OK Computer

Untitled

OK Computer is the third studio album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released in 1997 on Parlophone and Capitol Records. OK Computer was the first self-produced Radiohead album, with assistance from Nigel Godrich. Radiohead recorded the album in Oxfordshire and Bath between 1996 and early 1997, with most of the recording completed in the historic mansion St. Catherine's Court. The band made a deliberate attempt to distance themselves from the guitar-oriented, lyrically introspective style of their previous album, The Bends. OK Computer's abstract lyrics, densely layered sound and wide range of influences laid the groundwork for Radiohead's later, more experimental work.

Upon the album's delivery to Capitol, label representatives lowered their sales estimates, deeming the record uncommercial. Nevertheless, OK Computer reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and became the band's highest album entry on the American charts at the time, debuting at number 21 on the Billboard 200. Three songs from the album—"Paranoid Android", "Karma Police" and "No Surprises"—were released as promotional singles. The album expanded Radiohead's worldwide popularity and has to date sold over 4.5 million copies.

OK Computer received considerable acclaim upon release. Prominent British and American rock critics predicted the album would have far-reaching cultural impact. In subsequent years, the album has been frequently cited by listeners, critics and musicians as one of the greatest of its time. OK Computer initiated a shift away the popular Britpop genre of the time to the more melancholic and atmospheric style of alternative rock that would be prevalent in the next decade. Critics and fans often comment on the underlying themes found in the lyrics and artwork, emphasising Radiohead's views on rampant consumerism, social alienation and political malaise; in this capacity, OK Computer is often interpreted as having prescient insight into the mood of 21st century life.

Background

Thom Yorke (pictured in 2001) and the band sought a less melancholy direction than previous album The Bends.

In 1995, Radiohead were touring in support of their acclaimed second album The Bends. Midway through the tour, Brian Eno commissioned the band to contribute a song to The Help Album, a charity compilation organised by War Child. The Help Album was to be recorded over the course of a single day, 4 September 1995, and rush-released that week. That day the band recorded "Lucky" in five hours with engineer Nigel Godrich, who had assisted producer John Leckie with The Bends and had produced several Radiohead B-sides.

Godrich said of the Help Album session later, "Those things are the most inspiring, when you do stuff really fast and there's nothing to lose. We left feeling fairly euphoric. So after establishing a bit of a rapport work-wise, I was sort of hoping I would be involved with the next album." To promote The Help Album, "Lucky" featured as the lead track on the Help EP, which only charted at number 51 after BBC Radio 1 chose not to play it. This disappointed Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, but he later said "Lucky" crucially shaped the nascent sound and mood of their upcoming record: " 'Lucky' was indicative of what we wanted to do. It was like the first mark on the wall."

Meanwhile, Radiohead found the Bends tour to be stressful and draining and took a break in January 1996. Subsequently, the band sought to distance their new material from the introspective style of The Bends. Drummer Phil Selway said, "There was an awful lot of soul searching [on The Bends]. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring." Yorke, Radiohead's primary lyricist, said, "The big thing for me is that we could really fall back on just doing another miserable, morbid and negative record lyrically, but I don't really want to, at all. And I'm deliberately just writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."

The critical and commercial success of The Bends gave the band the confidence to self-produce their third album, and they were supplied with a £100,000 budget for recording equipment and an open-ended deadline by their label Parlophone. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood said "the only concept that we had for this album was that we wanted to record it away from the city and that we wanted to record it ourselves." A number of producers, including major figures like Scott Litt, were offered the job, but the band were encouraged by the sessions with Godrich. They consulted him for advice on what equipment to use, and prepared for the upcoming sessions by buying their own recording equipment, including a plate reverberator purchased from Jona Lewie. Although Godrich sought to focus his production work on electronic dance music, he outgrew his role as advisor and became co-producer on the album.

Recording

In July 1996, Radiohead started rehearsing and recording OK Computer in the Canned Applause studio, a converted shed near Didcot, Oxfordshire. Even without the deadline that contributed to the stress of The Bends, the band still ran into difficulties, which Selway blamed on their choice to self-produce the album: "[W]e're jumping from song to song, and when we started to run out of ideas, we'd move on to a new song ... the stupid thing was that we were nearly finished when we'd move on, because so much work had gone into them." The members worked with nearly equal roles in the production and formation of the music, though Yorke was still firmly "the loudest voice" according to O'Brien. Selway said "we give each other an awful lot of space to develop our parts, but at the same time we are all very critical about what the other person is doing." Meanwhile, Godrich's role in production was somewhere between an equal collaborator and a managerial outsider. In one interview, Godrich said, "With Radiohead, we all shared the responsibility for producing the album"; in another, Godrich said, "They need to have another person outside their unit, especially when they're all playing together, to say when the take goes well. ... I take up slack when people aren't taking responsibility—the term producing a record means taking responsibility for the record. ... It's my job to ensure that they get the ideas across." From the OK Computer sessions onward, Godrich has been characterised as the band's unofficial "sixth member".

