OK Computer

Many people recognize Radiohead as that band that wrote that nineties song of angst and self-loathing "Creep". They were dismissed as a one-hit-wonder, and fell off the musical landscape.

Their subsequent album, The Bends, showed that these lads from Oxford actually had some talent and may have a bit more to offer. But it was their release of OK Computer in 1998 that blasted these guys into the pantheon of rock and roll's most exciting artists. Tom Cruise, Madonna, and R.E.M. led the droves of adoring fans and music critics alike to line up, seemingly overnight, to gush over the group formerly know as On a Friday. The sudden adoration caught the band off guard, and front man Thom Yorke struggled with the fame and attention the band had garnered. The film "Meeting People is Easy" documents the band during their meteoric rise to fame, and provides an insight to the affects of this fame on them as a band and as individuals.

OK Computer has been described as a "classic" album, the best album of the nineties, and a concept album. Musically it takes the listener all over the place, from the glockenspiel laced lulaby "No Surprises", to the hard edged almost grunge sounding "Paranoid Android", to the computer voice litany of positive thoughts in "Fitter Happier". Lyrically Yorke delves into alienation in the modern nuclear society, his distrust and fear of modern technology and mechanized transport, as well as nearly-averted death and coming "back to save the universe".

Many critics were quick to maintain that OK Computer is a concept album along the lines of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". Radiohead have denied this, although the concepts are there, and the songs and the progression take the listener through a bit of a sequential journey of ideas. I'm not sure I buy the idea of a concept album, as some of the tracks ("Lucky" and "Exit Music (for a film)" ) were written before the group headed to Jane Seymour's mansion in the English countryside to record the album.

The (a)esthetic of the album's artwork nicely compliments the music, and is an integral part of the "experience" of the album. The imagery hints at a blurred view of aspects of society. You can sort of make out a bit here and there, but clarity is lost and the viewer is left with an altered view of something that appears on first glance to be familiar, but is now distorted. This seems to be the message behind many of the lyrics of the songs themselves.





I love how the music compliments the lyrics in "No Surprises". It's a kind of lull-a-bye that is sung to us by society and we gradually fall "asleep" as our lives pass us by...




... and I love how in "Let Down" the lyrics and music are contrasting. The lyrics are slightly upbeat and catchy, but the lyrics are describing how the world is essentially a let down. Brilliant!