes a "superhero"; the song is thematically linked to "Airbag", and Yorke has described the song in interviews as having "positive", upbeat lyrics. The track is similar to the early-1970s music of Pink Floyd
, a major influence on Jonny Greenwood.
The album ends with Jonny Greenwood's "The Tourist", which he wrote as an unusually staid piece where something "doesn't have to happen...every 3 seconds." He said, "'The Tourist' doesn't sound like Radiohead at all. It has become a song with space." Yorke said it was chosen as the closing track song because, "a lot of the album was about background noise and everything moving too fast and not being able to keep up. It was really obvious to have 'Tourist' as the last song. That song was written to me from me, saying, 'Idiot, slow down.' Because at that point, I needed to. So that was the only resolution there could be: to slow down."
advertisement "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
". Wired
writer Leander Kahney suggests that it is an homage
to Macintosh computers, as "The Mac's built-in speech recognition
software responds to the command 'OK Computer,' as an alternative to hitting an OK button onscreen." Other titles considered were Ones and Zeroes—a reference to the binary numeral system
—and Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments.
The album's artwork is a collage of images and text created by Stanley Donwood
and Yorke, credited under the pseudonym
"The White Chocolate Farm". Donwood was commissioned by Yorke to work on the artwork alongside the recording sessions. Yorke explained, "If I'm shown some kind of visual representation of the music, only then do I feel confident. Up until that point, I'm a bit of a whirlwind." The colour palette is predominantly white and blue,, according to Donwood, the result of "trying to make something the color of bleached bone." Used twice on the artwork, once in the booklet and once on the compact disc itself, is the image of two stick figures shaking hands. Yorke explained the image as emblematic of exploitation, saying, "Someone's being sold something they don't really want, and someone's being friendly because they're trying to sell something. That's what it means to me." Explaining the artwork's themes, Yorke said, "It's quite sad, and quite funny as well. All the artwork and so on ... It was all the things that I hadn't said in the songs."
Visual motifs in the artwork include motorways
, aeroplanes
, families with children, corporate logo
s and cityscapes. The words "Lost Child" feature prominently on the cover, and the booklet artwork contains phrases in the constructed language
Esperanto
and health-related instructions in both English and Greek
. The use of disconnected phrases led a critic for Uncut
to say, "The non-sequiturs created an effect akin to being lifestyle-coached by a lunatic." White scribbles, Donwood's method of correcting mistakes rather than using the computer function undo
, are present everywhere in the collages. The liner notes
contain the full lyrics, rendered with atypical syntax, alternate spelling and small annotations; for example, the line "in a deep deep sleep of the innocent" from "Airbag" is shown as ">in a deep deep sssleep of tHe inno$ent/completely terrified". The lyrics are also arranged and spaced in shapes that resemble hidden images. In keeping with the band's then emergent anti-corporate
stance, the production credits contain the ironic copyright notice
; "Lyrics reproduced by kind permission even though we wrote them."
saw "more or less, 'commercial suicide'. They weren't really into it. At that point, we got the fear. How is this going to be received?" Capitol lowered its estimates from two million units to a half a million. In O'Brien's view only Parlophone
, the band's British label, was optimistic as global distributers dramatically reduced their sales estimates. Label representatives were reportedly disappointed with the lack of potential marketable singles, especially the absence of anything resembling their initial hit, "Creep".
Parlophone's advertising campaign was unorthodox. The label took full-page advertisements in high-profile British newspapers and tube stations
with lyrics for "Fitter Happier" pitched in large black letters against white backgrounds. The same lyrics, and artwork adapted from the album, were repurposed for shirt designs. Yorke said, "We actively chose to pursue the 'Fitter Happier' thing" in linking what a critic called "a coherent set of concerns" between the album artwork and its promotional material. More unconventional merchandise included a floppy disk
with Radiohead screensavers and an FM
radio
in the shape of a desktop computer
. In America, Capitol sent 1,000 cassette players to prominent members of the press and music industry, each with a copy of the album permanently glued inside. Capitol president Gary Gersh, when asked about the campaign after the album's release, said "Our job is just to take them as a left-of-center band and bring the center to them. That's our focus, and we won’t let up until they’re the biggest band in the world."
OK Computer was released in Japan on 21 May, in the UK on 16 June and in the US on 1 July. In addition to the dominant CD
format, the album was released as a double-LP vinyl record, cassette
and MiniDisc
. That month, Radiohead embarked on a world tour in promotion of OK Computer called the "Against Demons" tour.
Radiohead chose "Paranoid Android
" to be released as the lead single, despite being considered uncommercial for its unusually long running time and lack of a catchy chorus. Colin Greenwood admitted the song was "hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit shifter [radio stations] can have been expecting," but said that Capitol was supportive of the band's choice. On the strength of frequent radio play on Radio 1 and rotation of the song's music video
on MTV
, "Paranoid Android" reached number three in the U.K. giving Radiohead their highest chart position to date and their highest overall as of . The album debuted at number one on the U.K., where it held for two weeks. It stayed in the top 10 for weeks and became the country's eighth-best selling record of the year. When "Karma Police
" and "No Surprises
" were released as singles, both charted in the UK top 10; additionally, "Karma Police" peaked at number 14 on the Billboard
Modern Rock Tracks chart. "Lucky" was released as a promotional single in France but did not chart. "Let Down", considered for release as the lead single, charted on the Modern Rock Tracks chart at number 29.
The band planned to produce a video for every song on the album to be released as a whole, but the project was abandoned due to financial and time constraints. Also considered, but ultimately scrapped, were plans for trip hop
group Massive Attack
to remix
the entire album. Meeting People Is Easy
, a rockumentary
following the band on its OK Computer world tour, premiered in 1998. By February 1998, the album had sold at least half a million copies in the UK and 2 million worldwide. To date, at least 1.2 million copies have been sold in the US, 3 million across Europe and a total of 4.5 million worldwide. OK Computer has been certified
triple platinum in the UK, double platinum in the US and platinum in Australia.
gave the album a ten out of ten score, and reviewer James Oldham wrote "Here are 12 tracks crammed with towering lyrical ambition and musical exploration; that refuse to retread the successful formulas of before and instead opt for innovation and surprise; and that vividly articulate both the dreams and anxieties of one man without ever considering sacrifice or surrender. In short, here is a landmark record of the 1990s, and one that deserves your attention more than any other released this year." Taylor Parkes
of Melody Maker
connected the album's release to the era's feeling of paranoia and alienation about millenarianism
, and said "It's as pained and as slow-moving as the emotions that inspired it. ... In one way or another, Radiohead have excelled themselves." Q
awarded the album five out of five stars, with writer David Cavanagh stating that "the majority of OK Computers 12 songs ... takes place in a queer old landscape: unfamiliar and ominous, but also beautiful and unspoiled. ... It's a huge, mysterious album for the head and soul." Nick Kent
wrote in Mojo
that "Others may end up selling more, but in 20 years time I'm betting OK Computer will be seen as the key record of 1997, the one to take rock forward instead of artfully revamping images and song-structures from an earlier era." In a four-out-of-five-stars review, Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian
wrote that the album "is surprising and sometimes inspiring but its intensity makes for a demanding listen."
OK Computer was also favourably received by critics in North America. Rolling Stone
gave the album four out of five stars. Reviewer Mark Kemp
wrote that the album is "a stunning art-rock tour de force ... On OK Computer, Radiohead take the ideas they had begun toying with on The Bends into the stratosphere. ... OK Computer is evidence that [Radiohead] are one rock band still willing to look the devil square in the eyes", but warned "OK Computer is not an easy listen." In a review scored at eight out of ten, Spin
reviewer Barry Walters praised "the embattled musicianship, the tightly wound arrangements, the whacked out but tangible humanity" of the band's playing and Yorke's "vocal performance that radiates major drama without grandstanding", calling the album "an achievement few mainstream guitar bands can claim." In an article for The New Yorker
, Alex Ross praised OK Computer for its progressiveness, and contrasted Radiohead's risk-taking with the more musically conservative "dadrock" of their contemporaries Oasis
. Ross wrote that "Throughout the album, contrasts of mood and style are extreme [...] This band has pulled off one of the great art-pop balancing acts in the history of rock." Ryan Schreiber wrote, in a highly enthusiastic review in his online music magazine Pitchfork Media
, that "Radiohead's third piece of incredible work, OK Computer, is not only their best yet, but one of the year's greatest releases. The record is brimming with genuine emotion, beautiful and complex imagery and music, and lyrics that are at once passive and fire-breathing."
Some reviews were mixed or contained qualified praise. Robert Christgau
of The Village Voice
gave OK Computer a B− rating and ranked it as the "Dud of the Month" in his consumer guide. Christgau commented that the album lacked "soul", calling it "arid" and "ridiculous", and compared it unfavourably to Pink Floyd. An Entertainment Weekly
review by David Browne
gave the album a B+, and wrote that "When the arrangements and lyrics meander or sprout pretensions, the album grows ponderous and soggy. For all of Radiohead's growing pains, though, their aim — to take British pop to a heavenly new level — is true." Andy Gill
wrote for The Independent
in an otherwise positive review, "For all its ambition, OK Computer is not, finally, as impressive as The Bends, which covered much the same sort of emotional knots, but with better tunes. It is easy to be impressed by, but ultimately hard to love, an album that so luxuriates in its despondency." While a review in Time
was largely positive, particularly praising the songs "Airbag", "Paranoid Android", and "Let Down", reviewer Christopher John Farley
criticised the second half of the album. Farley said, "While the first half-dozen tracks reward repeated listenings with melodies that grow and bloom with familiarity, there is often no structure to be found in the remaining half-dozen numbers." Greg Kot
, writing for the Chicago Tribune
, gave the album three and a half stars and said, "Long gone is the concise neo-grunge
of the group's breakthrough single, "Creep." In its place are serpentine arrangements, psychedelic orchestrations and haunting melodies that belie the wretchedness detailed in the lyrics. ... Rarely has a tantrum sounded so seductive."
The nearly universally positive reception to the album overwhelmed the band, and some members thought the press was excessively congratulatory. Particularly irksome to the band were comparisons to progressive rock
and "art rock
", with Yorke saying "We write pop songs ... there was no intention of it being 'art'. It's a reflection of all the disparate things we were listening to when we recorded it." Yorke was nevertheless pleasantly surprised that many listeners identified some of the album's musical influences, saying "What really blew my head off was the fact that people got all the things, all the textures and the sounds and the atmospheres we were trying to create." Jonny Greenwood responded to the album's reception by saying "In England, I think a lot of the reviews have been slightly over-the-top, because the last album [The Bends] was somewhat under-reviewed possibly and under-received."
, Entertainment Weekly, Hot Press
, Muziekkrant OOR
, HUMO
, Eye Weekly
and Inpress
, and tied for first place with Daft Punk
's Homework in The Face
. The album came second in NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Spin
and Uncut. Q and Les Inrockuptibles
both listed the album in their unranked year-end polls. It was a nominee for the 1997 Mercury Prize
, a prestigious award recognising the best British or Irish album of the year. The album was nominated in the Album of the Year
and Best Alternative Music Performance
categories at the 1998 Grammy Awards
, ultimately winning the latter.
OK Computer has appeared frequently in professional lists of greatest albums. A number of publications, including NME, Melody Maker, Alternative Press, Spin, Pitchfork, Time
and Slant
placed OK Computer prominently in lists of best albums of the 1990s or of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 162 on Rolling Stone
magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
. Retrospective reviews from BBC Music
, The A.V. Club
Slant and Paste
have received the album favourably; likewise, Rolling Stone gave the album five stars in the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide
, with critic Rob Sheffield
saying "Radiohead was claiming the high ground abandoned by Nirvana
, Pearl Jam
, U2
, R.E.M.
, everybody; and fans around the world loved them for trying too hard at a time when nobody else was even bothering."
OK Computer has been cited by some as undeserving of its acclaim, while others assert that Radiohead's career was negatively impacted by the album's critical success. In a poll surveying thousands conducted by BBC 6 Music
, OK Computer was named the sixth most overrated album "in the world". David H. Green of The Daily Telegraph
called the album "self-indulgent whingeing" and maintains that the positive critical consensus toward OK Computer is an indication of "a 20th-century delusion that rock is the bastion of serious commentary on popular music" to the detriment of electronic and dance music
. The album was selected as an entry in "Sacred Cows", an NME column questioning the critical status of "revered albums", in which Henry Yates said of the album "There’s no defiance, gallows humour
or chink of light beneath the curtain, just a sense of meek, resigned despondency," and further criticized the record as "the moment when Radiohead stopped being 'good' [compared to The Bends] and started being 'important'." In a Spin article on the "myth" that "Radiohead Can Do No Wrong", Chris Norris argues that the acclaim for OK Computer created an inflated set of expectations for each successive Radiohead release.
