Let’s start this series of album reviews with one of the most influential that was on repeat on my CD player over and over during the late 90’s. It was also one of the first CDs I ever bought. I remember buying it in Wilko’s and being very scared to be spending £10.99 on an album – I was lucky enough to have a student grant but it seemed like a huge amount to pay for music. I had been working full time at Burger King for a year and this was over three hours pay (this was before the minimum wage). It was and is an obscene amount of money to pay for music and we can pay that money each month for almost all the albums in the world that have every existed. But was it worth it at the time? Oh yes.
The first song “Airbag” is a great track and the sound effects towards the end of the song in the strange outro really inspired me as I was doing a degree in Electronic Music and Politics at Keele University when the album was released. We had a studio at Keele called Studio 2 where we were cutting up tape using razor blades and looping them round microphone stands. Some of this music in “Airbag” I was sure I could recreate myself but some of it was way more complicated. We were desperate to get into Studio 1 where there was a computer program using Cubase and another with the university’s only copy of Protools. But we had to start in Studio 2 according to the course. Many of my fellow students were annoyed but I quite enjoyed the physical cutting and pasting of sounds. “Airbag” is a great song, especially for keyboard players like myself who have always been interested in creating strange sounds.
Next on the album is one of Radiohead’s most iconic songs – “Paranoid Android”. This was simply gorgeous, inventive, macabre, frightening, epic and very long. It was also one of the first songs that took me on a musical journey, a little bit like “Bohemian Rhapsody” with its clear but contrasting sections. I had a tough time with relationships in my early twenties and my flat mates knew not to come into my room if this song was playing! That exciting guitar solo ending with a 7/4 passage followed by the “rain down” part of the song was just something I had never heard before. And then finishing with that fast and unexpected ending. It wasn’t a song, it was an experience.
The third song “Subterranean Homesick Alien” has keyboard sounds that were beautiful and romantic yet tinged with nostalgia and something scary. The title evokes the Bob Dylan classic “Subterranean Homesick Blues” but doesn’t sound anything like it. Tom Yorke says the song came from a school exercise where you had to imagine you were an alien on earth for the first time and to describe what you see and feel in your hometown. I wonder if we do story writing like this in schools these days?
“Exit Music (for a film)” was something I was excited to see on the album track listing as I was really into film music at the time and very influenced by Hans Zimmer and John Williams. It is such a sad song – a very depressing and sad song. But so beautiful and well crafted. The harmonies are clever and unorthodox in most popular music. The drums only really kick in three minutes into the music and turn this understated song into something truly epic. Try not to listen to this song on repeat if you want a sound mind.
I thought “Let Down” would be a let down as no album has five great songs one after the other. I was wrong. I absolutely love the guitar work on this song. In a very dark and emotional album, “Let Down” is a song about emptiness yet actually sounds uplifting despite the lyrics about being “crushed like a bug in the ground”.
Can this album sustain yet another great song? Well guess what is next – “Karma Police”. I remember seeing this song and thinking about Leonard Cohen’s “Jazz Police”, which I found hilarious – I still don’t know whether “I’m your man” is a Cohen album that should be taken seriously or if he is trying to make fun of himself! “Karma Police” is a fantastic song – who hasn’t wanted the karma police to arrest someone who really deserves it and punish them appropriately?
“Fitter, Happier, More Productive” was a very timely song for me. I had been studying early musique concrète by Pierre Schaefer at university and it was interesting to see how you could put some of these ideas into a piece of popular music. We were always encouraged to make atonal music at university, which I found annoying and pretentious yet I always thought these ambient sounds could be beautiful and accessible. Another piece of music it reminds me of is “Memories of Green”, from the Bladerunner soundtrack by Vangelis. The monotonous computer monologue was something I don’t think I’d ever heard before and it really works. Listening to the song now makes me think I am a “pig in a cage on antibiotics”. It jars you because we are fed these uplifting and life-affirming messages constantly. I’ve just been writing my New Years Resolutions and could probably have fed it into the computer and something similar will come out. 25 years and this track has come back to haunt me. I’m the piggie that has been brainwashed.
“Electioneering” is a classic rock song. In 2022, with so many elections and non-elections we still get the same promises and mistakes from our political leaders. Normally every album has a bit of filler and I guess this is OK Computer’s filler but quite honestly it would be the title track in any other band’s new release. In particular, the guitar-work at the end of the song is very admirable.
“Climbing up the walls” has a great sound effect rich introduction. The strings at the end are said to be inspired by Krysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima”. I remember studying this piece for my GCSE Music exam and thinking the extended techniques on stringed instruments were a bit ridiculous. But the Penderecki sure sounded like what I thought nuclear holocaust would sound like. This song is a rock song with intentional microtones in the string parts. It is a scary, frightening song. Tom Yorke used to work with mentally sick people and this is certainly a song that has these people in mind.
The next song is my favourite “No Surprises” – a beautiful, emotional yet suicidal adult lullaby. I’ll take a quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide with no alarms and no surprises”. This is the song I want played at my funeral. I’ve learned this on the piano and it’s one of my go-to karaoke songs. Probably makes everyone think I’m a depressed teenager but it is just a really well made and gorgeous song.
I’m not that familiar with the last two songs as I normally fall asleep during “No Surprises” but they are both fantastic. “Lucky” is a song about war and has a great solo. The last track “The Tourist” is a superb final song, really summing up this dark yet beautiful album. The lyrics tell us to “slow down” and are certainly poignant for 2023 just as it had been in 1997. We need to slow down, listen to some good music and stop consuming everything as fast as we can.
Teaching Points – There are loads of things we can teach children using OK Computer. You could do the exact same task Tom Yorke had and get children to write a story as if they were an alien come to earth observing their hometown for the first time. In the Music classroom I think I would go for “Fitter, Happier, More Productive” and reflect on the lyrics and perhaps even use it for stimulus for a Soundtrap soundscape composition, perhaps using sound bytes that children are bombarded with on social media. I think the main take away from the album is how to create beauty using strange sounds and dark lyrics and is certainly something that is relevant for students today.
Final Review – OK Computer is an album for when you are feeling sad but need beauty back in your life. Slow down, take away all other distractions and simply listen to one of the greatest albums that has every been created.
In the dark with headphones on.