Radiohead eventually decided that Canned Applause was an unsatisfactory recording location, which Yorke attributed to its proximity to the band members' homes, and which Jonny Greenwood attributed to its lack of dining and bathroom facilities. By this time had nearly completed recording four songs—"Electioneering", "No Surprises", "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "The Tourist". At their label's request, the band took a break from recording to embark on a 13-date American tour, opening for Alanis Morissette, where they performed early versions of several of their new songs. During the mid-1996 tour one of the new songs, "Paranoid Android", evolved from a fourteen-minute song featuring long organ solos to one closer to the six-minute album version. During the short tour, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann commissioned Radiohead to write a song for his upcoming film Romeo + Juliet. Luhrmann gave the band footage of the final 30 minutes of the film, and Yorke said "When we saw the scene in which Claire Danes holds the Colt 45 against her head, we started working on the song immediately." Soon afterwards, the band wrote and recorded "Exit Music (For a Film)"; the track plays over the film's end credits but was not included on the soundtrack at the band's request. Yorke later said that the song helped shape the direction of the rest of the album, and that it "was the first performance we'd ever recorded where every note of it made my head spin—something I was proud of, something I could turn up really, really loud and not wince at any moment."

Most of OK Computer was recorded between September and October 1996 at St Catherine's Court, a rural mansion near Bath, Somerset.

Radiohead resumed their recording sessions in September 1996 at St Catherine's Court, a historic mansion near Bath owned by actress Jane Seymour. Jonny Greenwood said the new location was unlived-in but sometimes used as "a kind of corporate convention hangout." The change of setting marked an important transition in the recording process. Greenwood, comparing the mansion to previous studio settings, said recording at St. Catherine's Court "was less like a laboratory experiment, which is what being in a studio is usually like, and more about a group of people making their first record together."

The group made extensive use of the different rooms and acoustics throughout the house: the vocals on "Exit Music (For a Film)" featured an echo effect achieved by recording on a stone staircase, and "Let Down" was recorded at 3 AM in a ballroom. The isolation from the outside world allowed the band to work at a different pace, with more flexible and spontaneous working hours. O'Brien said that "the biggest pressure was actually completing [the recording]. We weren't given any deadlines and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. We were delaying it because we were a bit frightened of actually finishing stuff." Yorke was ultimately satisfied with the quality of the recordings made at the location, and later said "In a big country house, you don't have that dreadful '80s 'separation'. ... There wasn't a desire for everything to be completely steady and each instrument recorded separately." O'Brien was similarly pleased with the recordings, estimating that 80 per cent of the album was recorded live. He noted, "I hate doing overdubs, because it just doesn't feel natural. ... Something special happens when you're playing live; a lot of it is just looking at one another and knowing there are four other people making it happen."

Radiohead returned to Canned Applause in October for rehearsals, and completed most of the album during further sessions at St. Catherine's Court. By Christmas, they had narrowed the track listing down to 14 songs. The album's string parts were recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London in January 1997. The album was mastered at the same location, and mixed over the next two months at various studios around the city. Godrich preferred a quick and hands-off approach to his mixing work, and said "I feel like I get too into it. I start fiddling with things and I fuck it up. ... I generally take about half a day to do a mix. If it's any longer than that, you lose it. The hardest thing is trying to stay fresh, to stay objective."

Music and lyrics

Style and influences

The jazz fusion of Miles Davis (left, in 1986) and political writings of Noam Chomsky (right, in 2005) influenced OK Computer.

Yorke explained that the starting point for the record was the "incredibly dense and terrifying sound" of Bitches Brew, a 1969 avant-garde jazz fusion album by Miles Davis. He described the sound of Bitches Brew to Q: "It was building something up and watching it fall apart, that’s the beauty of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer." Yorke has identified "I'll Wear It Proudly" by Elvis Costello, "Fall on Me" by R.E.M., "Dress" by PJ Harvey and "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles as being particularly influential on the album's songwriting. Radiohead drew further inspiration from the recording style of film soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone and the krautrock band Can, musicians Yorke described as "abusing the recording process".

According to Yorke, the band hoped to achieve an "atmosphere that's perhaps a bit shocking when you first hear it, but only as shocking as the atmosphere on The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds." The band expanded their instrumentation to include electric piano, Mellotron, cello and other strings, glockenspiel and electronic effects. The band's exploratory approach to instruments was summarised by Jonny Greenwood as "when we’ve got what we suspect to be an amazing song, but nobody knows what they’re gonna play on it." One reviewer characterised OK Computer as sounding like "a DIY electronica album made with guitars". Many of Yorke's vocals were first takes; he felt that if he made other attempts he would "start to think about it and it would sound really lame."

Lyrics

Yorke's lyrics on the album are more abstract compared to his personal, emotional lyrics for The Bends. Critic Alex Ross said the lyrics "seemed a mixture of overheard conversations, techno-speak, and fragments of a harsh diary" with "images of riot police at political rallies, anguished lives in tidy suburbs, yuppies freaking out, sympathetic aliens gliding overhead." Recurring themes include transport, technology, insanity, death, modern life in the UK, globalisation and political objection to capitalism. Yorke said, "On this album, the outside world became all there was... I'm just taking Polaroids of things around me moving too fast." He explained that "It was like there's a secret camera in a room and it's watching the character who walks in—a different character for each song. The camera's not quite me. It's neutral, emotionless. But not emotionless at all. In fact, the very opposite."

Yorke's lyrics were inspired by books he read at the time, including Noam Chomsky's writings, Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton's The State We’re In, Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! and Philip K. Dick's VALIS. Although the songs do share common themes, Radiohead do not consider OK Computer to be a concept album and have said that they had no intention to link the songs together with any underlying narrative. However, the album is intended to be heard as a whole; O'Brien said, "We spent two weeks track-listing the album. The context of each song is really important... It's not a concept album but there is a continuity there."