OK Computer was recorded in the lead up to the 1997 general election
. It was thus seen by critics as encompassing public opinion through its "despairing-yet-hopeful tone" and themes of alienation. In an interview, Yorke expressed doubt that things would change from the preceding two decades of Conservative
government to the "New Labour" government of Tony Blair
. He said public reaction to the death
of Princess Diana
was more significant, as a moment when the British public realized "the royals
had had us by the balls for the last hundred years, as had the media and the state."
Critics have interpreted undertones of political dissatisfaction in the music and lyrics on OK Computer, and have compared their statements to those of earlier rock bands. David Stubbs
said that, where punk rock
had been a rebellion against a time of deficit and poverty, OK Computer protested the "mechanistic convenience" of contemporary surplus and excess. Alex Ross said the album "pictured the onslaught of the information age
and a young person's panicky embrace of it" and made the band into "the poster boys
for a certain kind of knowing alienation—as Talking Heads
and R.E.M. had been before." Jon Pareles
of The New York Times found precedents in Radiohead's concerns "about a culture of numbness, building docile workers and enforced by self-help
regimes and anti-depressants
" in the work of Pink Floyd and Madness
. The band's distaste with the commercialized promotion of OK Computer reinforced their anti-capitalist political viewpoint, which would be further explored on their subsequent releases.
With the year 2000 approaching, many felt the tone of the album was millennial or futuristic
. According to The A.V. Club writer Steven Hyden in the feature "Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation", "Radiohead appeared to be ahead of the curve, forecasting the paranoia, media-driven insanity, and omnipresent sense of impending doom that’s subsequently come to characterize everyday life in the 21st century." In 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die
, Tom Moon described OK Computer as a "prescient ... dystopia
n essay on the darker implications of technology ... oozing [with] a vague sense of dread, and a touch of Big Brother foreboding that bears strong resemblance to the constant disquiet of life on Security Level Orange
, post-9/11
." Chris Martin
of Coldplay
remarked that, "It would be interesting to see how the world would be different if Dick Cheney
really listened to Radiohead's OK Computer. I think the world would probably improve. That album is fucking brilliant. It changed my life, so why wouldn't it change his?"
The release of OK Computer coincided with the decline of Britpop
. Britpop, which reached its peak popularity in the mid-1990s and was led by bands such as Oasis
and Blur
, typically emphasized traditionalist homage to British rock
of the 1960s and 1970s. The genre was a key element of the broader cultural movement Cool Britannia
. Starting in 1997, a number of events marked the end of the genre's heyday; these included Blur spurning the conventional Britpop sound on Blur and Oasis' Be Here Now failing to live up to audience expectations. Through OK Computers influence, the dominant style of UK guitar pop shifted toward an approximation of "Radiohead's paranoid but confessional, slurry but catchy approach". Many newer British acts used similarly complex, atmospheric arrangements. "Post-Britpop
" band Travis
worked with Godrich to create the languid pop texture of The Man Who
, which became the biggest-selling album of 1999 in the UK. Some in the British press accused Travis of appropriating Radiohead's sound.
John Harris
writes that OK Computer was among several "fleeting signs that British rock music might [have been] returning to its inventive traditions" in the wake of Britpop's demise. However, Footman says the "Radiohead Lite" bands that followed were "missing [OK Computer] sonic inventiveness, not to mention the lyrical substance". Radiohead described the prevalence of bands that "sound like us" as one reason to break with the style of OK Computer for their next album, Kid A
. When asked by MTV
interviewer Gideon Yago what the band thought of "bands like Travis, Coldplay, and Muse
... making a career sounding exactly like [Radiohead] did in 1997", Yorke replied "Good luck with Kid A!" While Harris concludes that British rock ultimately developed an "altogether more conservative tendency", he says that with OK Computer and their subsequent material, Radiohead provided a "clarion call" to fill the void left by Britpop.
OK Computer triggered a minor revival of progressive rock and ambitious concept albums, paving the way for prog-influenced bands such as Dungen
, Mew
, Mystery Jets
, The Secret Machines
and Pure Reason Revolution
. Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines said "Songs like 'Paranoid Android
' made it OK to write music differently, to be more experimental. OK Computer was important because it reintroduced unconventional writing and song structures." However, the band has rejected any affiliation with the genre and denies having attempted to make a coherent concept album. Jonny Greenwood dismissed such claims by saying "I think one album title and one computer voice do not make a concept album. That's a bit of a red herring."
Several rock bands which later became popular, including Coldplay, Bloc Party
and TV on the Radio
, have said they were formatively influenced by OK Computer. TV on the Radio's debut album, for instance, was titled OK Calculator
as a lighthearted homage
that singer Tunde Adebimpe
called "obviously a joke on so many levels—musically, primarily." Additionally, the album's popularity paved the way for British alternative rock bands such as Muse, Snow Patrol
, Keane, Travis, Doves, Badly Drawn Boy
, Editors and Elbow
. Established musicians such as R.E.M.
frontman Michael Stipe
, former Smiths
guitarist Johnny Marr
, Mo' Wax
label owner James Lavelle
and Depeche Mode
and Recoil
member Alan Wilder
are fans of the album. Classical and jazz musicians such as Christopher O'Riley
and Brad Mehldau
have performed material from OK Computer, and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen
said "When I heard OK Computer, after five minutes I said, 'I actually get this. I understand what these people are trying to do.' And what they were trying was not so drastically different from what I was trying to do."
, parent company of Parlophone, in 2007 after failed contract negotiations. EMI retained the copyright to Radiohead's back catalogue of material recorded while signed to the label. After a period of being out of print
on vinyl, EMI reissue
d a double-LP of OK Computer on 19 August 2008, along with later albums Kid A, Amnesiac
and Hail to the Thief
as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series. OK Computer became the year's tenth best-selling vinyl record, shifting just under 10,000 units. The reissue was connected in the press to a general upswing in vinyl sales and cultural appreciation of records as a format.
OK Computer was reissued again on 24 March 2009 simultaneously with Pablo Honey and The Bends, without Radiohead's involvement. The reissue came in two editions: a 2-CD "Collector's Edition" and a 2-CD 1-DVD "Special Collector's Edition". The first disc contains the original studio album, the second disc contains B-sides
collected from OK Computer singles and live recording sessions, and the DVD contains a collection of music videos and a live television performance. All material on the reissue had been previously released and the music was not remastered.
In a March 2009 interview, O'Brien claimed that EMI had not notified the band members of the reissue and said "I think the fans have got most of [the material on the reissues], it's all the stuff up on YouTube
. This is just a company who are trying to squeeze every bit of lost money, it's not about [an] artistic statement." Press reaction to the reissue announcement reflected the concern that EMI was exploiting Radiohead's back catalogue. Larry Fitzmaurice of Spin accused EMI of planning to "issue and re-issue [Radiohead's] discography until the cash stops rolling in", and Pitchforks Ryan Dombal said it was "hard to look at these reissues as anything other than a cash-grab for EMI/Capitol—an old media company that got dumped by their most forward-thinking band." Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone defended EMI, saying "While it's easy to accuse Capitol of milking the cash cow once again, these sets are pretty comprehensive."
Reception to the reissue was mixed, especially regarding the value of the bonus material. A Pitchfork review written by Scott Plagenhoef awarded the reissue a perfect score, arguing that it was worth buying for fans who did not already own the rare material. Plagenhoef said, "That the band had nothing to do with these is beside the point: This is the final word on these records, if for no other reason that the Beatles' September 9 remaster campaign
is, arguably, the end of the CD era." Stephen Thomas Erlewine
of Allmusic said that "While none of this material is bad—and much is quite good—this isn't a disc that's necessary to the appreciation of OK Computer. It's not revelatory; it's a good set of footnotes carrying some mildly interesting supplemental material." Sam Richards of Uncut praised the bonus disc material for providing "fresh angles" on Radiohead's sound, but called the accompanying DVD "flimsy" and said it was a "shame" that EMI did not acquire footage of Radiohead's "legendary 1997 Glastonbury performance".
Will Hermes said in his review for Rolling Stone that while the reissue demonstrates that the "cream" of the band's output was on the original album, the bonus tracks better foreshadow the sound of Radiohead's later material. PopMatters
included the release in its list of the best reissues of the year, but criticized the "inexcusable" absence of expanded liner notes; Sean McCarthy wrote "at least Capitol could have hired a few notable critics to write about the enormous impact" of the album. The A.V. Club writer Josh Modell praised both the bonus disc and the DVD, and said of the album, "And what can be said about 1997’s OK Computer that hasn’t been said before? It really is the perfect synthesis of Radiohead’s seemingly conflicted impulses."
, Jonny Greenwood
, Ed O'Brien
, Colin Greenwood
and Phil Selway
, except where noted.
"Karma Police" B-sides
"No Surprises" B-sides
BBC Radio One Evening Session (28 May 1997)
Later... with Jools Holland live performance (31 May 1997)
Additional personnel
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by the English alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
, released on 16 June 1997 on Parlophone
Parlophone
Parlophone is a record label that was founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch was formed in 1923 as "Parlophone" which developed a reputation in the 1920s as a leading jazz label. It was acquired in 1927 by the Columbia Graphophone Company which...
in the UK and 1 July 1997 by Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
in the US. It marks a deliberate attempt by the band to move away from the introspective guitar-oriented sound of their previous album The Bends
The Bends
The Bends is the second studio album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released on 13 March 1995 by Parlophone. The Bends was produced by John Leckie at EMI's studios in London, and engineered by Nigel Godrich, who would go on to produce all future albums by the band...
. Its layered sound and wide range of influences set it apart from many of the Britpop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
and alternative rock bands popular at the time and laid the groundwork for Radiohead's later, more experimental work.
OK Computer was the first self-produced Radiohead album, with assistance from Nigel Godrich
Nigel Godrich
Nigel Godrich, , is a recording engineer, record producer and musician. He is best known for his work with the English rock band Radiohead and is sometimes referred to as the "sixth member" of the band...
. Radiohead recorded the album in Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
and Bath between 1996 and early 1997, with most of the recording completed in the historic mansion St. Catherine's Court. On delivery to Capitol, the label lowered its sales estimates due to the album's unconventional, unmarketable sound. Nevertheless, OK Computer reached number one on the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
and became Radiohead's highest album entry on the American charts at the time, debuting at number 21 on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
. Three singles—"Paranoid Android
Paranoid Android
"Paranoid Android" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The lyrics of the darkly humorous song were written primarily by singer Thom Yorke, following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar...
", "Karma Police
Karma Police
"Karma Police" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead from their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The song's title and lyrics derive from an in-joke among the band, referring to the Hindu theory of retributive enforcement, known as karma....
" and "No Surprises
No Surprises
"No Surprises" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released as the third and final single from the group's 1997 album OK Computer. It was accompanied by a music video that featured a single shot of singer Thom Yorke's head in a plastic bubble filling with water. The single peaked...
"—were released in promotion of the album.
The album built on the band's worldwide popularity and has to date sold over 4.5 million copies. It received considerable acclaim at release, and is frequently cited by critics as one of the greatest albums ever recorded. Its influence on later musicians marks the transition from Britpop to the more melancholic and atmospheric style of latter-day alternative rock. Critics and fans often remark on the underlying themes found in the lyrics and artwork emphasising views on rampant consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
, social disconnection, political stagnation and malaise. An LP
LP record
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
reissue
Reissue
A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....
in 2008 contributed to a popular revival of vinyl records, and an expanded CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
reissue in 2009, released without the band's foreknowledge or permission, brought renewed attention to the album and its legacy.
Background
In 1995, Radiohead—singer Thom YorkeThom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
, guitarists Jonny Greenwood
Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer, best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, but serves mainly as lead guitarist and keyboard player. In addition to guitar and keyboard, he plays viola, harmonica,...
and Ed O'Brien
Ed O'Brien
Edward John O'Brien is an English musician, songwriter and guitarist for the rock band Radiohead. He is also responsible for harmony vocals during live concerts and on many tracks from the band's albums...
