The Best of the Best: Radiohead's OK Computer
I had never listened to Radiohead until I dived into their discography, and I really liked "Creep." No one around me really discusses the band though you can't deny their impact on music culture as a whole due to their run of always critically acclaimed albums. My mom knows a couple of their songs, but she's the only person I know that even knew of them and talked about them. I'm not saying this to dismiss Radiohead or anything. They're obviously mega famous and amazing. I'm just saying this as someone that walked blind into their discography and walked away a changed man.
It seems that other artists frequently cite Radiohead as inspiration. You can even hear them namedropped on hit singles! See: Katy Perry's "The One That Got Away." That was the first time I had looked into them back in 2011 when I heard that song and I was young, dumb, and 17 being like "who's that?"
This brings us to our topic of today, Radiohead's landmark 3rd studio album, OK Computer. When you immediately press play and listen to the very first track, "Airbag," you're hit with a dense layer of sound. There's opera vocals back there, there's trippy drums, and then there's haunting guitars. I feel like "Airbag" sets us up for everything that is the album. Its lyrics focus on a dystopia in the future that centers on rampant consumerism, capitalism, emotional and social alienation, and politics. (Wikipedia helped me out with this). An overall theme of the album is, you guessed it, technology. The album was released close to the new millennia, but it's almost as if it predicted the future and gives us a glimpse of 21st century life. There's a melancholy atmosphere throughout it that even seeps deep into Thom Yorke's vocals. It's almost like a rainy summer day, it's beautiful but you can't do anything because it's raining.
"Paranoid Android" has the Macintosh synthesized Fred voice in the background. It makes you realize just how many layers these songs have, and I was shocked to learned they were all mostly recorded live. Just because there's so much going on. Like seriously, it's dense. I think you could listen to this record for years and find something new on the tracks you didn't notice previously.
I love reading the history behind records because sometimes you can find really neat tidbits. For instance, Radiohead recorded this album in different rooms of a mansion for acoustics. I imagine this also helped set the mood of various songs on the album with the different atmospheres. They also recorded on a stone staircase for reverberation. Which is a first time for me. I've never known of anyone doing that. Also, many of the vocals used for the album were first takes which is pretty rare and a big deal.
Adele used her first take on "Rolling in the Deep," and made a big deal about it in interviews because it was raw, unpolished, and unpracticed. Whitney Houston would often go in and record songs in a single take. It's just impressive, and you can really feel that untamed beauty here on OK Computer.
The atmosphere on the record is seriously unlike those I have come across before. They nailed the dystopian concept. Reading through reviews of the album, Spin characterized the album as "a DIY electronica album made with guitars." And... I really agree. That is a good take on the album. It has that raw homemade feel, but it also hits hard with its production. But there's also this artistic air of grandeur. Lyrically, it's super duper abstract which adds to its artistic quality without feeling too pretentious or preachy even though it discusses topics that people will rarely see eye to eye on.
The Wikipedia article for the album is insanely long and detailed. I've featured just a few pieces I thought was interesting. I highly recommend taking a full look at the article just because the band has gone in depth behind the process and meaning. Usually I find when an artist reveals too much about a piece of their work it loses meaning, but OK Computer is so intriguing and engaging, it's wonderful to have all these insights. And reading about them is part of the fun.
OK Computer was acclaimed at the time of its release, and in retrospect has also been warmly embraced. The album inspired countless bands chasing after its innovation. It's hard to describe everything genius the album has going for it because it's just so much. It'd be a challenge to replicate this record and recapture what makes it great in the first place. That's a dream any artist would chase for decades and possibly never accomplish.
So what do I really think about the album? It's great. Just listen to "No Surprises" and be amazed. Is it a record you'd seek out to listen to everyday? Possibly not unless you're just in that rebellious, deflated mood. Where does it stand today? It'll still leave you pondering and digesting society and politics. We're coming up on 30 years of OK Computer, and really not much has changed and has only become more and more like the album describes. This is an album that will always be popular in Bachelor-of-Arts circles in colleges and universities for decades to come.
Recommendation: for when you feel shunned from society.
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