Tracks 1–6

Opening track "Airbag" was inspired by DJ Shadow and is underpinned by an electronic drum beat programmed from a seconds-long recording of Selway's drumming. The band sampled the drum track with a digital sampler and edited it with a Macintosh, but admitted to making approximations in emulating Shadow's style due to their programming inexperience. The bassline in "Airbag" stops and starts unexpectedly, achieving an effect similar to 1970s dub. The song's references to automobile accidents and reincarnation, were inspired by a magazine article titled "An Airbag Saved My Life" and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yorke wrote "Airbag" about the illusion of safety offered by modern transit, and "the idea that whenever you go out on the road you could be killed." Music journalist Tim Footman notes the song's technical innovations and lyrical concerns demonstrate the "key paradox" of the album: "the musicians and producer are delighting in the sonic possibilities of modern technology; the singer, meanwhile, is railing against its social, moral, and psychological impact. ... It's a contradiction mirrored in the culture clash of the music, with the 'real' guitars negotiating an uneasy stand-off with the hacked-up, processed drums."

"Paranoid Android", split into four distinct sections, is among the band's longest recorded studio tracks at 6:23. The unconventional multi-section song was inspired by The Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", which also eschew a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. The song's musical style was also inspired by the music of the Pixies. The song was written by Yorke after an unpleasant night at a Los Angeles bar, where he saw a woman react violently after someone spilled a drink on her. Its title and lyrics are a reference to Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

The use of electric keyboards in "Subterranean Homesick Alien" is an example of the band's attempts to emulate the atmosphere of Bitches Brew. The title is a reference to the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", and the science fiction-inspired song describes an isolated narrator who fantasises about being abducted by extraterrestrials. The narrator speculates that, upon returning to Earth, his friends would not believe his story and he would remain a misfit. The lyrics were inspired by a school assignment from Yorke's time at Abingdon School to write a piece of "Martian poetry", a British literary movement of works that humorously recontextualises mundane aspects of human life from an alien "Martian" perspective.

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, particularly the 1968 film adaptation, inspired the lyrics for "Exit Music (For a Film)". Initially Yorke wanted to work lines from the play into the song, but instead the final draft of the lyrics became a broad summary of the narrative. Yorke compared the opening of the song, which mostly features his singing paired with acoustic guitar, to Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison. The synthesised sound of a choir and other electronic voices are used throughout the track. The song climaxes with the entrance of drums, and this section prominently features distorted bass run through a fuzz pedal. The climactic portion of the song is an attempt to emulate of the sound of trip hop group Portishead, but in a style that bass player Colin Greenwood called more "stilted and leaden and mechanical". The song concludes by fading back to Yorke's voice, acoustic guitar and the synthesised choir.

"Let Down" contains multilayered arpeggiated guitars and electric piano. Jonny Greenwood plays a guitar part in a different time signature to the other instruments. O’Brien said the song was influenced by Phil Spector, a producer and songwriter best known for his reverberating "Wall of Sound" recording techniques. The song's lyrics are, Yorke said, "about that feeling that you get when you're in transit but you're not in control of it—you just go past thousands of places and thousands of people and you're completely removed from it." Commenting on one of the song's lines, "Don't get sentimental/It always ends up drivel", Yorke said: "Sentimentality is being emotional for the sake of it. We're bombarded with sentiment, people emoting. That's the Let Down. Feeling every emotion is fake. Or rather every emotion is on the same plane whether it's a car advert or a pop song." Yorke felt that skepticism of emotion was characteristic of Generation X and said that it informed not just "Let Down" but the band's approach to the whole album.

Critic Steve Huey said the structure of "Karma Police" is "somewhat unorthodox, since there doesn't seem to be a true chorus section; the main verse alternates with a short, subdued break ... and after two cycles, the song builds to a completely different ending section." The first portion is centred around acoustic guitar and piano, with a chord progression indebted to The Beatles' "Sexy Sadie". Starting at 2:34, the song transitions into an orchestrated section with the repeated line "Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself". The song ends with guitarist Ed O'Brien playing feedback using a delay pedal. The title and lyrics to "Karma Police" originate from an in-joke during The Bends tour. Jonny Greenwood said "whenever someone was behaving in a particularly shitty way, we'd say 'The karma police will catch up with him sooner or later.'"

Tracks 7–12

"Fitter Happier" consists of sampled musical and background sound and lyrics recited by a synthesised voice from the Macintosh SimpleText application. Written after a period of writer's block, "Fitter Happier" was described by Yorke as a checklist of slogans for the 1990s, which he considered "the most upsetting thing I've ever written". The track was considered for the album's opening track, but rejected because the band considered the effect off-putting. Steve Lowe called the song "penetrating surgery on pseudo-meaningful corporations lifestyles" with "a repugnance for prevailing yuppified social values." Among the loosely connected imagery of the lyrics, Footman identified the song's subject as "the materially comfortable, morally empty embodiment of modern, Western humanity, half-salaryman, half-Stepford Wife, destined for the metaphorical farrowing crate, propped up on Prozac, Viagra and anything else his insurance plan can cover." Sam Steele called the lyrics "a stream of received imagery: scraps of media information, interspersed with lifestyle ad slogans and private prayers for a healthier existence. It is the hum of a world buzzing with words, one of the messages seeming to be that we live in such a synthetic universe we have grown unable to detect reality from artifice."