, bassist Colin Greenwood
Colin Greenwood
Colin Charles Greenwood , is an English musician and composer, best known as the bassist of the rock band Radiohead. Apart from bass, Colin plays keyboards, synthesizers and works on sampling on the electronic side of Radiohead...
and drummer Phil Selway
Phil Selway
Philip James "Phil" "The Graf" Selway is an English musician and songwriter, best known as the drummer of English rock group Radiohead. He also drums and provides backing vocals, along with occasional guitar and lead vocals, for 7 Worlds Collide...
—were touring in support of their highly acclaimed second album The Bends
The Bends
The Bends is the second studio album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released on 13 March 1995 by Parlophone. The Bends was produced by John Leckie at EMI's studios in London, and engineered by Nigel Godrich, who would go on to produce all future albums by the band...
. Midway through the tour, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
requested that Radiohead contribute a song to The Help Album
The Help Album
The Help Album is a 1995 charity album devoted to the War Child charity's aid efforts in war-stricken areas, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina...
, a charity compilation
Charity record
A charity record is a release of a song for a specific charitable cause. Some of the earliest charity records came from the Music for UNICEF Concert, with ABBA's Chiquitita and the Bee Gees' Too Much Heaven among them released as singles, with all the royalties going to UNICEF...
organized by War Child
War Child (charity)
War Child is a non-governmental organisation founded in the UK 1993, which focuses on providing assistance to children in areas of conflict and post-conflict. They use their film and entertainment background to raise money for aid agencies operating in former Yugoslavia...
to benefit children affected by the Bosnian War
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...
. The Help Album sessions were to take place over the course of only a single day, 4 September 1995, and rush-released later that week. That day the band recorded the song "Lucky", which they had written while on tour, in five hours. The song was released on The Help Album and as the lead track on a promotional Help EP, but BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
chose not to play the track and the EP only reached 51 on the UK Charts. Yorke was disappointed with the song's commercial performance, but later said that "Lucky" crucially shaped the nascent sound and mood of their upcoming record: "'Lucky' was indicative of what we wanted to do. It was like the first mark on the wall." The song would eventually be included on OK Computer.
Radiohead found the tour to be stressful and draining and took a break in January 1996. In the aftermath, Radiohead sought to distance their new material from the musical style of The Bends. Selway said, "The Bends was an introspective album ... There was an awful lot of soul searching. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring." Yorke, the band's primary lyricist, said, "The big thing for me is that we could really fall back on just doing another miserable, morbid and negative record lyrically, but I don't really want to, at all. And I'm deliberately just writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."
The critical and commercial success of The Bends gave the band the self confidence to self-produce their third album. A number of producers, including major figures like Scott Litt
Scott Litt
Scott Litt is an American record producer who mostly works with artists in the alternative rock genre and is best known for producing six R.E.M. albums.-Biography:...
, were offered the job, but the band were encouraged by recording sessions with engineer Nigel Godrich
Nigel Godrich
Nigel Godrich, , is a recording engineer, record producer and musician. He is best known for his work with the English rock band Radiohead and is sometimes referred to as the "sixth member" of the band...
, who had assisted John Leckie
John Leckie
John Leckie is a British music producer, notable for producing many high-profile albums such as The Stone Roses's debut and Radiohead's The Bends...
with The Bends and had produced several Radiohead B-sides
A-side and B-side
A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...
. Greenwood said "the only concept that we had for this album was that we wanted to record it away from the city and that we wanted to record it ourselves." The group prepared for the recording sessions by buying their own recording equipment, including a plate reverberator purchased from Jona Lewie
Jona Lewie
Jona Lewie is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.-Career:Jona Lewie joined his first group, The Johnston City Jazz Band, while still at school in 1963, and by 1968 had become a blues & boogie singer and piano player...
. Radiohead consulted Godrich for advice on what equipment to use. Although Godrich sought to shift the focus of his production work away from rock music and to electronic dance music, he outgrew his role as advisor and became co-producer on the album.
Recording
In early 1996, Radiohead started rehearsing and recording OK Computer in the Canned Applause studio, a converted shed near DidcotDidcot
Didcot is a town and civil parish in Oxfordshire about south of Oxford. Until 1974 it was in Berkshire, but was transferred to Oxfordshire in that year, and from Wallingford Rural District to the district of South Oxfordshire...
, Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
. It was the band's first attempt to work outside a conventional studio environment. Colin Greenwood said, "We had this mobile-studio type of thing going where we could take it all into studios to capture those environments. We recorded about 35% of the album in our rehearsal space. You had to piss around the corner because there were no toilets or no running water. It was in the middle of the countryside. You had to drive to town to find something to eat."
To avoid the tension that accompanied the recording sessions for The Bends, EMI did not impose a production deadline on Radiohead. The band still ran into difficulties, which Selway blamed on their choice to self-produce the album: "[W]e're jumping from song to song, and when we started to run out of ideas, we'd move on to a new song ... the stupid thing was that we were nearly finished when we'd move on, because so much work had gone into them." The members developed nearly equal roles in the production and formation of the music, and Selway said "we give each other an awful lot of space to develop our parts, but at the same time we are all very critical about what the other person is doing." Radiohead eventually decided that Canned Applause was an unsatisfactory recording location. Yorke attributed the discontent to its proximity to the band members' homes, while Jonny Greenwood cited its lack of dining and bathroom facilities. In spite of these difficulties, the group had nearly completed recording four songs—"Electioneering", "No Surprises
No Surprises
"No Surprises" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released as the third and final single from the group's 1997 album OK Computer. It was accompanied by a music video that featured a single shot of singer Thom Yorke's head in a plastic bubble filling with water. The single peaked...
", "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "The Tourist"—when they left Canned Applause.
At their label's request, the band took a break from recording to embark on a 13-date American tour, opening for Alanis Morissette
Alanis Morissette
Alanis Nadine Morissette is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, record producer, and actress. She has won 16 Juno Awards and seven Grammy Awards, was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and also shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination...
, where they performed early versions of several of their new songs. During the summer 1996 tour one of the new songs, "Paranoid Android
Paranoid Android
"Paranoid Android" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The lyrics of the darkly humorous song were written primarily by singer Thom Yorke, following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar...
", evolved from a fourteen-minute song featuring long organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
solos to one closer to the six-minute album version. During the tour, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
commissioned Radiohead to write a song for his upcoming film Romeo + Juliet. Luhrman gave the band footage of the final 30 minutes of the film, and Yorke said "When we saw the scene in which Claire Danes
Claire Danes
Claire Catherine Danes is an American actress of television, stage and film. She has appeared in roles as diverse as Angela Chase in My So-Called Life, as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, as Kate Brewster in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, as Yvaine in Stardust and as Temple Grandin in...
holds the Colt 45
Colt Single Action Army
The Colt Single Action Army is a single action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six metallic cartridges. It was designed for the U.S...
against her head, we started working on the song immediately." Soon afterwards, the band wrote and recorded "Exit Music (For a Film)
Exit Music (For a Film)
"Exit Music " is a song by Radiohead, written specifically for the ending credits of the 1996 film William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. Although not included on either of the two soundtrack albums at the request of Thom Yorke, the song appears on the band's highly acclaimed third album, OK...
"; the track plays over the film's end credits
End Credits
"End Credits" is the first single from Drum and Bass duo Chase & Status' second studio album No More Idols. The single was co-written, co-produced and features vocals from Plan B and was released on 29 October 2009, reaching a peak position of No. 9 in the UK Singles Chart...
but was not included on the soundtrack
Romeo + Juliet (soundtrack)
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Music from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack to the 1996 film of the same name. The soundtrack contained two separate releases: the first containing popular music from the film and the second containing the score to the film composed by Nellee Hooper, Craig...
at the band's request. Yorke later said that the song helped shape the direction of the rest of the album, and that it "was the first performance we'd ever recorded where every note of it made my head spin – something I was proud of, something I could turn up really, really loud and not wince at any moment."
Radiohead resumed their recording sessions in September 1996 at St Catherine's Court
St Catherine's Court
St Catherine's Court is a grade I listed Tudor manor house in a secluded valley north of Bath, England.The manor of St Catherine belonged to the Prior of Bath in medieval times. It takes its name from the church of St Catherine beside the manor house....
, a historic mansion near Bath owned by actress Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour (actress)
Jane Seymour, OBE is an English actress best known for her performances in the James Bond film Live and Let Die , East of Eden , Onassis: The Richest Man in the World , and the American television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman...
. The group made much use of the different rooms and atmospheres throughout the house: the vocals on "Exit Music (For a Film)" featured an echo effect achieved by recording on a stone staircase, and "Let Down" was recorded at 3 AM in a ballroom. The isolation from the outside world allowed the band to work at a different pace, with more flexible and spontaneous working hours. O'Brien said that "the biggest pressure was actually completing [the recording]. We weren't given any deadlines and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. We were delaying it because we were a bit frightened of actually finishing stuff." Yorke was ultimately satisfied with the quality of the recordings made at the location, and later said "In a big country house, you don't have that dreadful '80s 'separation
Stem mixing and mastering
Stem-mixing is a method of mixing audio material based on creating groups of audio tracks and processing them separately prior to combining them into a final master mix. Stems are also sometimes referred to as submixes, subgroups, or busses....
'. ... There wasn't a desire for everything to be completely steady and each instrument recorded separately." O'Brien was similarly pleased with the recordings, estimating that 80 per cent of the album was recorded live. He noted, "I hate doing overdubs, because it just doesn't feel natural. ... Something special happens when you're playing live; a lot of it is just looking at one another and knowing there are four other people making it happen."
Radiohead returned to Canned Applause in October for rehearsals, and completed most of the album during further sessions at St. Catherine's Court. By Christmas, they had narrowed the track listing down to 14 songs. The album's string
String section
The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...
parts were recorded at Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner...
in London in January 1997. The album was mastered
Audio mastering
Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
at the same location, and mixed
Audio mixing (recorded music)
In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may...
over the next two months at various studios around the city.
Music and lyrics
Bitches Brew
Bitches Brew is a studio double album by jazz musician Miles Davis, released in April 1970 on Columbia Records. The album continued his experimentation with electric instruments previously featured on his critically acclaimed In a Silent Way album...
, a 1969 avant-garde
Avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...
jazz fusion
Jazz fusion
Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...
album by Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
. He described the sound of Bitches Brew to Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
: "It was building something up and watching it fall apart, that’s the beauty of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer." Yorke has identified "I'll Wear It Proudly" by Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
, "Fall on Me
Fall on Me
"Fall on Me" is a song by the American alternative rock band R.E.M. from their fourth album Lifes Rich Pageant . It was the first of two singles released from that LP. It peaked at number 94 on the Billboard Hot 100.-Meaning and origin:Though R.E.M...
" by R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
, "Dress
Dress (song)
"Dress" is the debut single by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey from her debut album Dry Released in 1991, two promotional music videos were also recorded.-Background and history:...
" by PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
and "A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life
"A Day in the Life" is a song by The Beatles, the final track on the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with orchestral additions...
" by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
as being particularly influential on the album's songwriting. Radiohead drew further inspiration from the film soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
and the krautrock
Krautrock
Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...
band Can
Can (band)
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.Can constructed their music largely...
, musicians Yorke described as motivated by "abusing the recording process". According to Yorke, the band hoped to achieve an "atmosphere that's perhaps a bit shocking when you first hear it, but only as shocking as the atmosphere on The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...
' Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band The Beach Boys, released May 16, 1966, on Capitol Records. It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records in the history of popular music and one of the best albums of the 1960s, including songs such as "Wouldn't...
." The band expanded their instrumentation to include electric piano
Electric piano
An electric piano is an electric musical instrument.Electric pianos produce sounds mechanically and the sounds are turned into electrical signals by pickups. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument, but electro-mechanical. The earliest electric pianos were invented...
, Mellotron
Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
, cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
and other strings, glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
and electronic effects. The band's more exploratory approach to instruments was summarized by Jonny Greenwood as "when we’ve got what we suspect to be an amazing song, but nobody knows what they’re gonna play on it." One reviewer characterised OK Computer as sounding like "a DIY
Do it yourself
Do it yourself is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
album made with guitars". Many of Yorke's vocals were first takes; he felt that if he made other attempts he would "start to think about it and it would sound really lame."
