Talk:OK Computer

Zero Kilobyte Computer?

Has anyone in the band spoken about the level of intent of the title reflecting a 0K Computer? I think that the theme of memorylessness is prevalent with them (e.g. titling an album Amnesiac) so it seems like the most sensible interpretation of the name as a computer with no memory. Yet in an interview with Yorke when asked point blank about the title's meaning he doesn't bring that up (though he doesn't actually answer the question at all, just kind of says the title isn't that relevant to the musical content). I'd be very suspicious that it wasn't intended as a play on the OK/0K duality—I just can't find it stated explicitly anywhere on the web. HostileFork 17:20, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

that's a veyr interesting take on the title. user:mail10 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.1.194 (talk) 13:56, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, indeed. It's possible. --James599 (talk) 20:30, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Ahum, weird, my true reply was deleted? Can anyone who has read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy confirm the fact that zaphod repeatedly addresses the computer as follows: OK, COMPUTER, switch on the improb, drive" or whatever. Theres not a doubt in my mind that this is were the title comes from, seeing that the Paranoid Android reference was already made towards the book. -Reply dont delete. Timothy Barson —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.53.18 (talk) 16:40, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, "OK, computer" is used repeated in H2G2 and "when I am King, you will be first against the wall" is a reference as well (in a addition to oft-cited other examples). So it seems very likely this is the genesis of the title (without previding any reliable sources to back it up, obviously). Headphones22 (talk) 04:23, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Thus we can conclude that Radiohead is sort of nerd, I mean come on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.94.90.243 (talk) 09:45, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

besteveralbums.com keeps getting added.

User:Stanleydonwood keeps referring to the website besteveralbums.com where this album is placed at the top of the charts (meaning it's the most acclaimed or something), stating that it's "further information on critical acclaim". I believe the website is neither notable nor reliable and will now revert his second edit that added it again. If Stanleydonwood keeps doing this, I don't know what to do, though. Litis (talk) 11:20, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the website does not appear to be notable. faithless (^speak) 23:06, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, this is probally the most organized and well put-together greatest albums website, so i think that it is notable in that regard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.24.227 (talk) 23:28, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Anything on the BBC radioplay?

[1] ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 03:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

Robert Christgau claims this album has no soul. He gave Soulja Boy's album an A-. An A fucking minus... [Potentially defamatory comments removed by Papa November (talk)]

So criticism is now removed. --James599 (talk) 16:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your edit, but unfortunately your point of view about the criticism is not a suitable justification for removing them. The simple fact is that Christgau (a very famous critic) criticised the album, and it is reasonable to keep that fact in the article. Also, you make no reference the other negative reviews you removed. Please do not make any potentially defamatory comments again. Papa November (talk) 16:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I've now removed the headlines instead. That will do. --James599 (talk) 16:53, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

It honestly seems like Christgau is simply trolling Radiohead material, and various other Alternative Rock musicians too. He is constantly giving out 1 star ratings, and his reviews are, to be honest, very amateurish. I highly suggest removing his reviews from not just this article, but all Wikipedia articles. Unless wikipedia considers any person on the Internet as a viable source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.241.176.45 (talk) 19:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia's article on Christgau, not to mention the various articles in the links below it, or even the basic biographical info on his website, and you'll find that Christgau is a HIGHLY viable source. True, his style infuriates many, but he's been doing the capsule review for longer than almost anybody else you'd care to cite, and he's no amateur - he's been contributing to leading music magazines and alternative newsweeklies for 40 years. The "one star" ratings you cite are actually complimentary "honorable mentions", which certainly ought to be noted by anybody linking to them on Wikipedia but often isn't. Lastly, "trolls" are typically ill-informed, singleminded, belligerent, and under 35 - none of which describes Christgau. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.148.148.197 (talk) 03:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I last time I checked he gave In Rainbows an A-. Pretty generous for such a hardened critic who has admitted to having a major bias towards progressive and art rock. Even the haters secretly know that Radiohead are great. XD --Degree9 (talk) 02:19, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Embedded media

At the moment, the article only contains the album cover image, and audio samples of Karma Police and No Surprises. Can we add some free images to liven up the body of the article? Also, are the current non-free audio samples the best choices to include? What specific points are we trying to make with the samples? I've tried to clear up their fair use rationales, but I'm not sure I can think of a rock solid justification for either.

Specifically:

• Why is there a clip of Karma Police in the "Singles and release" section? There's more discussion of Paranoid Android, so why not use a clip of that instead? Do people really need to hear an audio sample of Karma Police to fully understand the section? I'd say Paranoid Android is more deserving of a clip here: it would help to illustrate its "radio unfriendly" nature, and explain why it didn't get a lot of airplay. It's difficult to explain that in plain text.
• Why is there a clip of No Surprises in the "Lyrical style" section? The song isn't even mentioned there! There's a whole paragraph devoted to "Fitter Happier", and an audio clip would help to show the creepy effect created by the synthetic speech, which can't effectively be described with plain text.