"Electioneering", featuring cowbell and a distorted guitar solo, is the album's most rock-oriented track and has been compared to Radiohead's earlier style on Pablo Honey. "Electioneering" is also the album's most directly political song, and expresses a cynical attitude about political affairs. It was partly inspired by Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, a book analysing contemporary mass media under the propaganda model. Yorke likened its lyrics, which focus on political and artistic compromise, to "a preacher ranting in front of a bank of microphones." Regarding its oblique political references, Yorke said, "What can you say about the IMF, or politicians? Or people selling arms to African countries, employing slave labour or whatever. What can you say? You just write down 'Cattle prods and the IMF' and people who know, know." O'Brien said the song was about the promotional cycle of touring: "When you have to promote your album for a longer period, in the United States for example, you fly around from city to city for weeks to meet journalists and record company people. After a while you feel like a politician who has to kiss babies and shake hands all day long."

"Climbing Up the Walls", described by a critic as "monumental chaos", is layered with a string section, ambient noise and repetitive, metallic-sounding percussion. The song's string section, composed by Jonny Greenwood and written for 16 instruments, was inspired by modern classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. Greenwood said, "I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn't sound like 'Eleanor Rigby', which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years." The combination of Yorke's distraught vocals and the atonal strings was described by one critic as "Thom's voice dissolving into a fearful, blood-clotted scream as Jonny whips the sound of a million dying elephants into a crescendo." For the lyrics, Yorke drew from his time as an orderly in a mental hospital during the Care in the Community policy of deinstitutionalizing mental health patients, and an article in The New York Times about serial killers.

"No Surprises", recorded in a single take, is arranged with electric guitar (inspired by The Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice"), acoustic guitar, glockenspiel and vocal harmonies. With "No Surprises", the band strove to replicate the mood of Louis Armstrong's 1968 recording of "What a Wonderful World" and the soul music of Marvin Gaye. Yorke identified the subject of the song as "someone who's trying hard to keep it together but can't." The lyrics seem to portray a suicide or an unfulfilling life, and dissatisfaction with contemporary social and political order. Some lines refer to rural or suburban imagery. One of the key metaphors in the song is the opening line "a heart that's full up like a landfill". According to Yorke, the song is a "fucked-up nursery rhyme ... [that] stems from my unhealthy obsession of what to do with plastic boxes and plastic bottles. ... All this stuff is getting buried, the debris of our lives. It doesn't rot, it just stays there. That's how we deal, that's how I deal with stuff, I bury it." Critics have said the song's gentle mood contrasts sharply with its harsh lyrics; Steele said, "even when the subject is suicide ... Ed O'Brien's guitar is as soothing as balm on a red-raw psyche, the song rendered like a bittersweet child's prayer."

"Lucky" was inspired by the recent conflict in Bosnia, and Sam Taylor said it was "the one track on [The Help Album] to capture the sombre terror of the conflict", and that its serious subject matter and dark tone made the band "too 'real' to be allowed on the Britpop gravy train". The song was originally more politically explicit, but the first draft was pared down from "pages and pages and pages of notes". The lyrics depict a man surviving an aeroplane crash and are drawn from Yorke's anxiety about transportation. The musical centerpiece of "Lucky" is its three-piece guitar arrangement, which grew out of the high-pitched intro played by O'Brien. Critics have compared the style of the guitar-playing to Pink Floyd and, more broadly, arena rock.

The album ends with Jonny Greenwood's "The Tourist", which he wrote as an unusually staid piece where something "doesn't have to happen ... every 3 seconds." He said, "'The Tourist' doesn't sound like Radiohead at all. It has become a song with space." Greenwood wrote the music as a reaction to seeing hurried tourists in France, and Yorke contributed lyrics later while on vacation in Prague. Yorke said it was chosen as the closing track song because, "a lot of the album was about background noise and everything moving too fast and not being able to keep up. It was really obvious to have 'Tourist' as the last song. That song was written to me from me, saying, 'Idiot, slow down.' Because at that point, I needed to. So that was the only resolution there could be: to slow down." The song, an "unexpectedly bluesy waltz", draws to a close as the guitars drop out, leaving only drums and bass, and concludes with the sound of a small bell.

Title and artwork

A page of the OK Computer booklet with logos, white scribbles and text in Esperanto and English. The motif of two stick figures shaking hands, repeated on the compact disc, was described by Yorke as symbolizing exploitation.

"OK Computer" was the original title for the song "Palo Alto", which had been considered for inclusion on the album. Although the song was abandoned, its first title stuck with the band; according to Jonny Greenwood, "[it] started attaching itself and creating all these weird resonances with what we were trying to do." Yorke said it "refers to embracing the future, it refers to being terrified of the future, of our future, of everyone else's. It's to do with standing in a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines and computers and so on ... and the sound it makes." Yorke described the title as "a really resigned, terrified phrase", to him similar to the Coca-Cola advertisement "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing". Wired writer Leander Kahney suggests that it is a homage to Macintosh computers, as "The Mac's built-in speech recognition software responds to the command 'OK Computer,' as an alternative to hitting an OK button onscreen." Other titles considered were Ones and Zeroes—a reference to the binary numeral system—and Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments.