Yorke's lyrics on the album are more abstract compared to his personal, emotional lyrics for The Bends. Critic Alex Ross said the lyrics "seemed a mixture of overheard conversations, techno-speak, and fragments of a harsh diary" with "images of riot police
Riot control
Riot control refers to the measures used by police, military, or other security forces to control, disperse, and arrest civilians who are involved in a riot, demonstration, or protest. Law enforcement officers or soldiers have long used non-lethal weapons such as batons and whips to disperse crowds...
at political rallies, anguished lives in tidy suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
s, yuppie
Yuppie
Yuppie is a term that refers to a member of the upper middle class or upper class in their 20s or 30s. It first came into use in the early-1980s and largely faded from American popular culture in the late-1980s, due to the 1987 stock market crash and the early 1990s recession...
s freaking out, sympathetic aliens
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
gliding overhead." Themes that pervade the album include transport, technology, insanity, death, modern life in the UK, globalisation and political objection to capitalism
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
. Yorke said, "On this album, the outside world became all there was... I'm just taking Polaroids
Instant camera
The instant camera is a type of camera that generates a developed film image. The most popular types to use self-developing film were formerly made by Polaroid Corporation....
of things around me moving too fast." He explained that "It was like there's a secret camera in a room and it's watching the character who walks in—a different character for each song. The camera's not quite me. It's neutral, emotionless. But not emotionless at all. In fact, the very opposite." Many of Yorke's lyrics were inspired by books he read at the time, including Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
's writings, Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton
Will Hutton
William Nicolas Hutton is an English writer, weekly columnist and former editor-in-chief for The Observer. He is currently Principal of Hertford College, Oxford and Chair of the Big Innovation Centre , an initiative from The Work Foundation , having been Chief Executive of The Work Foundation from...
's The State We’re In, Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name...
's What a Carve Up! and Phillip K. Dick's VALIS
VALIS
VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God....
. Although the songs have common themes, any clear story is unintentional and Radiohead do not deem OK Computer to be a concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
. However, the album is intended to be heard as a whole; O'Brien said, "We spent two weeks track-listing the album. The context of each song is really important... It's not a concept album but there is a continuity there."
Tracks 1-6
Opening track "Airbag" was inspired by DJ ShadowDJ Shadow
Joshua Paul Davis better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was constructed...
and is underpinned by an electronic drum beat programmed from a seconds-long recording of Selway's drumming. The band sampled the drum track with an Akai S3000XL
Akai S3000XL
The ' is a 16-bit professional stereo digital sampler. The instrument has 32 polyphonic voices, and 2 MB of built-in RAM. While this may not seem like much compared to today's standards, when the S3000XL was released, it was top of the line...
and edited it with a Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
, but admitted to making approximations in emulating Shadow's style due to their programming inexperience. The bassline in "Airbag" stops and starts unexpectedly, and according to Colin Greenwood "I thought I'd probably think of something to put in the gaps later, but I never got around to it." The song's references to automobile accidents and reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
, were inspired by a magazine article titled "An Airbag Saved My Life" and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yorke wrote "Airbag" about "the idea that whenever you go out on the road you could be killed."
"Paranoid Android" is the band's second-longest recorded studio track as of 2011 at 6:23. The unconventional multi-section structure of the song was inspired by similarly structured rock songs, such as The Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is a song by The Beatles, featured on the eponymous double-disc album The Beatles, also known as The White Album...
" and Queen
Queen (band)
Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...
's "Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody
"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera...
". The song's musical style was also inspired by the music of the Pixies. Colin Greenwood said that the song is "just a joke, a laugh, getting wasted together over a couple of evenings and putting some different pieces together." The song was written by Yorke after an unpleasant night at a Los Angeles bar, particularly a woman who reacted violently after someone spilled a drink on her. Its title and lyrics reference Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin, the Paranoid Android, is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold...
from Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
.
The use of electric keyboards in "Subterranean Homesick Alien" is an example of the band's attempts to emulate the atmosphere of Bitches Brew. The title is a reference to the Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
song "Subterranean Homesick Blues
Subterranean Homesick Blues
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is a song by Bob Dylan, originally released in 1965 as a single on Columbia Records, catalogue 43242. It appeared 19 days later as the lead track to the album Bringing It All Back Home. It was Dylan's first Top 40 hit, peaking at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also...
", and the song has a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
-theme in which the isolated narrator longs to be abducted
Abduction phenomenon
The terms alien abduction or abduction phenomenon describe "subjectively real memories of being taken secretly against one’s will by apparently nonhuman entities and subjected to complex physical and psychological procedures." People claiming to have been abducted are usually called "abductees" or...
by extraterrestrials
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
to see "the world as I'd love to see it". Upon returning to Earth, the narrator speculates that his friends would not believe his story and he would remain a misfit. The lyrics were inspired by a school assignment from Yorke's time at Abingdon School
Abingdon School
Abingdon School is a British day and boarding independent school for boys situated in Abingdon, Oxfordshire , previously known as Roysse's School. In 1998 a formal merger took place between Abingdon School and Josca's, a preparatory school four miles to the west at Frilford...
to write a piece of "Martian poetry
Martian poetry
Martian poetry was a minor movement in British poetry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. The term Martianism has also been applied more widely to include fiction as well as to poetry. The word martianism is,...
", a British literary movement of works that humorously recontextualizes mundane aspects of human life from an alien "Martian
Martian
As an adjective, the term martian is used to describe anything pertaining to the planet Mars.However, a Martian is more usually a hypothetical or fictional native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Historically, life on Mars has often been hypothesized, although there is currently no solid evidence of...
" perspective. Yorke says the song explores his fascination with "the idea of someone observing how we live from the outside ... and sitting there pissing themselves laughing at how humans go about their daily business."
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
, particularly the 1968 film adaptation
Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...
, inspired the lyrics for "Exit Music (For a Film)". Initially Yorke had wanted to incorporate lines from the play into the lyrics, but ultimately the lyrics became a broad summary of the narrative. Yorke compared the opening of the song, which mostly features his singing paired with acoustic guitar, to Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
's At Folsom Prison
At Folsom Prison
At Folsom Prison is a live album by Johnny Cash, released on Columbia Records in May 1968. Since his 1955 song "Folsom Prison Blues", Cash had been interested in performing at a prison. His idea was put on hold until 1967, when personnel changes at Columbia Records put Bob Johnston in charge of...
. The synthesized sound of a choir and other electronic voices are used throughout the track. The climax of the song opens with drumming and prominently features distorted bass run through a fuzz pedal, which Yorke called "the most significant thing in 'Exit Music' ... It’s incredibly brutal." The second portion of the song is an attempted emulation of the sound of trip hop
Trip hop
Trip hop is a music genre consisting of downtempo electronic music which originated in the early 1990s in England, especially Bristol. Deriving from "post"-acid house, the term was first used by the British music media and press as a way to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat which...
group Portishead but is, according to Colin Greenwood, more "stilted and leaden and mechanical".
"Let Down" contains multilayered arpeggiated
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
guitars and electric piano. Jonny Greenwood plays a guitar part in a different time signature
Time signature
The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
to the other instruments. O’Brien said the song was influenced by Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
, a producer best known for his reverberating "Wall of Sound
Wall of Sound
The Wall of Sound is a music production technique for pop and rock music recordings developed by record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, California, during the early 1960s...
" production style. Music journalist Tim Footman
Tim Footman
Tim Footman is a British author, journalist and editor. He was educated at Churcher's College, Appleby College in Canada, and the University of Exeter....
described the style of the song as a mix of the jangling
Jangle pop
Jangle pop is a genre of alternative rock from the mid-1980s that "marked a return to the chiming or jangly guitars and pop melodies of the '60s" bands such as The Byrds, with their electric twelve-string guitars and power pop song structures. Mid-1980s jangle pop was a non-mainstream "pop-based...
1980s indie pop
Indie pop
Indie pop is a genre of alternative rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcard Records label in the early '80s, such as Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera, and the dominant UK independent band of the mid...
aesthetic, exemplified by the C86 compilation, and the keyboard intro to The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
's "Baba O'Riley
Baba O'Riley
"Baba O'Riley" is a song written by Pete Townshend for the English rock band The Who. Roger Daltrey sings most of the song, with Pete Townshend singing the middle eight: "Don't cry/don't raise your eye/it's only teenaged wasteland"...
". The song's lyrics are, Yorke says, "about that feeling that you get when you're in transit but you're not in control of it—you just go past thousands of places and thousands of people and you're completely removed from it." Commenting on one of the song's lines, "Don't get sentimental/It always ends up drivel", Yorke said: "Sentimentality is being emotional for the sake of it. We're bombarded with sentiment, people emoting. That's the Let Down. Feeling every emotion is fake. Or rather every emotion is on the same plane whether it's a car advert or a pop song." Yorke felt that this skepticism toward emotion was pervasive in Generation X
Generation X
Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960's through the early 1980's, usually no later than 1981 or...
and said that it informed not just "Let Down" but the overall approach to the album.
Critic Steve Huey says the structure of "Karma Police" is "somewhat unorthodox, since there doesn't seem to be a true chorus section; the main verse alternates with a short, subdued break ... and after two cycles, the song builds to a completely different ending section." The first portion is centered primarily around acoustic guitar and piano, with a chord progression indebted to The Beatles' "Sexy Sadie
Sexy Sadie
Sexy Sadie may refer to:* "Sexy Sadie", a song by The Beatles* Sexy Sadie , a Spanish pop rock group from the island of Majorca* Susan Atkins, one of the Manson Family killers who went by the name "Sexy Sadie"...
". Starting at 2:10, the song transitions into a more orchestrated section with the repeated line "Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself". After this the song ends with Ed O'Brien playing guitar feedback
Audio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
using an AMS
AMS (Advanced Music Systems)
AMS were a manufacturer of professional studio equipment. The company later merged with Neve Electronics to form the award winning AMS Neve Ltd company, who received an Emmy in 1992 and a Grammy in 2000.-Background:...
digital
Digital delay line
A digital delay line is a discrete element in digital filter theory, which allows a signal to be delayed by a number of samples. If the delay is an integer multiple of samples digital delay lines are often implemented as circular buffers...
delay
Delay (audio effect)
Delay is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.-Early delay...
pedal. The title and lyrics to "Karma Police" originate from a band in-joke
In-joke
An in-joke, also known as an inside joke or in joke, is a joke whose humour is clear only to people who are in a particular social group, occupation, or other community of common understanding...
during The Bends tour. Jonny Greenwood said "whenever someone was behaving in a particularly shitty way, we'd say 'The karma police will catch up with him sooner or later.'" Yorke said the song "is dedicated to everyone who works for a big firm. It's a song against bosses."
Tracks 7-12
"Fitter Happier", which begins the second half of the album, consists of sampled musical and background sound and lyrics recited by a synthesised voiceSpeech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
from the Macintosh SimpleText
SimpleText
SimpleText is the native text editor for the Classic Mac OS. SimpleText allows editing including text formatting , fonts, and sizes. It can be considered similar to Windows' WordPad application...
application. Written after a period of writer's block
Writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
, "Fitter Happier" was described by Yorke as a checklist of slogans for the 1990s, which he considered "the most upsetting thing I've ever written".
"Electioneering", featuring cowbell and a distorted guitar solo, has been compared to the band's more rock-oriented style on their debut, Pablo Honey
Pablo Honey
Pablo Honey is the debut studio album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released in February 1993. The album was produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie and was recorded at Chipping Norton Studio and Courtyard Studio, Oxfordshire from September to November 1992...
. Yorke likened its lyrics, which focus on political and artistic compromise, to "a preacher ranting in front of a bank of microphones."
The next track, "Climbing Up the Walls", is marked by ambient insect-like noises and "metallic" drums. The song's string section, composed by Jonny Greenwood and written for 16 instruments, was inspired by modern classical
20th century classical music
20th century classical music was without a dominant style and highly diverse.-Introduction:At the turn of the century, music was characteristically late Romantic in style. Composers such as Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius were pushing the bounds of Post-Romantic Symphonic writing...
composer Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is a musical composition for 52 string instruments, composed in 1960 by Krzysztof Penderecki , which took third prize at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Composers' Competition in Katowice in 1960...