I'm not saying we should remove or change either clip necessarily. We should just think more carefully about how much non-free content we're including, what (and how much) descriptive text accompanies the media, what specific point it illustrates, why plain text won't do the job, etc... Papa November (talk) 12:13, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Definitely should use a clip of "Paranoid Android", probably at one of the stylistic shift sections. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

References cleanup

A number of the web references are to copyright-violating reproductions of magazine articles on fansites. These should all be changed to credit the original source (ie. Spin, NME, Mojo) without linking to the unauthorized reproductions. WesleyDodds (talk) 10:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I didn't notice that this was the CotW until just now! I'll help out with references, and coincidentally I just got the book Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album which should be useful. --Brandt Luke Zorn (talk) 22:35, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Are reader polls allowed to be included? I don't think so, only critical opinion is recommended on Wikipedia right? . . . In other news, I redirected all the (pointless, OR-tinged) non-single song articles. Beware of random IPs reinstating them and demanding to "let the articles grow". indopug (talk) 12:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that significant reader polls should be included, and both the Virgin poll and the Q poll are mentioned in the Footman book. --Brandt Luke Zorn (talk) 04:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Finished! I've tagged a couple of refs as possibly unreliable. I'm not sure that news articles on the "At Ease" fan site (ref. 53) are a particularly great source, so it would be better to find something else. Also, do we really need the translations of Esperanto (ref. 24)? If so, I'm sure it would be better to point to an English-Esperanto dictionary. Finally, the footnote about Orwellian references (ref. 22) needs verification - this shouldn't be too hard to find. Papa November (talk) 23:09, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The Esperanto bit bugs me. Unless there's a source indicating that the language is Esperanto, we shouldn't include it. And we definitely don't need a translation. Also, specific details about the songs should generally be reserved for the individual song pages, if possible. We want to talk about the album as a whole. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

"Injektilo" is esperanto for "injection". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.21.85.195 (talk) 03:01, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Charts?

We need someone to handle the album chart placings, both in the prose and in handy table form. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think a section on the exhausting world tour they undertook to support the record is pretty mandatory too. I mean, they made an awful documentary about it and everything. indopug (talk) 03:27, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That documentary is awful. I can help with a section on the tour; Welcome to the Machine has a chapter on it, and Radiohead discussed it pretty frequently at the time to express how much they hated it. Also, I just made the Charts section and I have two issues: "Let Down" charted in the US, but isn't a single, so how should it be listed? Also, in 2008 "Karma Police" charted at #59 on the "Hot Canadian Digital Singles". Is that important enough to list? If so, does it affect the "Year" column at all? --Brandt Luke Zorn (talk) 06:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The singles placings aren't really that necessary for album articles; the discographies and individual singles articles can cover that ground. At most, I'd say we can stick with the chart placings for the physically-released singles. Also, since "Let Down" charted in the US, we should un-redirect that one. I know there's a section analyzing the song in the Classic Rock Tracks book I have. WesleyDodds (talk) 07:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Musical style and themes

The section is a bit of a jumble of facts. I've tried to organise things a bit more clearly, but we really need to beef up the references here. Any offers? I also think we should change the audio samples - there's virtually no discussion of either clip in this section. Papa November (talk) 11:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

A good template for the music section Loveless (yes, I wrote it, but I do think it's really good!). As I haven't listened to the album this section would be the hardest for me to contribute to, but I'll try and add what I can from Exit Music. The first priority is getting rid of all those "Fact" tags either by adding citationn or just junking the unverified info. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I can contribute to the Musical style, just not today! I'm swamped with other work in real life right now, but I'll definitely help out with the whole article over the weekend. Also, I think we should keep one of the two samples up right now because both songs are fairly representative of the album's sound on a whole, and then add either "Airbag" (for the drums) or "Climbing Up the Walls" (for the strings). Both the samples of "Karma Police" and "No Surprises" would need to kept anyway because they should be used in the articles about those songs. --Brandt Luke Zorn (talk) 04:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

At the moment, the only mention of No Surprises and Karma Police in the whole article is "...'Karma Police' and 'No Surprises' did not chart quite as high..." in the release section. If we barely mention the songs, we can't use non-free audio samples of them as they fail WP:NFCC#8 (media must significantly enhance the reader's understanding of the topic).

I do however agree that the songs are representative of the sound of the album as a whole, so the solution is to add a decent amount of descriptive text explaining this. Papa November (talk) 08:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Copyediting comments

A few notes made while copyediting.