The album's artwork is a collage of images and text created by Stanley Donwood and Yorke, credited under the pseudonym "The White Chocolate Farm". Donwood was commissioned by Yorke to work on a visual diary alongside the recording sessions. Yorke explained, "If I'm shown some kind of visual representation of the music, only then do I feel confident. Up until that point, I'm a bit of a whirlwind." The colour palette is predominantly white and blue, according to Donwood, the result of "trying to make something the color of bleached bone." Used twice on the artwork, once in the booklet and once on the compact disc itself, is the image of two stick figures shaking hands. Yorke explained the image as emblematic of exploitation, saying, "Someone's being sold something they don't really want, and someone's being friendly because they're trying to sell something. That's what it means to me." Explaining the artwork's themes, Yorke said, "It's quite sad, and quite funny as well. All the artwork and so on ... It was all the things that I hadn't said in the songs."

Visual motifs in the artwork include motorways, aeroplanes, families with children, corporate logos and cityscapes. The words "Lost Child" feature prominently on the cover, and the booklet artwork contains phrases in the constructed language Esperanto and health-related instructions in both English and Greek. The use of disconnected phrases led a critic for Uncut to say, "The non-sequiturs created an effect akin to being lifestyle-coached by a lunatic." White scribbles, Donwood's method of correcting mistakes rather than using the computer function undo, are present everywhere in the collages. The liner notes contain the full lyrics, rendered with atypical syntax, alternate spelling and small annotations. The lyrics are also arranged and spaced in shapes that resemble hidden images. In keeping with the band's then emergent anti-corporate stance, the production credits contain the ironic copyright notice "Lyrics reproduced by kind permission even though we wrote them."

Release and promotion

Selway admitted that when the band delivered the album, the band's American label Capitol saw "more or less, 'commercial suicide'. They weren't really into it. At that point, we got the fear. How is this going to be received?" Capitol lowered its sales forecast from two million units to a half a million. In O'Brien's view only Parlophone, the band's British label, remained optimistic while global distributors dramatically reduced their sales estimates. Label representatives were reportedly disappointed with the lack of potential marketable singles, especially the absence of anything resembling their initial hit, "Creep".

The lyrics to "Fitter Happier" and images adapted from the album artwork were used on advertisements in music magazines, signs in the London Underground and shirts (shirt design pictured).

Parlophone's advertising campaign was unorthodox. The label took full-page advertisements in high-profile British newspapers and tube stations with lyrics for "Fitter Happier" pitched in large black letters against white backgrounds. The same lyrics, and artwork adapted from the album, were repurposed for shirt designs. Yorke said, "We actively chose to pursue the 'Fitter Happier' thing" to link what a critic called "a coherent set of concerns" between the album artwork and its promotional material. More unconventional merchandise included a floppy disk with Radiohead screensavers and an FM radio in the shape of a desktop computer. In America, Capitol sent 1,000 cassette players to prominent members of the press and music industry, each with a copy of the album permanently glued inside. When asked about the campaign after the album's release, Capitol president Gary Gersh said, "Our job is just to take them as a left-of-center band and bring the center to them. That's our focus, and we won’t let up until they’re the biggest band in the world."

Radiohead chose "Paranoid Android" as the lead single, despite its unusually long running time and lack of a catchy chorus. Colin Greenwood admitted the song was "hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit shifter [radio stations] can have been expecting," but said that Capitol was supportive of the band's choice. The song premiered on the Radio 1 programme The Evening Session in April 1997 and released as a single in May 1997. On the strength of frequent radio play on Radio 1 and rotation of the song's music video on MTV, "Paranoid Android" reached number three in the UK, giving Radiohead their highest chart position.

Radiohead embarked on a world tour in promotion of OK Computer called the "Against Demons" tour, commencing at the album launch in Barcelona on 22 May 1997. OK Computer was released in Japan on 21 May, in the UK on 16 June and in the US on 1 July. In addition to the dominant CD format, the album was released as a double-LP vinyl record, cassette and MiniDisc. The album debuted at number one on the UK, where it held for two weeks. It stayed in the top 10 for weeks and became the country's eighth-best selling record of the year. Meanwhile, the tour took the band across the UK and Ireland, continental Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia, concluding on 29 August 1998 in New York. The tour was mentally taxing for the band, particularly Yorke, who later said "That tour was a year too long. I was the first person to tire of it, then six months later everyone in the band was saying it. Then six months after that, nobody was talking any more."

"Karma Police" was released in August 1997 and "No Surprises" in January 1998. Both singles charted in the UK top 10, and "Karma Police" peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. "Lucky" was released as a promotional single in France but did not chart. "Let Down", considered for release as the lead single, charted on the Modern Rock Tracks chart at number 29. The band planned to produce a video for every song on the album to be released as a whole, but the project was abandoned due to financial and time constraints. Also considered, but ultimately scrapped, were plans for trip hop group Massive Attack to remix the entire album. Meeting People Is Easy, Grant Gee's rockumentary following the band on its OK Computer world tour, premiered in November 1998.

By February 1998, the album had sold at least half a million copies in the UK and 2 million worldwide. To date, at least 1.4 million copies have been sold in the US, 3 million across Europe and a total of 4.5 million worldwide. OK Computer has been certified triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US, in addition to certifications in other markets.