; Greenwood said of the song that "I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn't sound like 'Eleanor Rigby
Eleanor Rigby
"Eleanor Rigby" is a song by The Beatles, simultaneously released on the 1966 album Revolver and on a 45 rpm single. The song was written primarily by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney...
', which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years." The song is about "the monster in the closet", with Yorke drawing on a brief job as an orderly in a mental hospital, and an article in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
about serial killers, in writing it.
"No Surprises", one of the album's most melodic tracks, is layered with electric guitar inspired by the Beach Boys "Wouldn't It Be Nice
Wouldn't It Be Nice
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" is the opening track on the 1966 album Pet Sounds and one of the most widely recognized songs by the American rock band The Beach Boys...
", acoustic guitar, glockenspiel and vocal harmonies. With "No Surprises", the band strove to replicate the atmosphere of Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....
's music and the 1968 Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
recording of "What a Wonderful World
What a Wonderful World
"What a Wonderful World" is a song written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1968. Thiele and Weiss were both prominent in the music world . Armstrong's recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999...
". The lyrics seem to portray a suicide or an unfulfilled life, and dissatisfaction with contemporary social and political order.
"Lucky" depicts a man who survives an aeroplane crash in a lake and becomes a "superhero"; the song is thematically linked to "Airbag", and Yorke has described the song in interviews as having "positive", upbeat lyrics. The track is similar to the early-1970s music of Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
, a major influence on Jonny Greenwood.
The album ends with Jonny Greenwood's "The Tourist", which he wrote as an unusually staid piece where something "doesn't have to happen...every 3 seconds." He said, "'The Tourist' doesn't sound like Radiohead at all. It has become a song with space." Yorke said it was chosen as the closing track song because, "a lot of the album was about background noise and everything moving too fast and not being able to keep up. It was really obvious to have 'Tourist' as the last song. That song was written to me from me, saying, 'Idiot, slow down.' Because at that point, I needed to. So that was the only resolution there could be: to slow down."
Title and artwork
"OK Computer" was the original title for the song "Palo Alto", which had been considered for inclusion on the album. Although the song was abandoned, its first title stuck with the band; according to Jonny Greenwood, "[it] started attaching itself and creating all these weird resonances with what we were trying to do." Yorke said it "refers to embracing the future, it refers to being terrified of the future, of our future, of everyone else's. It's to do with standing in a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines and computers and so on [...] and the sound it makes." Yorke described the title as "a really resigned, terrified phrase", to him similar to the Coca-ColaCoca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
advertisement "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing " is a popular song which originated as a jingle in the groundbreaking 1971 "Hilltop" television commercial for Coca-Cola. The song, produced by Billy Davis and performed by The New Seekers, portrayed a positive message of hope and love sung by a multicultural...
". Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
writer Leander Kahney suggests that it is an homage
Homage
Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
to Macintosh computers, as "The Mac's built-in speech recognition
Speech recognition
Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
software responds to the command 'OK Computer,' as an alternative to hitting an OK button onscreen." Other titles considered were Ones and Zeroes—a reference to the binary numeral system
Binary numeral system
The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, represents numeric values using two symbols, 0 and 1. More specifically, the usual base-2 system is a positional notation with a radix of 2...
—and Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments.
The album's artwork is a collage of images and text created by Stanley Donwood
Stanley Donwood
Stanley Donwood is the pen name of English artist Dan Rickwood. Donwood is known for his close association with the British rock group Radiohead, having created all their album and poster art...
and Yorke, credited under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"The White Chocolate Farm". Donwood was commissioned by Yorke to work on the artwork alongside the recording sessions. Yorke explained, "If I'm shown some kind of visual representation of the music, only then do I feel confident. Up until that point, I'm a bit of a whirlwind." The colour palette is predominantly white and blue,, according to Donwood, the result of "trying to make something the color of bleached bone." Used twice on the artwork, once in the booklet and once on the compact disc itself, is the image of two stick figures shaking hands. Yorke explained the image as emblematic of exploitation, saying, "Someone's being sold something they don't really want, and someone's being friendly because they're trying to sell something. That's what it means to me." Explaining the artwork's themes, Yorke said, "It's quite sad, and quite funny as well. All the artwork and so on ... It was all the things that I hadn't said in the songs."
Visual motifs in the artwork include motorways
Controlled-access highway
A controlled-access highway is a highway designed exclusively for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow and ingress/egress regulated...
, aeroplanes
Fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...
, families with children, corporate logo
Logo
A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...
s and cityscapes. The words "Lost Child" feature prominently on the cover, and the booklet artwork contains phrases in the constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
and health-related instructions in both English and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
. The use of disconnected phrases led a critic for Uncut
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
to say, "The non-sequiturs created an effect akin to being lifestyle-coached by a lunatic." White scribbles, Donwood's method of correcting mistakes rather than using the computer function undo
Undo
Undo is a command in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs such as graphic processing, undo will negate the last command done to the file being edited....
, are present everywhere in the collages. The liner notes
Liner notes
Liner notes are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.-Origin:...
contain the full lyrics, rendered with atypical syntax, alternate spelling and small annotations; for example, the line "in a deep deep sleep of the innocent" from "Airbag" is shown as ">in a deep deep sssleep of tHe inno$ent/
Anti-corporate activism
Anti-corporate activists believe that the influence of large business corporations poses a threat to the public good and democratic authority...
stance, the production credits contain the ironic copyright notice
Copyright notice
A copyright notice, either as symbol or phrase, informs users of the underlying claim to copyright ownership in a published work.Copyright law is different from country to country, and a copyright notice is required in about 20 countries for a work to be protected under copyright...
; "Lyrics reproduced by kind permission even though we wrote them."
Release and promotion
Selway admitted that when the band delivered the album, the band's American label CapitolCapitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
saw "more or less, 'commercial suicide'. They weren't really into it. At that point, we got the fear. How is this going to be received?" Capitol lowered its estimates from two million units to a half a million. In O'Brien's view only Parlophone
Parlophone
Parlophone is a record label that was founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch was formed in 1923 as "Parlophone" which developed a reputation in the 1920s as a leading jazz label. It was acquired in 1927 by the Columbia Graphophone Company which...
, the band's British label, was optimistic as global distributers dramatically reduced their sales estimates. Label representatives were reportedly disappointed with the lack of potential marketable singles, especially the absence of anything resembling their initial hit, "Creep".
Parlophone's advertising campaign was unorthodox. The label took full-page advertisements in high-profile British newspapers and tube stations
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
with lyrics for "Fitter Happier" pitched in large black letters against white backgrounds. The same lyrics, and artwork adapted from the album, were repurposed for shirt designs. Yorke said, "We actively chose to pursue the 'Fitter Happier' thing" in linking what a critic called "a coherent set of concerns" between the album artwork and its promotional material. More unconventional merchandise included a floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
with Radiohead screensavers and an FM
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
in the shape of a desktop computer
Desktop computer
A desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer. Early desktop computers are designed to lay flat on the desk, while modern towers stand upright...
. In America, Capitol sent 1,000 cassette players to prominent members of the press and music industry, each with a copy of the album permanently glued inside. Capitol president Gary Gersh, when asked about the campaign after the album's release, said "Our job is just to take them as a left-of-center band and bring the center to them. That's our focus, and we won’t let up until they’re the biggest band in the world."
OK Computer was released in Japan on 21 May, in the UK on 16 June and in the US on 1 July. In addition to the dominant CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
format, the album was released as a double-LP vinyl record, cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
and MiniDisc
MiniDisc
The disc is permanently housed in a cartridge with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically by a mechanism upon insertion. The audio discs can either be recordable or premastered. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to record...
. That month, Radiohead embarked on a world tour in promotion of OK Computer called the "Against Demons" tour.
Radiohead chose "Paranoid Android
Paranoid Android
"Paranoid Android" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The lyrics of the darkly humorous song were written primarily by singer Thom Yorke, following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar...
" to be released as the lead single, despite being considered uncommercial for its unusually long running time and lack of a catchy chorus. Colin Greenwood admitted the song was "hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit shifter [radio stations] can have been expecting," but said that Capitol was supportive of the band's choice. On the strength of frequent radio play on Radio 1 and rotation of the song's music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
, "Paranoid Android" reached number three in the U.K. giving Radiohead their highest chart position to date and their highest overall as of . The album debuted at number one on the U.K., where it held for two weeks. It stayed in the top 10 for weeks and became the country's eighth-best selling record of the year. When "Karma Police
Karma Police
"Karma Police" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead from their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The song's title and lyrics derive from an in-joke among the band, referring to the Hindu theory of retributive enforcement, known as karma....
" and "No Surprises
No Surprises
"No Surprises" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released as the third and final single from the group's 1997 album OK Computer. It was accompanied by a music video that featured a single shot of singer Thom Yorke's head in a plastic bubble filling with water. The single peaked...
" were released as singles, both charted in the UK top 10; additionally, "Karma Police" peaked at number 14 on the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
Modern Rock Tracks chart. "Lucky" was released as a promotional single in France but did not chart. "Let Down", considered for release as the lead single, charted on the Modern Rock Tracks chart at number 29.
The band planned to produce a video for every song on the album to be released as a whole, but the project was abandoned due to financial and time constraints. Also considered, but ultimately scrapped, were plans for trip hop
Trip hop
Trip hop is a music genre consisting of downtempo electronic music which originated in the early 1990s in England, especially Bristol. Deriving from "post"-acid house, the term was first used by the British music media and press as a way to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat which...
group Massive Attack
Massive Attack
Massive Attack are an English DJ and trip hop duo from Bristol, England consisting of Robert "3D" Del Naja and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall. Working with co-producers, as well as various session musicians and guest vocalists, they make records and tour live. The duo are considered to be of the trip...
to remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
the entire album. Meeting People Is Easy
Meeting People Is Easy
Meeting People Is Easy, first released on 30 November 1998, is a rockumentary by Grant Gee following British alternative rock band Radiohead on their exhaustive world tour following the success of their 1997 album OK Computer...
, a rockumentary
Rockumentary
The term rockumentary is a neologism denoting a documentary about rock music or its musicians. The term was used by Bill Drake in the 1969 History of Rock & Roll radio broadcast, and by Rob Reiner in the 1984 mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap....
following the band on its OK Computer world tour, premiered in 1998. By February 1998, the album had sold at least half a million copies in the UK and 2 million worldwide. To date, at least 1.2 million copies have been sold in the US, 3 million across Europe and a total of 4.5 million worldwide. OK Computer has been certified
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...
triple platinum in the UK, double platinum in the US and platinum in Australia.
Critical reception
Upon its release, OK Computer received almost unanimously positive reviews. Consensus among critics was that the album was a landmark of its time and would have far-reaching impact and importance. NMENME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
gave the album a ten out of ten score, and reviewer James Oldham wrote "Here are 12 tracks crammed with towering lyrical ambition and musical exploration; that refuse to retread the successful formulas of before and instead opt for innovation and surprise; and that vividly articulate both the dreams and anxieties of one man without ever considering sacrifice or surrender. In short, here is a landmark record of the 1990s, and one that deserves your attention more than any other released this year." Taylor Parkes
Taylor Parkes
Taylor Parkes is a British journalist. He is best known for his music journalism which appeared in Melody Maker from 1993 to 1998, notable for a style which mixed dark humour, especially in bitterly critical pieces, with an intellectual tone, influenced by the likes of Simon Reynolds and Paul Morley...
of Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
connected the album's release to the era's feeling of paranoia and alienation about millenarianism
Millenarianism
Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...
, and said "It's as pained and as slow-moving as the emotions that inspired it. ... In one way or another, Radiohead have excelled themselves." Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
awarded the album five out of five stars, with writer David Cavanagh stating that "the majority of OK Computers 12 songs ... takes place in a queer old landscape: unfamiliar and ominous, but also beautiful and unspoiled. ... It's a huge, mysterious album for the head and soul." Nick Kent
Nick Kent
Nick Kent is a British rock critic and musician.-Career:Along with writers including Paul Morley, Charles Shaar Murray and Danny Baker, Nick Kent is seen as one of the most important and influential UK music journalists of the 1970s. He wrote for the British music publication New Musical Express,...
wrote in Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
that "Others may end up selling more, but in 20 years time I'm betting OK Computer will be seen as the key record of 1997, the one to take rock forward instead of artfully revamping images and song-structures from an earlier era." In a four-out-of-five-stars review, Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
wrote that the album "is surprising and sometimes inspiring but its intensity makes for a demanding listen."