• "The group asked Godrich for advice on what to acquire; Godrich eventually outgrew this role and became co-producer on the album" - no real connection between these clauses, might want to split into two sentences
• Audio sample captions need a description of what the music you're going to hear is
• "Yorke also said that OK Computer was not a strictly personal album and that each song on the album was a "polaroid" from the viewpoint of a different person, even inspiring him to vary his vocal style in each song" - kinda redundant to the previous paragraph
• "The album was released on 16 June 1997 in the United Kingdom; the American release followed on 1 July" - again, see end of previous paragraph
• "The band Travis worked with Nigel Godrich - just refer to him by surname... and you might want to say he produced Travis' album, to jog the reader's memory as to who he is
• "Many of the newer acts used similarly complex, atmospheric arrangements" - I'm not sure if this sentence adds anything at all
• I doubt ref 86 is reliable (I'm pretty sure DoS isn't, off the top of my head), and 88 is almost certainly unreliable
• Ref 95 needs a publisher

Giggy (talk) 06:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Christgau templates

An unregistered editor has been repeatedly removing the Christgau review templates from the infoboxes of all Radiohead albums. This isn't worth an edit war, so please could we discuss whether to keep or remove them. My view on this is that Robert Christgau is arguably the world's most famous music critic and his opinion is at least as notable as the other reviews listed. The template provides a link to the original review, so it is clearly cited and verifiable. I see no reason to remove them. Papa November (talk) 23:09, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The links to Robert Christgau's reviews can feel very messy and disorganised, with simple sentences or even just one word. I feel though he is a professional critic, the links on the templates to his reviews can seem very confusing. 92.0.155.139 (talk) 23:29, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree, there is no reason to remove the template. Not only is Christgau's review significant because he is one of the most important rock critics, but he is also one of the few dissenting critics who gave OK Computer an unfavorable review. --Brandt Luke Zorn (talk) 23:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

He's the only critic to give OK Computer an overall unfavorable review, just like he's the critic to give countless albums the only favorable or unfavorable review. In other words, he's an attention whore. Now, he falls under the category of being notable as long as there's someone willing to employ him, and indeed for a large period of time there was. Now that he's fired, however, his reviews - which are found on his personal website and unpublished by major publications - are not notable at all. 202.40.139.164 (talk) 12:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Did he write the review for the Village Voice, or is it original material for his website? Because his reputation is based on being the main critic for the Village Voice and if it's from the newspaper, the publication should be named in the infobox, not Christgau (the link would be the same, though). WesleyDodds (talk) 01:43, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The Village Voice originally published Christgau's review of OK Computer as part of his Consumer Guide while he was with the Vilage Voice (found here). The version of the review linked to in the infobox is slightly modified from the original published in the Village Voice, and is the review published in Christgau's Consumer Guide book, which is not necessarily associated with the Village Voice. --Brandt Luke Zorn (talk) 02:52, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Christgau was notable as a reviewer of the Village Voice. He's not notable as an independent reviewer, except that his independent reviews have been a very frequent target of ridicule - giving Souljaboytellem.com an A-, for example. The frequent links to his personal website on Wikipedia seems to be the result of spam by a few overly enthusiastic Wikipedians. 202.40.139.164 (talk) 11:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Although I agree that Christgau's personal website is not the greatest resource, the review of OK Computer was published in Village Voice, (i.e. a notable source of music reviews) and Christgau remains one of the most famous critics in the world. I'm afraid that neither Christgau's current employment status nor your personal opinion of the accuracy of the review has any relevance, so I've restored the reference. Papa November (talk) 13:02, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Lucky Single

Does Lucky deserve its own article since it was a single from before OK Computer, and a charity single at that? I've found it hard to find any information about it at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.193.180.128 (talk) 08:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Radiohead is not dumb as shit

Someone has the nerve to change the background section title to "RADIOHEAD IS DUMB AS SH*T!". I changed it/undid this. Please, whoever did this, refrain from doing so. It will simply be undone. --BuddyOfHolly (talk) 16:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

See WP:RBI Papa November (talk) 17:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:OK Computer/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

GA Sweeps: Pass

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing Sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I went through the article and made various changes, please look them over. I fixed several dead links, but there was one that I could not fix and I have tagged it. Try and find a replacement for it. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good Article. Altogether the article is well-written and is still in great shape after its passing in 2007. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 02:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Progressive Rock

I think adding progressive rock on the genre list would be perfectly accurate. 01:20, 23 June 2009 (UTC)Revan ltrl (talk)

No, it wouldn't. WesleyDodds (talk) 21:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Art Rock?

Could this album not be classified under the genre of Art Rock?--Degree9 (talk) 02:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)