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Contemporary reception
Review scores
Source	Rating
Chicago Tribune
Entertainment Weekly	B+
The Guardian
NME	10/10
Pitchfork Media	10.0/10
Q
Rolling Stone
Spin	8/10
The Village Voice	B−

Upon its release, OK Computer received almost unanimously positive reviews. Critics in the British and American press generally agreed that the album was a landmark of its time and would have far-reaching impact and importance, and that the band's willingness to experiment made it a challenging listen. According to Footman, "Not since 1967, with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had so many major critics agreed immediately, not only on an album's merits, but on its long-term significance, and its ability to encapsulate a particular point in history." In the English press, the album garnered favourable reviews in NME, Melody Maker, The Guardian, and Q. Nick Kent wrote in Mojo that "Others may end up selling more, but in 20 years time I'm betting OK Computer will be seen as the key record of 1997, the one to take rock forward instead of artfully revamping images and song-structures from an earlier era."

OK Computer was also well received by critics in North America. Rolling Stone, Spin, and Pitchfork Media published positive reviews. In an article for The New Yorker, Alex Ross praised OK Computer for its progressiveness, and contrasted Radiohead's risk-taking with the musically conservative "dadrock" of their contemporaries Oasis. Ross wrote that "Throughout the album, contrasts of mood and style are extreme ... This band has pulled off one of the great art-pop balancing acts in the history of rock."

Reviewers for Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, and Time were mixed or contained qualified praise. In an otherwise positive review, Andy Gill wrote for The Independent, "For all its ambition, OK Computer is not, finally, as impressive as The Bends, which covered much the same sort of emotional knots, but with better tunes. It is easy to be impressed by, but ultimately hard to love, an album that so luxuriates in its despondency." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave OK Computer a B− rating and ranked it as the "Dud of the Month" in his consumer guide. Christgau commented that the album lacked "soul", calling it "arid" and "ridiculous", and compared it unfavourably to Pink Floyd.

OK Computer appeared in many 1997 critics' lists and listener polls for best album of the year. It topped the year-end polls of Mojo, Vox, Entertainment Weekly, Hot Press, Muziekkrant OOR, HUMO, Eye Weekly and Inpress, and tied for first place with Daft Punk's Homework in The Face. The album came second in NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Spin and Uncut. Q and Les Inrockuptibles both listed the album in their unranked year-end polls. It was a nominee for the 1997 Mercury Prize, a prestigious award recognising the best British or Irish album of the year. The album was nominated in the Album of the Year and Best Alternative Music Performance categories at the 1998 Grammy Awards, ultimately winning the latter.

The nearly universally positive reception to the album overwhelmed the band, and some members thought the press was excessively congratulatory. Particularly irksome to the band were links to progressive rock and art rock, with direct comparisons to Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon cropping up frequently among critics and fans. Yorke responded to these claims: "We write pop songs ... there was no intention of it being 'art'. It's a reflection of all the disparate things we were listening to when we recorded it." Yorke was nevertheless pleasantly surprised that many listeners identified some of the album's musical influences, saying "What really blew my head off was the fact that people got all the things, all the textures and the sounds and the atmospheres we were trying to create." Jonny Greenwood responded to the album's reception by saying "In England, I think a lot of the reviews have been slightly over-the-top, because the last album [The Bends] was somewhat under-reviewed possibly and under-received."

Legacy

Retrospective acclaim

OK Computer has appeared frequently in professional lists of greatest albums. A number of publications, including NME, Melody Maker, Alternative Press, Spin, Pitchfork Media, Time and Slant placed OK Computer prominently in lists of best albums of the 1990s or of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 162 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Retrospective reviews from BBC Music, The A.V. Club Slant and Paste have received the album favourably; likewise, Rolling Stone gave the album five stars in the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide, with critic Rob Sheffield saying "Radiohead was claiming the high ground abandoned by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, U2, R.E.M., everybody; and fans around the world loved them for trying too hard at a time when nobody else was even bothering."

OK Computer has been cited by some as undeserving of its acclaim, while others assert that Radiohead's career was negatively impacted by the album's critical success. In a poll surveying thousands conducted by BBC Radio 6 Music, OK Computer was named the sixth most overrated album "in the world". David H. Green of The Daily Telegraph called the album "self-indulgent whingeing" and maintains that the positive critical consensus toward OK Computer is an indication of "a 20th-century delusion that rock is the bastion of serious commentary on popular music" to the detriment of electronic and dance music. The album was selected as an entry in "Sacred Cows", an NME column questioning the critical status of "revered albums", in which Henry Yates said of the album "There’s no defiance, gallows humour or chink of light beneath the curtain, just a sense of meek, resigned despondency," and further criticised the record as "the moment when Radiohead stopped being 'good' [compared to The Bends] and started being 'important'." In a Spin article on the "myth" that "Radiohead Can Do No Wrong", Chris Norris argues that the acclaim for OK Computer created an inflated set of expectations for each successive Radiohead release.

Commentary and interpretation

In interviews, Thom Yorke criticised recently elected Tony Blair (pictured in 1998) and his New Labour government. Critics have asserted that similar political sentiments are present throughout OK Computer.

