OK Computer

Radiohead

album cover

"For a Minute There, I Lost Myself"

Maybe Radiohead had a crystal ball when, back in 1996, it began developing this dystopian essay on the darker implications of technology. At the time, there wasn't much public awareness about the sinister applications of data mining. The big identity theft scares were just beginning. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 hadn't happened, so it was well before the Bush administration's secret program of high-tech surveillance on its citizens.

Yet oozing through the substrata of "Let Down" and "Paranoid Android" and other fragile compositions is 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. Casting himself as a dazed character from a Camus play, singer and lyricist Thom Yorke ponders what it means to be plugged in and at the same time profoundly disconnected. Everywhere he turns, he confronts suspicion and mistrust, as well as new demands on his fast-withering soul. When, on the grand processional that is the album's most dramatic moment, he bumps into the "Karma Police," he's given the existential rough-up, along with a warning: "This is what you get when you mess with us."

OK Computer is notable for more than its prescient theme. Throughout, the instrumentalists, particularly guitarist Jonny Greenwood, find jarring ways to underscore the lyrics—on "Exit Music (for a Film)" and others, the intricately layered electric guitars multiply the horror inside Yorke's voice—and head—by a factor of ten. With subsequent albums, the British five-piece has refined and expanded this basic approach; the troubled elegies of Kid A, the snarling Hail to the Thief, and the austere meditations of In Rainbows continue the journey of the lost soul who made his debut on the 1993 single "Creep." Awesome listening experiences all, they map a riveting and unexpectedly coherent journey, a progression through various states of darkness. If most rock is an expression of limitless possibility, Radiohead's oeuvre is the sinister flip side, a tour of the soul-sucking psychic traps waiting just ahead on the hi-def digital horizon.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1997, Capitol
Key Tracks: "Paranoid Android," "Karma Police"
Catalog Choice: Kid A; In Rainbows
Next Stop: Pink Floyd: The Wall
After That: Coldplay: Parachutes
Book Pages: 627–628

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Comments:

#1 from Ryan Sandridge, Arlington, VA - 02/13/2009 6:12

OK Computer was the launch pad of an entirely new sound. Radiohead’s earlier work was good, but it wasn’t ground breaking. OK Computer and subsequent Radiohead pieces explore the complexities of atonality, something that rarely gets mainstream attention. OK Computer went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in the USA.

It is rare when an album comes along and completely changes the landscape of music, and OK Computer is one of those times.

#2 from Grace, Miami, FL - 10/26/2009 6:41

My friend introduced my to this album saying it would change my life and she was right:) Gotta thank her.

#3 from difference between, usa - 05/05/2010 5:39

it was well before the Bush administration’s secret program of high-tech surveillance on its citizens.

#4 from difference between, usa - 05/05/2010 5:41

This is what you get when you mess with us.thank u for sharing.

1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die

OK Computer

Radiohead

"For a Minute There, I Lost Myself"

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