OK Computer was also favourably received by critics in North America. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
gave the album four out of five stars. Reviewer Mark Kemp
Mark Kemp
Mark Kemp is an American music journalist and author. A graduate of East Carolina University, he has served as music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks...
wrote that the album is "a stunning art-rock tour de force ... On OK Computer, Radiohead take the ideas they had begun toying with on The Bends into the stratosphere. ... OK Computer is evidence that [Radiohead] are one rock band still willing to look the devil square in the eyes", but warned "OK Computer is not an easy listen." In a review scored at eight out of ten, Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
reviewer Barry Walters praised "the embattled musicianship, the tightly wound arrangements, the whacked out but tangible humanity" of the band's playing and Yorke's "vocal performance that radiates major drama without grandstanding", calling the album "an achievement few mainstream guitar bands can claim." In an article for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Alex Ross praised OK Computer for its progressiveness, and contrasted Radiohead's risk-taking with the more musically conservative "dadrock" of their contemporaries Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
. Ross wrote that "Throughout the album, contrasts of mood and style are extreme [...] This band has pulled off one of the great art-pop balancing acts in the history of rock." Ryan Schreiber wrote, in a highly enthusiastic review in his online music magazine Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
, that "Radiohead's third piece of incredible work, OK Computer, is not only their best yet, but one of the year's greatest releases. The record is brimming with genuine emotion, beautiful and complex imagery and music, and lyrics that are at once passive and fire-breathing."
Some reviews were mixed or contained qualified praise. Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
of The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
gave OK Computer a B− rating and ranked it as the "Dud of the Month" in his consumer guide. Christgau commented that the album lacked "soul", calling it "arid" and "ridiculous", and compared it unfavourably to Pink Floyd. An Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
review by David Browne
David Browne
David Browne is an American journalist and author. He was the resident music critic at Entertainment Weekly between 1990 and 2006. He was an editor at Music & Sound Output magazine and a music critic at the New York Daily News before EW...
gave the album a B+, and wrote that "When the arrangements and lyrics meander or sprout pretensions, the album grows ponderous and soggy. For all of Radiohead's growing pains, though, their aim — to take British pop to a heavenly new level — is true." Andy Gill
Andy Gill
Andy Gill is a founding member and guitarist for the English rock group Gang of Four, considered among the most influential post-punk bands...
wrote for The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
in an otherwise positive review, "For all its ambition, OK Computer is not, finally, as impressive as The Bends, which covered much the same sort of emotional knots, but with better tunes. It is easy to be impressed by, but ultimately hard to love, an album that so luxuriates in its despondency." While a review in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
was largely positive, particularly praising the songs "Airbag", "Paranoid Android", and "Let Down", reviewer Christopher John Farley
Christopher John Farley
For the late comedian and SNL actor, see Chris Farley.Christopher John Farley is a Jamaican-born American journalist, columnist, and author.-Early life and education:...
criticised the second half of the album. Farley said, "While the first half-dozen tracks reward repeated listenings with melodies that grow and bloom with familiarity, there is often no structure to be found in the remaining half-dozen numbers." Greg Kot
Greg Kot
Greg Kot is an American writer and journalist. Since 1990, Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune, where he has covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and business issues...
, writing for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, gave the album three and a half stars and said, "Long gone is the concise neo-grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
of the group's breakthrough single, "Creep." In its place are serpentine arrangements, psychedelic orchestrations and haunting melodies that belie the wretchedness detailed in the lyrics. ... Rarely has a tantrum sounded so seductive."
The nearly universally positive reception to the album overwhelmed the band, and some members thought the press was excessively congratulatory. Particularly irksome to the band were comparisons to progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
and "art rock
Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...
", with Yorke saying "We write pop songs ... there was no intention of it being 'art'. It's a reflection of all the disparate things we were listening to when we recorded it." Yorke was nevertheless pleasantly surprised that many listeners identified some of the album's musical influences, saying "What really blew my head off was the fact that people got all the things, all the textures and the sounds and the atmospheres we were trying to create." Jonny Greenwood responded to the album's reception by saying "In England, I think a lot of the reviews have been slightly over-the-top, because the last album [The Bends] was somewhat under-reviewed possibly and under-received."
Retrospective acclaim
OK Computer appeared in many 1997 critics' lists and listener polls for best album of the year. It topped the year-end polls of Mojo, VoxVox (magazine)
Vox was a British music magazine, first issued in October 1990. It was published by IPC Media, and was later billed as a monthly sister-magazine to IPC's music weekly, the NME....
, Entertainment Weekly, Hot Press
Hot Press
Hot Press is a fortnightly music and political magazine based in Dublin, Ireland founded in 1977. The magazine has been edited since its inception by Niall Stokes. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it had a circulation of 19,215 during 2007...
, Muziekkrant OOR
Muziekkrant OOR
Muziekkrant OOR is the oldest currently published music magazine in the Netherlands. The name "OOR" is the Dutch word for ear.-History:The magazine was first published on 1 April 1971, being founded by Barend Toet . Of the first issue 20,000 copies were printed and paid for by Berry Visser, one of...
, HUMO
HUMO
HUMO is a popular Belgian weekly radio and television magazine, written in Dutch.Originally the magazine was titled Humoradio, a portmanteau of 'humor' and 'radio'....
, Eye Weekly
Eye Weekly
Eye Weekly was a free weekly newspaper published in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was owned by Torstar, the parent company of the Toronto Star, and was published by their Star Media Group until its final issue on May 5, 2011. The following week, Torstar launched a successor publication, The Grid.-...
and Inpress
Inpress
Inpress is a free weekly tabloid-sized music magazine that is released in Melbourne, Geelong and Mornington Peninsula areas of Victoria, Australia...
, and tied for first place with Daft Punk
Daft Punk
Daft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter . Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France and met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house with synthpop...
's Homework in The Face
The Face (magazine)
The Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
. The album came second in NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
and Uncut. Q and Les Inrockuptibles
Les Inrockuptibles
Les Inrockuptibles is a French cultural magazine. Started as a monthly magazine in 1986, it became weekly in 1995. The name is a play on "Les Incorruptibles", the French title of the American television series The Untouchables...
both listed the album in their unranked year-end polls. It was a nominee for the 1997 Mercury Prize
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize and currently known as the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for sponsorship reasons, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album from the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was established by the British Phonographic Industry and British...
, a prestigious award recognising the best British or Irish album of the year. The album was nominated in the Album of the Year
Grammy Award for Album of the Year
The Grammy Award for Album of the Year is the most prestigious award category at the Grammys. It has been awarded since 1959 and though it was originally presented to the artist alone, the award is now presented to the artist, the producer, the engineer and/or mixer and the mastering engineer...
and Best Alternative Music Performance
Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album
The Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album is an award presented to recording artists for quality albums in the alternative rock genre at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards...
categories at the 1998 Grammy Awards
Grammy Awards of 1998
The 40th Grammy Awards were held on February 25, 1998. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Rock icon Bob Dylan, Alison Krauss, and R...
, ultimately winning the latter.
OK Computer has appeared frequently in professional lists of greatest albums. A number of publications, including NME, Melody Maker, Alternative Press, Spin, Pitchfork, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
and Slant
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
placed OK Computer prominently in lists of best albums of the 1990s or of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 162 on Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...
. Retrospective reviews from BBC Music
BBC Music
BBC Music is a team working in the department of Audio and Music Interactive at the BBC. Responsible for the BBC Music website - the portal site to music content across the BBC website....
, The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
Slant and Paste
Paste (magazine)
Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgang's Vault. Its tagline is "Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture."-History:...
have received the album favourably; likewise, Rolling Stone gave the album five stars in the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide
Rolling Stone Album Guide
The Rolling Stone Album Guide, previously known as The Rolling Stone Record Guide, is a book that, along with its sister publication Rolling Stone magazine, contains professional reviews of popular music...
, with critic Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield is an American music journalist and author. He is currently a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, writing music reviews and essays on pop culture. Prior to that, he was a contributing editor at Blender before the print version of the magazine folded in 2009, and at Spin...
saying "Radiohead was claiming the high ground abandoned by Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
, Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder , Jeff Ament , Stone Gossard , and Mike McCready...
, U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
, R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
, everybody; and fans around the world loved them for trying too hard at a time when nobody else was even bothering."
OK Computer has been cited by some as undeserving of its acclaim, while others assert that Radiohead's career was negatively impacted by the album's critical success. In a poll surveying thousands conducted by BBC 6 Music
BBC 6 Music
BBC 6 Music is one of the BBC's digital radio stations, was launched on 11 March 2002 and originally codenamed Network Y. It was the first national music radio station to be launched by the BBC in 32 years....
, OK Computer was named the sixth most overrated album "in the world". David H. Green of The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
called the album "self-indulgent whingeing" and maintains that the positive critical consensus toward OK Computer is an indication of "a 20th-century delusion that rock is the bastion of serious commentary on popular music" to the detriment of electronic and dance music
Electronic dance music
Electronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...
. The album was selected as an entry in "Sacred Cows", an NME column questioning the critical status of "revered albums", in which Henry Yates said of the album "There’s no defiance, gallows humour
Gallows humor
Gallows humor , derives from gallows which is a platform with a noose used to execute people by hanging. Gallows humor is the type of humor that still manages to be funny in the face of, and in response to, a perfectly hopeless situation...
or chink of light beneath the curtain, just a sense of meek, resigned despondency," and further criticized the record as "the moment when Radiohead stopped being 'good' [compared to The Bends] and started being 'important'." In a Spin article on the "myth" that "Radiohead Can Do No Wrong", Chris Norris argues that the acclaim for OK Computer created an inflated set of expectations for each successive Radiohead release.
Cultural response
United Kingdom general election, 1997
The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...
. It was thus seen by critics as encompassing public opinion through its "despairing-yet-hopeful tone" and themes of alienation. In an interview, Yorke expressed doubt that things would change from the preceding two decades of Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
government to the "New Labour" government of Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
. He said public reaction to the death
Death of Diana, Princess of Wales
On 31 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, France. Her companion, Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, Henri Paul, were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Fayed's...
of Princess Diana
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
was more significant, as a moment when the British public realized "the royals
British Royal Family
The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...
had had us by the balls for the last hundred years, as had the media and the state."
Critics have interpreted undertones of political dissatisfaction in the music and lyrics on OK Computer, and have compared their statements to those of earlier rock bands. David Stubbs
David Stubbs
David Stubbs is a British journalist. He was born on 13 September 1962 in London, but grew up in Leeds. As a student at Oxford University he was a close friend of Simon Reynolds; together they worked on an influential fanzine called Monitor before joining Melody Maker in 1986...
said that, where punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
had been a rebellion against a time of deficit and poverty, OK Computer protested the "mechanistic convenience" of contemporary surplus and excess. Alex Ross said the album "pictured the onslaught of the information age
Information Age
The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
and a young person's panicky embrace of it" and made the band into "the poster boys
Poster child
A poster child is a child afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters or other media as part of a campaign to raise money or enlist volunteers for a cause or organization...
for a certain kind of knowing alienation—as Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
and R.E.M. had been before." Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of the New York Times. He played jazz flute and piano, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in music. In the 1970s he was an associate editor of Crawdaddy!, and in the 1980s an associate...
of The New York Times found precedents in Radiohead's concerns "about a culture of numbness, building docile workers and enforced by self-help
Self-help
Self-help, or self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders...
regimes and anti-depressants
Antidepressant
An antidepressant is a psychiatric medication used to alleviate mood disorders, such as major depression and dysthymia and anxiety disorders such as social anxiety disorder. According to Gelder, Mayou &*Geddes people with a depressive illness will experience a therapeutic effect to their mood;...
" in the work of Pink Floyd and Madness
Madness (band)
In 1979, the band recorded the Lee Thompson composition "The Prince". The song, like the band's name, paid homage to their idol, Prince Buster. The song was released through 2 Tone Records, the label of The Specials founder Jerry Dammers. The song was a surprise hit, peaking in the UK music charts...
. The band's distaste with the commercialized promotion of OK Computer reinforced their anti-capitalist political viewpoint, which would be further explored on their subsequent releases.