OK Computer was recorded in the lead up to the 1997 general election and released a month after the victory of Tony Blair's New Labour government. The album was perceived by critics as an expression of dissent and skepticism toward the new government and a reaction against the national mood of optimism. Dorian Lynskey wrote, "On May 1, 1997, Labour supporters toasted their landslide victory to the sound of 'Things Can Only Get Better.' A few weeks later, OK Computer appeared like Banquo's ghost to warn: No, things can only get worse." According to Amy Britton, the album "showed not everyone was ready to join the party, instead tapping into another feeling felt throughout the UK—pre-millenial angst. ... huge corporations were impossible to fight against—this was the world OK Computer soundtracked, not the wave of British optimism."

In an interview, Yorke doubted that Blair's policies would differ from the preceding two decades of Conservative government. He said the public reaction to the death of Princess Diana was more significant, as a moment when the British public realised "the royals had had us by the balls for the last hundred years, as had the media and the state." The band's distaste with the commercialised promotion of OK Computer reinforced their anti-capitalist political viewpoint, which would be further explored on their subsequent releases.

Critics have compared Radiohead's statements of political dissatisfaction to those of earlier rock bands. David Stubbs said that, where punk rock had been a rebellion against a time of deficit and poverty, OK Computer protested the "mechanistic convenience" of contemporary surplus and excess. Alex Ross said the album "pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person's panicky embrace of it" and made the band into "the poster boys for a certain kind of knowing alienation—as Talking Heads and R.E.M. had been before." Jon Pareles of The New York Times found precedents in the work of Pink Floyd and Madness for Radiohead's concerns "about a culture of numbness, building docile workers and enforced by self-help regimes and anti-depressants."

Many felt the tone of the album was millennial or futuristic, anticipating cultural and political trends. According to The A.V. Club writer Steven Hyden in the feature "Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation", "Radiohead appeared to be ahead of the curve, forecasting the paranoia, media-driven insanity, and omnipresent sense of impending doom that’s subsequently come to characterise everyday life in the 21st century." In 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, Tom Moon described OK Computer as a "prescient ... dystopian essay on the darker implications of technology ... oozing [with] 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." Chris Martin of Coldplay remarked that, "It would be interesting to see how the world would be different if Dick Cheney really listened to Radiohead's OK Computer. I think the world would probably improve. That album is fucking brilliant. It changed my life, so why wouldn't it change his?"

Musical influence

"A lot of people have taken OK Computer and said, 'This is the yardstick. If I can attain something half as good, I'm doing pretty well.' But I've never heard anything really derivative of OK Computer—which is interesting, as it shows that what Radiohead were doing was probably even more complicated than it seemed."

—Josh Davis (DJ Shadow)

"The whole sound of it and the emotional experience crossed a lot of boundaries. It tapped into a lot of buried emotions that people hadn't wanted to explore or talk about."

—James Lavelle

The release of OK Computer coincided with the decline of Britpop. Through OK Computer's influence, the dominant style of UK guitar pop shifted toward an approximation of "Radiohead's paranoid but confessional, slurry but catchy approach". Many newer British acts adopted similarly complex, atmospheric arrangements. A prominent example of this trend, Post-Britpop band Travis worked with Godrich to create the languid pop texture of The Man Who, which became the biggest-selling album of 1999 in the UK. Some in the British press accused Travis of appropriating Radiohead's sound. Steven Hyden of AV Club said that by 1998, starting with The Man Who, "what Radiohead had created in OK Computer had already grown much bigger than the band," and that the album went on to influence "a wave of British-rock balladeers that reached its zenith in the '00s".

Critics have said OK Computer's popularity paved the way for the next generation of British alternative rock bands, and established musicians in a variety of genres have praised the album. Members of Coldplay, Bloc Party and TV on the Radio said they were formatively influenced by OK Computer. TV on the Radio's debut album was even titled OK Calculator as a lighthearted tribute. Radiohead described the pervasiveness of bands that "sound like us" as one reason to break with the style of OK Computer for their next album, Kid A.

Although OK Computer's influence on rock musicians is widely acknowledged, several critics believe that its experimental inclination was not authentically embraced on a wide scale. Footman said the "Radiohead Lite" bands that followed were "missing [OK Computer's] sonic inventiveness, not to mention the lyrical substance." David Cavanagh said that most of OK Computer's purported mainstream influence more likely stemmed from the ballads on The Bends. According to Cavanagh, "The populist albums of the post-OK Computer era—The Verve's Urban Hymns, Travis's Good Feeling, Stereophonics' Word Gets Around, Robbie Williams' Life thru a Lens—effectively closed the door that OK Computer's boffin-esque inventiveness had opened". John Harris believed that OK Computer was one of the "fleeting signs that British rock music might [have been] returning to its inventive traditions" in the wake of Britpop's demise. While Harris concludes that British rock ultimately developed an "altogether more conservative tendency", he said that with OK Computer and their subsequent material, Radiohead provided a "clarion call" to fill the void left by Britpop.

OK Computer did trigger a minor revival of progressive rock and ambitious concept albums, and a new wave of prog-influenced bands credited OK Computer for enabling their scene to thrive. Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines said "Songs like 'Paranoid Android' made it OK to write music differently, to be more experimental. OK Computer was important because it reintroduced unconventional writing and song structures." Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree said, "Here's a band that came from the indie rock tradition that snuck in under the radar when the journalists weren't looking and started making these absurdly ambitious and pretentious—and all the better for it—records." However, the band has rejected any affiliation with the genre and denies having attempted to make a coherent concept album. Jonny Greenwood dismissed such claims by saying "I think one album title and one computer voice do not make a concept album. That's a bit of a red herring."

