OK Computer

Occasionally a band releases an album so different from everything happening within a given musical sphere, that immediately it is championed by nearly everybody as, "an album that will change the course of music history". There have been many over the course of music's roller coaster journey through the ages: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Thriller", Metallica" and "Nevermind" spring readily from the dark recesses of my brain, and Radiohead's "OK Computer" sits among these giants without tarnishing their crowns, diminishing their achievements, or seeming out of place in this exalted company.
  Radiohead had already produced a 'great' album with the release of 1995's "The Bends", yet now they grasped that product and wrung it within an inch of it's life, kicked it up in the air and when it landed in pieces they threw themselves in to producing the gut-wrenching, emotional colossus of a masterpiece that is "OK Computer". They challenge the listener on every level and even on some you didn't know even existed.
"Paranoid Android" is hailed by many as "the modern Bohemian Rhapsody", which is apt as Thom Yorke has said it was inspired by that song and also by The Beatles "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", both of which veer away from the traditional 'verse-chorus-verse' song structure. The title and lyrics both reference the late Douglas Adams' creation "Marvin the Paranoid Android", from "The hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy". The beautiful "Exit Music (For A Film), a dark, brooding acoustic song, is a reworking of the finale of Romeo & Juliet, written specifically to be played over the end credits of the 1996 film "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet". "Karma Police" owed it's birth to the band jokingly saying, whenever they saw or heard someone being particularly offensive, "the karma police will catch up with them eventually". "Subterranean Homesick Alien" immediately references Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and outlines a person alienated from society to such an extent that he wishes aliens would abduct him. He then realises that upon his return nobody would believe him and he would be locked up for being insane...which would still be better than his life now. In "Let Down" Yorke explores his feelings concerning the emotional skepticism of the times "Feeling every emotion is fake. Or rather every emotion is on the same plane whether it's a car advert or a pop song", he said in a 1999 interview with Q Magazine. Modern lifestyles are also to the fore in "Fitter Happier", a song built on buzzwords, government slogans and advertising straplines. Yorke is postulating on our perceived dependence on advertising and government to lead us through our lives, making our decisions for us, and ultimately treating us like animals.

1.  Airbag  4:44

2.  Paranoid Android  6:23

3.  Subterranean Homesick Alien  4:27

4.  Exit Music (For a Film)  4:24

5.  Let Down  4:59

6.  Karma Police  4:21

7.  Fitter Happier  1:57

8.  Electioneering  3:50

9.  Climbing Up the Walls  4:45

10. No Surprises   3:48

11. Lucky  4:19

12. The Tourist  5:24

 "Electioneering", a song which paints a picture of politicians who will do or say anything to "rely on your vote", draws on the sound of their first album to produce the most rock-oriented track on the album. The band was commissioned by Brian Eno, in 1995, to submit a song for "The Help Album", a charity album on behalf of War Child. "Lucky" was the resulting song and concerned the ongoing war in Bosnia. "No Surprises" comes across as the most beautiful song ever written about a suicide (maybe?) or a person who, at least, has no more ambition or reason to live. Closing track "The Tourist" was a message from Thom Yorke to himself, that in among all the frenetic rushing about of modern life you had to take time to "idiot, slow down, slow down" which he needed to at that time. It was an obvious choice as the final track on the album. This album succeeds on many levels and sometimes despite itself. What I mean by that is despite the subject matter drawing on emotional extremes, that are demonstrative of either end of the dramatic spectrum, the combined weight of the creative talent, in both musicianship and lyricism, transcends any misgivings created by the content of any individual song. You go away from this album asking yourself many questions, pride of place among them being, "When will Radiohead deliver an album as good as this again?".

Paranoid Android

Karma Police

No Surprises