OK Computer is the third studio album by Radiohead, released on 16 June 1997 on Parlophone. Radiohead recorded the album in rural Oxfordshire and Bath, during 1996 and early 1997, with producer Nigel Godrich. Although most of the music is dominated by guitar, OK Computer's expansive sound and wide range of influences set it apart from many of the Britpop and alternative rock bands popular at the time, and laid the groundwork for Radiohead's later, more experimental work. While Radiohead do not consider OK Computer to be a concept album, its lyrics and visual artwork emphasise common themes such as consumerism, social disconnection, political stagnation, and modern malaise.
OK Computer reached number-one on the UK Albums Chart and marked Radiohead's highest entry into the American market at the time, debuting at number 21 on the Billboard 200. The album expanded the band's worldwide popularity, and has been certified triple platinum in the UK and Canada, double platinum in the US and platinum in Australia. OK Computer received considerable acclaim at the time of its release, and is frequently cited by critics as one of the greatest albums ever recorded. After the success of Radiohead's second album, The Bends (1995), the band decided to produce their third album themselves, although a number of producers, including Scott Litt, were offered a position to work on the album. They were encouraged by recording sessions with engineer Nigel Godrich, who had assisted John Leckie in producing The Bends and had produced several Radiohead B-sides. Bassist Colin 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". The band prepared for the recording sessions by buying their own recording equipment, though they consulted Godrich for advice on what to acquire. Godrich eventually outgrew this role and became co-producer on the album.
After the stressful tour in support of The Bends, the band took a break in January 1996 and expressed a desire to change their musical and lyrical style from that of their previous album. Drummer Phil Selway said that "The Bends was an introspective album... There was an awful lot of soul searching. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring". Singer Thom Yorke 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".
Yorke explained that the "incredibly dense and terrifying sound" of Bitches Brew by jazz composer Miles Davis was his starting point for the record. 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". Radiohead also drew influence from the film soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone and modern classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki, whose music Yorke described as "atmospheric, atonal, weird stuff" Yorke described the sound the band hoped to achieve from the album as "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 made use of diverse instrumentation, including electric piano, Mellotron, cello and other strings,glockenspiel, and electronic effects and rhythms. Many of Yorke's vocals on OK Computer were first takes; the singer explained that if he made further attempts after his initial takes, he would "start to think about it and it would sound really lame".
"Airbag", the album's opening track, was inspired by DJ Shadow and features an electronic drum beat programmed from a seconds-long recording of Selway drumming. The band sampled the drum track with an Akai S3000XL, edited it using a Macintosh computer, and admitted to making approximations in emulating Shadow's style due to their own inexperience making electronic music. The bassline in "Airbag" stops and starts unexpectedly, and according to Colin Greenwood "I thought I'd probably think of something to put in the gaps later, but I never got around to it". 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 idea that whenever you go out on the road you could be killed". "Paranoid Android", the band's second-longest recorded studio track at 6:23, has an unconventional multi-section song structure inspired by The Beatles' multipart "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", as well as the Pixies, who Yorke considers "the greatest band ever". Colin Greenwood said that the song is "just a joke, a laugh, getting wasted together over a couple of evenings and putting some different pieces together". The song was written by Yorke after an unpleasant night at a Los Angeles bar, particularly a woman who reacted violently after someone spilled a drink on her. Its title and lyrics reference Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 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 song is also a reference to the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", however it has a science fiction-theme in which the isolated narrator longs to be abducted by extraterrestrials to see "the world as I'd love to see it".
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, particularly the 1968 film adaptation, inspired the lyrics for "Exit Music (For a Film)". The song was made for Baz Luhrmann's adaptation,Romeo + Juliet, and played over the end credits. It was also influenced by Morricone, although Yorke has also compared it to the songs on Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison. "Let Down" prominently features arpeggiated guitars and electric piano and includes a guitar solo by Jonny Greenwood in a different time signature than the one the song is written; O’Brien described the song as "a nod to Phil Spector". The song's lyrics evoke crushed insects and are "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". "Karma Police" originated from an in-joke that the band members had, in which they would call "the karma police" on each other if someone did something wrong. The song is split into two sections and is primarily built around acoustic guitar and piano, with a chord progression indebted to The Beatles' "Sexy Sadie".
"Fitter Happier", which begins the second half of the album, 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". "Electioneering", featuring cowbell and a distorted guitar solo, has been compared to the band's more rock-oriented style on Pablo Honey. It was inspired by Noam Chomsky's writings— Yorke likened its lyrics, which focus on political and artistic compromise, to "a preacher ranting in front of a bank of microphones". The next track, "Climbing Up the Walls", is marked by ambient insect-like noises and "metallic" drums. The song's string section, composed by Jonny Greenwood and written for 16 instruments, was inspired by the Penderecki composition Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima; Greenwood said of the song that "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 song is about "the monster in the closet", with Yorke drawing on a brief job as an orderly in a mental hospital, and an article in The New York Times about serial killers, in writing it.
"No Surprises", one of the album's most stark and least aggressive tracks, was layered with electric guitar inspired by the Beach Boys song "Wouldn't It Be Nice", acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, and vocal harmonies.[With "No Surprises", the band strove to replicate the atmosphere of Marvin Gaye's music and the 1968 Louis Armstrong recording of "What a Wonderful World". However, it has been interpreted as portraying a suicide or an unfulfilled life, and dissatisfaction with contemporary social and political order. "Lucky" was originally a contribution to the 1995 War Child charity album The Help Album, and though the band considered remixing it for OK Computer, it was ultimately left unedited. The track is comparable to the early-1970s music of Pink Floyd, a major influence on Jonny Greenwood. "Lucky" depicts a man who survives an aeroplane crash in a lake and becomes a "superhero"; the song is thematically linked to "Airbag", and Yorke has described the song in interviews as having "positive", upbeat lyrics.
OK Computer's closing song, "The Tourist", was created by Jonny Greenwood, who said "'The Tourist' doesn't sound like Radiohead at all. It's a song where there doesn't have to happen anything every 3 seconds. It has become a song with space". The slow-paced song is written in 3/4 time, but with an additional beat at the end of every other line in the verse. "The Tourist" was chosen as the final song because, according to Yorke, "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".
Here are the lyrics of the songs in OK Computer:
Airbag
Paranoid Android
Subterranean Homesick Alien
Exit Music
Let Down
Karma Police
Fitter Happier
Electioneering
Climbing Up The Walls
No Surprises
Lucky
The Tourist
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/