Reissues

Radiohead left EMI, parent company of Parlophone, in 2007 after failed contract negotiations. EMI retained the copyright to Radiohead's back catalogue of material recorded while signed to the label. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, EMI reissued a double-LP of OK Computer on 19 August 2008, along with later albums Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series. OK Computer became the year's tenth best-selling vinyl record, shifting just under 10,000 units. The reissue was connected in the press to a general upswing in vinyl sales and cultural appreciation of records as a format.

OK Computer was reissued again on 24 March 2009 simultaneously with Pablo Honey and The Bends, without Radiohead's involvement. The reissue came in two editions: a 2-CD "Collector's Edition" and a 2-CD 1-DVD "Special Collector's Edition". The first disc contains the original studio album, the second disc contains B-sides collected from OK Computer singles and live recording sessions, and the DVD contains a collection of music videos and a live television performance. All material on the reissue had been previously released.

Professional ratings

"Collector's Edition"
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
The A.V. Club	(A)
Pitchfork Media	(10/10)
Rolling Stone
Q
Uncut

In a March 2009 interview, O'Brien claimed that EMI had not notified the band members of the reissue and said "I think the fans have got most of [the material on the reissues], it's all the stuff up on YouTube. This is just a company who are trying to squeeze every bit of lost money, it's not about [an] artistic statement." Press reaction to the reissue announcement reflected the concern that EMI was exploiting Radiohead's back catalogue. Larry Fitzmaurice of Spin accused EMI of planning to "issue and re-issue [Radiohead's] discography until the cash stops rolling in", and Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal said it was "hard to look at these reissues as anything other than a cash-grab for EMI/Capitol—an old media company that got dumped by their most forward-thinking band." Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone defended EMI, saying "While it's easy to accuse Capitol of milking the cash cow once again, these sets are pretty comprehensive."

The reissue was critically well received, although critics were mixed about the supplemental material. Reviews in Allmusic, Uncut, Q, Rolling Stone and PopMatters praised the supplemental material, but with reservations. A review written by Scott Plagenhoef for Pitchfork awarded the reissue a perfect score, arguing that it was worth buying for fans who did not already own the rare material. Plagenhoef said, "That the band had nothing to do with these is beside the point: This is the final word on these records, if for no other reason that the Beatles' September 9 remaster campaign is, arguably, the end of the CD era." The A.V. Club writer Josh Modell praised both the bonus disc and the DVD, and said of the album, "And what can be said about 1997’s OK Computer that hasn’t been said before? It really is the perfect synthesis of Radiohead’s seemingly conflicted impulses."

Track listing

All songs written by Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway.

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

Personnel

Radiohead

• Thom Yorke – vocals, guitar, piano, laptop, programming, illustrations
• Jonny Greenwood – guitar, keyboards, piano, organ, glockenspiel, string arrangements
• Colin Greenwood – bass guitar, bass synthesiser, percussion
• Ed O'Brien – guitar, FX, percussion, backing vocals
• Phil Selway – drums, percussion

Additional personnel

• Nigel Godrich – production, engineering
• Jim Warren – production, engineering
• Chris Blair – mastering
• Stanley Donwood – illustrations
• Nick Ingman – conducting

Chart positions and certifications

Album charts

Chart (1997)	Peak position
Australian Albums Chart	7
Austrian Albums Chart	17
Belgian Albums Chart (Flanders)	1
Belgian Albums Chart (Wallonia)	3
Canadian RPM Albums Chart	2
Dutch Albums Chart	2
French Albums Chart	3
German Albums Chart	27
New Zealand Albums Chart	1
Spanish Albums Chart	42
Swedish Albums Chart	3
Swiss Albums Chart	40
UK Albums Chart	1
US Billboard 200	21

Singles charts

Year	Song	Peak positions
		UK	US Modern Rock	NZ	AUS	SWE	NL
1997	"Paranoid Android"	3	—	—	29	53	61
1997	"Karma Police"	8	14	32	—	—	50
1998	"No Surprises"	4	—	23	47	—	58
"—" denotes releases that did not chart.

Certifications

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA)	Platinum	70,000^
Canada (Music Canada)	3× Platinum	300,000^
Europe (IFPI)	Platinum	1,000,000*
Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)	Gold	25,000^
United Kingdom (BPI)	3× Platinum	1,800,000^
United States (RIAA)	2× Platinum	2,000,000^
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

Notes

Footnotes

Citations

References

• Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (2004). Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York: Fireside. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Britton, Amy (2011). Revolution Rock: The Albums Which Defined Two Ages. AuthorHouse. ISBN 1-4678-8710-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Clarke, Martin (2010). Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless. London: Plexus. ISBN 0-85965-439-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Footman, Tim (2007). Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album. New Malden: Chrome Dreams. ISBN 1-84240-388-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Griffiths, Dai (2004). Radiohead's OK Computer. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1663-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Harris, John (2004). Britpop!: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock. Cambridge: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81367-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Lynskey, Dorian (2011). 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-167015-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Moon, Tom (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. New York: Workman. ISBN 0-85965-439-7. Archived from the original on 5 August 2011. Retrieved 5 August 2011. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Randall, Mac (2000). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story. New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks. ISBN 0-385-33393-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Ross, Alex (2010). Listen to This. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-18774-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)