With the year 2000 approaching, many felt the tone of the album was millennial or futuristic
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
. According to The A.V. Club writer Steven Hyden in the feature "Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation", "Radiohead appeared to be ahead of the curve, forecasting the paranoia, media-driven insanity, and omnipresent sense of impending doom that’s subsequently come to characterize everyday life in the 21st century." In 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die
1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die
1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die is a musical reference book written by Tom Moon, published in 2008.It consists of a list of recordings, mostly albums, arranged alphabetically by artist or composer, starting with ABBA's Gold and concluding with ZZ Top's Tres Hombres...
, Tom Moon described OK Computer as a "prescient ... dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n essay on the darker implications of technology ... oozing [with] a vague sense of dread, and a touch of Big Brother foreboding that bears strong resemblance to the constant disquiet of life on Security Level Orange
Homeland Security Advisory System
In the United States, the Homeland Security Advisory System was a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale. The different levels trigger specific actions by federal agencies and state and local governments, and they affect the level of security at some airports and other public facilities. It...
, post-9/11
Post-9/11
Post-9/11 is a term used to describe state of living in the United States or other parts of the world after the September 11 attacks, in reference to the many changes that have occurred due to the attacks...
." Chris Martin
Chris Martin
Christopher Anthony John "Chris" Martin is an English song-writer, who is the lead vocalist, pianist and rhythm guitarist of the band Coldplay. He is married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow.-Early life:...
of Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...
remarked that, "It would be interesting to see how the world would be different if Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
really listened to Radiohead's OK Computer. I think the world would probably improve. That album is fucking brilliant. It changed my life, so why wouldn't it change his?"
Musical influence
"OK Computer is Radiohead really stretching and pushing the boundaries of what they think they're capable of doing and what their audience think they're capable of doing and it is a classic, brilliant record."—Michael Stipe
Michael StipeJohn Michael Stipe is an American singer and lyricist. He was the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band R.E.M.Stipe is noted and occasionally parodied for the "mumbling" style of his early career as well as his social and political activism. He was in charge of R.E.M.'s visual image; often...
"OK Computer is pretty much a landmark record. As time goes on and we get away from when it was released, more and more it would be seen as the important record it is."
—Johnny Marr
Johnny MarrJohnny Marr is an English musician and songwriter. Marr rose to fame in the 1980s as the guitarist in The Smiths, with whom he formed a prolific songwriting partnership with Morrissey. Marr has been a member of Electronic, The The, and Modest Mouse...
"The whole sound of it and the emotional experience crossed a lot of boundaries. It tapped into a lot of buried emotions that people hadn't wanted to explore or talk about."
—James Lavelle
James LavelleJames Lavelle is a DJ, electronic recording artist and record label boss.-Early years:Born into a family with a strong tradition of music, Lavelle first began by learning the cello with his grandmother in Oxford....
The release of OK Computer coincided with the decline of Britpop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
. Britpop, which reached its peak popularity in the mid-1990s and was led by bands such as Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
and Blur
Blur (band)
Blur is an English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1989 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing...
, typically emphasized traditionalist homage to British rock
British rock
British rock describes a wide variety of forms of music made in the United Kingdom. Since around 1964, with the "British Invasion" of the United States spearheaded by The Beatles, British rock music has had a considerable impact on the development of American music and rock music across the...
of the 1960s and 1970s. The genre was a key element of the broader cultural movement Cool Britannia
Cool Britannia
Cool Britannia is a media term that was used during the late 20th century to describe the contemporary culture of the United Kingdom. The term was prevalent during the 1990s and later became closely associated with the early years of "New Labour" under Tony Blair...
. Starting in 1997, a number of events marked the end of the genre's heyday; these included Blur spurning the conventional Britpop sound on Blur and Oasis' Be Here Now failing to live up to audience expectations. Through OK Computers influence, the dominant style of UK guitar pop shifted toward an approximation of "Radiohead's paranoid but confessional, slurry but catchy approach". Many newer British acts used similarly complex, atmospheric arrangements. "Post-Britpop
Post-Britpop
Post-Britpop is a sub-genre of British alternative rock, made up of bands that emerged from the late 1990s and early 2000s in the aftermath of Britpop, influenced by acts like Pulp, Oasis and Blur, but with less overtly British concerns in their lyrics and making more use of American rock...
" band Travis
Travis (band)
Travis are a post-Britpop band from Glasgow, Scotland, comprising Fran Healy , Dougie Payne , Andy Dunlop and Neil Primrose...
worked with Godrich to create the languid pop texture of The Man Who
The Man Who
The Man Who is the second studio album from the Scottish indie pop band Travis. The album was released on 24 May 1999, becoming the album that gave the band international recognition. The album peaked at #1 in the UK and #8 in Australia. It was later released in the United States in Early 2000...
, which became the biggest-selling album of 1999 in the UK. Some in the British press accused Travis of appropriating Radiohead's sound.
John Harris
John Harris (critic)
John Rhys Harris is a British journalist, writer, and critic.-Early life:Harris was raised in Wilmslow in north Cheshire by a university lecturer and a teacher, daughter of a nuclear research chemist...
writes that OK Computer was among several "fleeting signs that British rock music might [have been] returning to its inventive traditions" in the wake of Britpop's demise. However, Footman says the "Radiohead Lite" bands that followed were "missing [OK Computer] sonic inventiveness, not to mention the lyrical substance". Radiohead described the prevalence of bands that "sound like us" as one reason to break with the style of OK Computer for their next album, Kid A
Kid A
Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in October 2000 by the Parlophone label. A commercial success worldwide, Kid A went platinum in its first week of release in the United Kingdom. Despite the lack of an official single or music video as publicity, Kid A...
. When asked by MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
interviewer Gideon Yago what the band thought of "bands like Travis, Coldplay, and Muse
Muse (band)
Muse are an English alternative rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of school friends Matthew Bellamy , Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard...
... making a career sounding exactly like [Radiohead] did in 1997", Yorke replied "Good luck with Kid A!" While Harris concludes that British rock ultimately developed an "altogether more conservative tendency", he says that with OK Computer and their subsequent material, Radiohead provided a "clarion call" to fill the void left by Britpop.
OK Computer triggered a minor revival of progressive rock and ambitious concept albums, paving the way for prog-influenced bands such as Dungen
Dungen
Dungen is a Swedish rock band based in Stockholm. Often classified as progg or psychedelic rock, Dungen is also influenced by Swedish folk music, classic rock, progressive rock, garage rock and alternative rock....
, Mew
Mew (band)
Mew is a Danish alternative music band consisting of Jonas Bjerre, Bo Madsen, and Silas Utke Graae Jørgensen. Bassist Johan Wohlert was also a founding member of the band, but left in 2006...
, Mystery Jets
Mystery Jets
Mystery Jets are an English five-piece indie band, formerly based on Eel Pie Island in Twickenham, London. The band was formed by Henry Harrison , Blaine Harrison and William Rees when the boys were still at school and would send each other songs on cassettes...
, The Secret Machines
The Secret Machines
The Secret Machines are a three-piece American alternative rock band. Originally from Dallas, Texas before moving to New York City, they describe their band as space rock. The original lineup consisted of two brothers, Brandon and Benjamin Curtis, and Josh Garza...
and Pure Reason Revolution
Pure Reason Revolution
Pure Reason Revolution are a British rock group formed at the University of Westminster in 2003 and who are playing their final dates together in November 2011. Their music incorporates elements of progressive rock and electro. Their music has been variously described as 'Astral Folk' and 'New...
. Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines said "Songs like 'Paranoid Android
Paranoid Android
"Paranoid Android" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The lyrics of the darkly humorous song were written primarily by singer Thom Yorke, following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar...
' made it OK to write music differently, to be more experimental. OK Computer was important because it reintroduced unconventional writing and song structures." However, the band has rejected any affiliation with the genre and denies having attempted to make a coherent concept album. Jonny Greenwood dismissed such claims by saying "I think one album title and one computer voice do not make a concept album. That's a bit of a red herring."
Several rock bands which later became popular, including Coldplay, Bloc Party
Bloc Party
Bloc Party are a British Indie rock band, composed of Kele Okereke , Russell Lissack , Gordon Moakes , and Matt Tong...
and TV on the Radio
TV on the Radio
TV on the Radio is an American art rock band formed in 2001 in Brooklyn, New York, whose music spans numerous diverse genres, from post-punk to electro and free jazz to soul music....
, have said they were formatively influenced by OK Computer. TV on the Radio's debut album, for instance, was titled OK Calculator
OK Calculator
OK Calculator is a demo collection from TV on the Radio which they self-released in 2002. The album's title alludes to Radiohead's album OK Computer.-Track listing:#"Freeway" – 2:19#"Say You Do" – 5:19...
as a lighthearted homage
Homage
Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
that singer Tunde Adebimpe
Tunde Adebimpe
Babatunde Omoroga "Tunde" Adebimpe is an American musician, actor, and director best known as the lead singer of the Brooklyn-based band TV on the Radio. His vocal method often involves improvisation, the use of effects and repeating sampled loops....
called "obviously a joke on so many levels—musically, primarily." Additionally, the album's popularity paved the way for British alternative rock bands such as Muse, Snow Patrol
Snow Patrol
Snow Patrol are an alternative rock band from Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland. Formed at the University of Dundee in 1994 as an indie rock band, the band is now based in Glasgow...
, Keane, Travis, Doves, Badly Drawn Boy
Badly Drawn Boy
Damon Gough is an English alternative music singer/songwriter. He was born on 2 October 1969, in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. He grew up in the Breightmet area of Bolton, Lancashire, England....
, Editors and Elbow
Elbow (band)
Elbow are an English rock band. They have played together since 1990 and recorded five studio albums, the most recent of which is Build a Rocket Boys!, released in March 2011...
. Established musicians such as R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
frontman Michael Stipe
Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipe is an American singer and lyricist. He was the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band R.E.M.Stipe is noted and occasionally parodied for the "mumbling" style of his early career as well as his social and political activism. He was in charge of R.E.M.'s visual image; often...
, former Smiths
The Smiths
The Smiths were an English alternative rock band, formed in Manchester in 1982. Based on the song writing partnership of Morrissey and Johnny Marr , the band also included Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce...
guitarist Johnny Marr
Johnny Marr
Johnny Marr is an English musician and songwriter. Marr rose to fame in the 1980s as the guitarist in The Smiths, with whom he formed a prolific songwriting partnership with Morrissey. Marr has been a member of Electronic, The The, and Modest Mouse...
, Mo' Wax
Mo' Wax
Mo' Wax was a UK-based record label owned by James Lavelle, who founded it in the early 1990s with Tim Goldsworthy. Steve Finan became co-owner shortly after. The label came to recognition for being at the forefront of trip hop, turntablism and alternative rap during the mid-90s...
label owner James Lavelle
James Lavelle
James Lavelle is a DJ, electronic recording artist and record label boss.-Early years:Born into a family with a strong tradition of music, Lavelle first began by learning the cello with his grandmother in Oxford....
and Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...
and Recoil
Recoil (band)
Recoil is a musical project created by former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder. Essentially a solo venture, Recoil began whilst Wilder was still in Depeche Mode as an outlet for his experimental, less pop-oriented compositions...
member Alan Wilder
Alan Wilder
Alan Charles Wilder is a British musician, formerly of Depeche Mode. His current musical project is called Recoil, started as a side project to Depeche Mode. When he left the latter in 1995, it became Wilder's primary project...
are fans of the album. Classical and jazz musicians such as Christopher O'Riley
Christopher O'Riley
Christopher O'Riley is an American classical pianist and public radio show host. He is the host of the weekly National Public Radio program From the Top. O'Riley is also known for his piano arrangements of songs by alternative artists....
and Brad Mehldau
Brad Mehldau
Brad Mehldau is an American jazz pianist. Besides leading his own group, the Brad Mehldau Trio, he has performed with many renowned artists, including Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter, Larry Grenadier, Peter Bernstein, Jeff Ballard, Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Michael Brecker, Chris Potter, Kurt...
have performed material from OK Computer, and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.-Early career:...
said "When I heard OK Computer, after five minutes I said, 'I actually get this. I understand what these people are trying to do.' And what they were trying was not so drastically different from what I was trying to do."
Reissues
Radiohead left EMIEMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, parent company of Parlophone, in 2007 after failed contract negotiations. EMI retained the copyright to Radiohead's back catalogue of material recorded while signed to the label. After a period of being out of print
Out of print
Out of print refers to an item, typically a book , but can include any print or visual media or sound recording, that is in the state of no longer being published....
on vinyl, EMI reissue
Reissue
A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....
d a double-LP of OK Computer on 19 August 2008, along with later albums Kid A, Amnesiac
Amnesiac
Amnesiac was generally well-received by critics. It was also ranked as one of the best albums of the year by several publications. The Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll ranked it number 6 on their top 10 albums of the year. Alternative Press declared it the #1 album of the year...
and Hail to the Thief
Hail to the Thief
Hail to the Thief is the sixth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in June 2003 through Parlophone Records. After two Radiohead albums that featured heavily processed vocals, less guitar, and strong influence from experimental electronica and jazz, Hail to the Thief was seen...
as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series. OK Computer became the year's tenth best-selling vinyl record, shifting just under 10,000 units. The reissue was connected in the press to a general upswing in vinyl sales and cultural appreciation of records as a format.
OK Computer was reissued again on 24 March 2009 simultaneously with Pablo Honey and The Bends, without Radiohead's involvement. The reissue came in two editions: a 2-CD "Collector's Edition" and a 2-CD 1-DVD "Special Collector's Edition". The first disc contains the original studio album, the second disc contains B-sides
B-Sides
B-Sides is an iTunes-exclusive album from the Coventry Trio The Enemy, consisting of ten songs that were B-sides to the single releases from their debut album We'll Live and Die in These Towns.-Track list:#Fear Killed the Youth of Our Nation...
collected from OK Computer singles and live recording sessions, and the DVD contains a collection of music videos and a live television performance. All material on the reissue had been previously released and the music was not remastered.
In a March 2009 interview, O'Brien claimed that EMI had not notified the band members of the reissue and said "I think the fans have got most of [the material on the reissues], it's all the stuff up on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. This is just a company who are trying to squeeze every bit of lost money, it's not about [an] artistic statement." Press reaction to the reissue announcement reflected the concern that EMI was exploiting Radiohead's back catalogue. Larry Fitzmaurice of Spin accused EMI of planning to "issue and re-issue [Radiohead's] discography until the cash stops rolling in", and Pitchforks Ryan Dombal said it was "hard to look at these reissues as anything other than a cash-grab for EMI/Capitol—an old media company that got dumped by their most forward-thinking band." Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone defended EMI, saying "While it's easy to accuse Capitol of milking the cash cow once again, these sets are pretty comprehensive."
Reception to the reissue was mixed, especially regarding the value of the bonus material. A Pitchfork review written by Scott Plagenhoef awarded the reissue a perfect score, arguing that it was worth buying for fans who did not already own the rare material. Plagenhoef said, "That the band had nothing to do with these is beside the point: This is the final word on these records, if for no other reason that the Beatles' September 9 remaster campaign
The Beatles Stereo Box Set
The Beatles Stereo Box Set is a box set compilation comprising all of the remastered stereo recordings by The Beatles. The set was released on 9 September 2009, the same day both The Beatles: Rock Band and the remastered mono recordings were released...
is, arguably, the end of the CD era." Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a senior editor for Allmusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for Allmusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes. He is also frontman and guitarist for the Ann Arbor-based band Who Dat?Erlewine is the nephew...
of Allmusic said that "While none of this material is bad—and much is quite good—this isn't a disc that's necessary to the appreciation of OK Computer. It's not revelatory; it's a good set of footnotes carrying some mildly interesting supplemental material." Sam Richards of Uncut praised the bonus disc material for providing "fresh angles" on Radiohead's sound, but called the accompanying DVD "flimsy" and said it was a "shame" that EMI did not acquire footage of Radiohead's "legendary 1997 Glastonbury performance".
Will Hermes said in his review for Rolling Stone that while the reissue demonstrates that the "cream" of the band's output was on the original album, the bonus tracks better foreshadow the sound of Radiohead's later material. PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
included the release in its list of the best reissues of the year, but criticized the "inexcusable" absence of expanded liner notes; Sean McCarthy wrote "at least Capitol could have hired a few notable critics to write about the enormous impact" of the album. The A.V. Club writer Josh Modell praised both the bonus disc and the DVD, and said of the album, "And what can be said about 1997’s OK Computer that hasn’t been said before? It really is the perfect synthesis of Radiohead’s seemingly conflicted impulses."
Track listing
All songs written by Thom YorkeThom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
, Jonny Greenwood
Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer, best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, but serves mainly as lead guitarist and keyboard player. In addition to guitar and keyboard, he plays viola, harmonica,...
, Ed O'Brien
Ed O'Brien
Edward John O'Brien is an English musician, songwriter and guitarist for the rock band Radiohead. He is also responsible for harmony vocals during live concerts and on many tracks from the band's albums...
, Colin Greenwood
Colin Greenwood
Colin Charles Greenwood , is an English musician and composer, best known as the bassist of the rock band Radiohead. Apart from bass, Colin plays keyboards, synthesizers and works on sampling on the electronic side of Radiohead...
and Phil Selway
Phil Selway
Philip James "Phil" "The Graf" Selway is an English musician and songwriter, best known as the drummer of English rock group Radiohead. He also drums and provides backing vocals, along with occasional guitar and lead vocals, for 7 Worlds Collide...
, except where noted.
- "Airbag" – 4:44
- "Paranoid AndroidParanoid Android"Paranoid Android" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The lyrics of the darkly humorous song were written primarily by singer Thom Yorke, following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar...
" – 6:23 - "Subterranean Homesick Alien" – 4:27
- "Exit Music (For a Film)Exit Music (For a Film)"Exit Music " is a song by Radiohead, written specifically for the ending credits of the 1996 film William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. Although not included on either of the two soundtrack albums at the request of Thom Yorke, the song appears on the band's highly acclaimed third album, OK...
" – 4:24 - "Let Down" – 4:59
- "Karma PoliceKarma Police"Karma Police" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead from their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The song's title and lyrics derive from an in-joke among the band, referring to the Hindu theory of retributive enforcement, known as karma....
" – 4:21 - "Fitter Happier" – 1:57
- "Electioneering" – 3:50
- "Climbing Up the Walls" – 4:45
- "No SurprisesNo Surprises"No Surprises" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released as the third and final single from the group's 1997 album OK Computer. It was accompanied by a music video that featured a single shot of singer Thom Yorke's head in a plastic bubble filling with water. The single peaked...
" – 3:48 - "LuckyLucky (Radiohead song)"Lucky" is a song by Radiohead. In December 1997, the song was released as a promotional single in France.- Recording and release :In 1995, Radiohead—singer Thom Yorke, guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway—were on tour in promotion of their...
" – 4:19 - "The Tourist" – 5:24
"Collector's Edition" disc 2
"Paranoid Android" B-sides- "Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)" – 4:23
- "Pearly*" – 3:37
- "A Reminder" – 3:53
- "Melatonin" (Thom Yorke) – 2:09
"Karma Police" B-sides
- "Meeting in the Aisle" – 3:09
- "Lull" – 2:29
- "Climbing Up the Walls" (Zero 7Zero 7Zero 7 is a British musical duo consisting of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker. The group members began their musical careers as studio engineers and in 1997 formed the group Zero 7. Their debut album, Simple Things was released in 2001 and received critical acclaim...
mix) – 5:19 - "Climbing Up the Walls" (Fila BrazilliaFila BrazilliaFila Brazillia was an electronica collaboration from Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire in North-East England. Formed in 1990 by Steve Cobby and David McSherry...
mix) – 6:25
"No Surprises" B-sides
- "Palo Alto" – 3:44
- "How I Made My Millions" – 3:09
- "Airbag" (Live in BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
) – 4:49 - "Lucky" (Live in FlorenceFlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
) – 4:36
BBC Radio One Evening Session (28 May 1997)
- "Climbing Up the Walls" – 4:20
- "Exit Music (For a Film)" – 4:35
- "No Surprises" – 3:58
"Special Collector's Edition" DVD
Music videos- "Paranoid Android"
- "Karma Police"
- "No Surprises"
Later... with Jools Holland live performance (31 May 1997)
- "Paranoid Android"
- "No Surprises"
- "Airbag"
Personnel
Radiohead- Thom YorkeThom YorkeThomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
– vocals, guitar, piano, laptop - Jonny GreenwoodJonny GreenwoodJonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer, best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, but serves mainly as lead guitarist and keyboard player. In addition to guitar and keyboard, he plays viola, harmonica,...
– guitar, keyboards, piano, organ, glockenspiel, string arrangements - Ed O'BrienEd O'BrienEdward John O'Brien is an English musician, songwriter and guitarist for the rock band Radiohead. He is also responsible for harmony vocals during live concerts and on many tracks from the band's albums...
– guitar, backing vocals - Colin GreenwoodColin GreenwoodColin Charles Greenwood , is an English musician and composer, best known as the bassist of the rock band Radiohead. Apart from bass, Colin plays keyboards, synthesizers and works on sampling on the electronic side of Radiohead...
– bass guitar, keyboards - Phil SelwayPhil SelwayPhilip James "Phil" "The Graf" Selway is an English musician and songwriter, best known as the drummer of English rock group Radiohead. He also drums and provides backing vocals, along with occasional guitar and lead vocals, for 7 Worlds Collide...
– drums
Additional personnel
- Nigel GodrichNigel GodrichNigel Godrich, , is a recording engineer, record producer and musician. He is best known for his work with the English rock band Radiohead and is sometimes referred to as the "sixth member" of the band...
– productionRecord producerA record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, engineeringAudio engineeringAn audio engineer, also called audio technician, audio technologist or sound technician, is a specialist in a skilled trade that deals with the use of machinery and equipment for the recording, mixing and reproduction of sounds. The field draws on many artistic and vocational areas, including... - Jim Warren – production, engineering
- Chris Blair – mastering
- Stanley DonwoodStanley DonwoodStanley Donwood is the pen name of English artist Dan Rickwood. Donwood is known for his close association with the British rock group Radiohead, having created all their album and poster art...
and "The White Chocolate Farm" – illustrations - Nick IngmanNick IngmanNicholas Ingman is an orchestra conductor and composer.Early recordings include:*'Big Beat' *'The Love Album' *'Terminator'...
– conductingConductingConducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
Album
| Chart (1997) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
7 |
| Austrian Albums Chart Ö3 Austria Top 40 Ö3 Austria Top 40 is the name of the official Austrian singles chart, as well as the radio show which presents it, aired Fridays on Hitradio Ö3. The show presents the Austrian singles, ringtones and downloads chart. It premiered on 26 November 1968 as Disc Parade and was presented by Ernst Grissemann... |
17 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995... (Flanders) |
1 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995... (Wallonia) |
3 |
| Canadian Albums Chart Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
3 |
| Dutch Albums Chart MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... |
2 |
| French Albums Chart Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry... |
3 |
| German Albums Chart Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie... |
27 |
| New Zealand Albums Chart Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
1 |
| Spanish Albums Chart | 42 |
| Swedish Albums Chart Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan, earlier known as Topplistan and Hitlistan and other names, is since October 2007 the Swedish national record chart, based on sales data from Swedish Recording Industry Association .... |
3 |
| Swiss Albums Chart Swiss Music Charts The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75... |
40 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
1 |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
21 |
Singles
| Year | Song | Peak positions | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
US Modern Rock |
NZ Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
AUS ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
SWE Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan, earlier known as Topplistan and Hitlistan and other names, is since October 2007 the Swedish national record chart, based on sales data from Swedish Recording Industry Association .... |
NL |
|||||||
| 1997 | "Paranoid Android Paranoid Android "Paranoid Android" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead, featured on their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The lyrics of the darkly humorous song were written primarily by singer Thom Yorke, following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar... " |
3 | — | — | 29 | 53 | 61 | |||||
| 1997 | "Karma Police Karma Police "Karma Police" is a song by English alternative rock band Radiohead from their 1997 third studio album OK Computer. The song's title and lyrics derive from an in-joke among the band, referring to the Hindu theory of retributive enforcement, known as karma.... " |
8 | 14 | 32 | — | — | 50 | |||||
| 1998 | "No Surprises No Surprises "No Surprises" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released as the third and final single from the group's 1997 album OK Computer. It was accompanied by a music video that featured a single shot of singer Thom Yorke's head in a plastic bubble filling with water. The single peaked... " |
4 | — | 23 | 47 | — | 58 | |||||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart. | ||||||||||||