OK Computer

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OK Computer
Studio album by Radiohead
Released	June 16, 1997
Recorded	July 1996 at Canned Applause September 1996 – January 1997 at St. Catherine's Court, Bath, England
Genre	Alternative rock Art rock
Length	53:27
Label	Parlophone Capitol
Producer(s)	Nigel Godrich Radiohead
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link The A.V. Club (favourable) link Pitchfork 10.0/10.0 link Rolling Stone link Robert Christgau (B-) link
Radiohead chronology
The Bends (1995)	OK Computer (1997)	Kid A (2000)

OK Computer is the third album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was first released on June 16, 1997 in the United Kingdom, where it debuted at #1, and on July 1 in the United States, where it debuted at #22. Greatly expanding the band's popularity worldwide, it became the last Radiohead album with a delayed release outside the UK. As of January 2007, OK Computer has been certified double platinum in the US.

The album has been acclaimed highly by many critics and is often cited as Radiohead's best work and a landmark record of the 1990s,^[1] or even of all time.^[2] In 1998, OK Computer was nominated for a Grammy award as Album of the Year, winning for Best Alternative Music Performance. Although OK Computer was seen to put the group at the forefront of modern rock music, it departed from the Britpop and alternative rock styles popular at the time, laying the groundwork for the band's later, more abstract albums.^[3]

According to singer Thom Yorke, OK Computer also represented a change in his style of writing lyrics, away from the personal concerns of Pablo Honey and The Bends: "On this album, the outside world became all there was, and the most irrelevant material took on stunning beauty and breathlessness. This is because I had sorted the internal stuff out. l wrote down what was around always and my singing 'identity' felt very loose... I'm just taking Polaroids of things around me, moving too fast. Why? How can you indulge in self-analysis when all this amazing shit's going on?"^[4]

Contents 1 Recording history 2 Release and reception 3 Influences 4 Artwork and concept 5 Acclaim 6 Track listing 7 Track information 8 Release history 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Recording history

After recording their previous album, The Bends, with veteran Abbey Road Studios producer John Leckie, Radiohead decided to strike out on their own. According to bassist Colin Greenwood, "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."^[5] The Bends had been a hit, so the band's record label Parlophone was willing to oblige, allowing them the freedom to work with engineer Nigel Godrich. Godrich was younger than any member of the band, and virtually unknown, but had assisted Leckie on The Bends and had already produced several Radiohead B-sides, as well as the 1995 charity single "Lucky" (later to appear on OK Computer).

In early 1996, "Canned Applause", a converted apple shed near Didcot, Oxfordshire, had been set up for rehearsal and recording. It was the first time Radiohead had attempted to record outside of a conventional studio environment. Greenwood said, "we bought $140,000 worth of studio gear to record the album with. We had this mobile studio type of thing going where we could take it all into studios to capture those environments. We recorded about 35 percent of the album in our rehearsal space... You had to piss around the corner because there were no toilets or no running water. It was in the middle of the countryside. You had to drive to town to find something to eat."^[5] Four songs from Canned Applause found their way onto the album: "Subterranean Homesick Alien", "Electioneering", "No Surprises" and "The Tourist".

In late July and August 1996, the band took a brief break from recording to tour, immediately playing several European festivals, where they debuted new songs, including "Airbag". Then, opening for Alanis Morissette in large North American venues, the band performed early versions of songs such as "Paranoid Android", "Let Down", "Climbing Up the Walls" and "Karma Police". During summer 1996, "Paranoid Android" reportedly evolved from a "14-minute" song featuring long organ solos, to a version closer to the one heard on the album.^[6]

In September, the band resumed recording, but according to Colin, "in a reaction to that stark, dreary place [Canned Applause] we recorded the other two-thirds of the record in this opulent country house."^[5] Along with Godrich, the band moved to St. Catherine's Court — a historic mansion near Bath, owned by actress Jane Seymour — where OK Computer was completed without record label pressure. However, there was another sort of deadline. One of the first songs completed was "Exit Music (For a Film)", which had been commissioned by director Baz Luhrmann for his Romeo + Juliet adaptation arriving in cinemas later that year. The song was recorded in the mansion's chilly stone entrance hall, while drummer Phil Selway performed the drum track in a room filled with teddy bears. Of this song Thom Yorke said, "It was the first performance that we recorded where every note of it makes me really happy".

Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood said, "the main difference in the atmosphere [from past albums] was in... the studio experience. We were all of the same age, mid- to late-twenties, and doing a record in the middle of nowhere. And there were no established professionals there. It wasn't a real recording studio, and we had our friend [Stanley Donwood] doing the artwork in the studio at the same time. We were all at the same stage of our life and all working together for something, it was quite a buzz".^[7]

The band made much use of the various different rooms and atmospheres throughout the house, and the isolation from the outside world encouraged time to run at a different pace, making working hours more flexible and spontaneous. Guitarist Ed O'Brien, commenting on the process, said he felt that "the biggest pressure was actually completing it. 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". However, the band decided they wanted a new record out by summer, and work was therefore finished by January 1997,^[8] and by February and March 1997, it was mixed at Abbey Road. The red digits "18576397" on the back of the cover have been thought to refer to March 6, 1997, 18:57 (GMT) which was the time the album had been mastered and was officially declared completed.^[9]

At one point during the recording, the working title leaked for the album was "Ones and Zeroes".^[10] The album's name ultimately came about in a rather unconventional way: "OK Computer" was originally the title of a song recorded for the album, which did not make the cut, but was later renamed "Palo Alto" and released as a B-side. The song's chorus in the final version is, "I'm ok, how are you? / Thanks for asking, thanks for asking / I'm ok, how are you? / I hope you're ok too".

[edit] Release and reception

According to Selway, "When we first delivered the album to Capitol, their first reaction was, 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?"^[11] Although the band's record label "didn't hear anything on OK Computer that sounded even remotely like a single, let alone like "Creep",^[12] Radiohead chose the six-and-a-half-minute "Paranoid Android" as their lead single anyway. The song charted at #3 in the UK, giving Radiohead their highest single chart position yet, while the unusual animated video by Magnus Carlsson became an MTV success in "censored" form.^[13] However, due to its length and the lack of a radio edit, the song was not widely played on other radio stations around the world. Subsequent singles "Karma Police" and "No Surprises" did not chart quite as high, but both were within the UK top 10, and "Karma Police" became a hit on alternative and modern rock radio in the United States. It was the band's first American hit since "Creep", as US radio had largely ignored Radiohead's singles from The Bends.

The band later credited their record label with enthusiastic marketing. Capitol Records undertook an unorthodox advertising campaign for the album, taking out full-page ads in high-profile British newspapers, which featured the lyrics for "Fitter Happier" written in large black letters on a white background.^[11] Capitol president Gary Gersh, when asked about the campaign after the album's release, said "We won't let up until they are the biggest band in the world".^[4]

"When we were cocooned in the studio making OK Computer, we were immensely proud of it," said Ed O'Brien. "But the longer the recording process went on, the less sure we became-it's very difficult to be objective, anyway. When the tapes went off to record company people alI over the world, the marketing people were not exactly optimistic about how it would sell, apart from the U.K., which unanimously thought it was fantastic. So we were a little nervous, because we want people to hear our music. There's a lesson to be learned from the album's success. It underlines the fact that radio and record companies underestimate what the general public are capable of listening to. This is not above people's heads. We're people, and we're making it; other people can get it too."^[4]

[edit] Influences

According to Thom Yorke, "We weren't listening to guitar bands, we were thoroughly ashamed of being a guitar band. So we bought loads of keyboards and learned how to use them, and when we got bored we went back to guitars.^[14] We're from the generation that grew up with computers. All the artwork is done on a computer. Some tracks on the record are completely made on the computer. Other songs are cut on tape".^[15]

"We had a sound in our heads that we had to get on to tape... 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...Miles Davis and Ennio Morricone and composers like Penderecki, which is sort of atmospheric, atonal weird stuff. We weren't listening to any pop music at all, but not because we hated pop music - because what we were doing was pop music... Bitches Brew by Miles Davis was the starting point of how things should sound; it's got this incredibly dense and terrifying sound to it. That's [the sound] I was trying to get - that was the sound in my head. The only other place I'd heard it was on a Morricone record. I'd never heard it in pop music...It wasn't like we were being snobs or anything, it was just like, 'This is saying the same stuff we want to say'."^[4]

Musical influences specifically cited by the band during this period included:

• DJ Shadow, Endtroducing... (1996) album, on the "cut up drums" of "Airbag".^[16]
• The Beatles, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", on the three-part song structure of "Paranoid Android". ^[16]
• Ennio Morricone, particularly on "Exit Music (For a Film)".^[17]
• The Pixies, on "Paranoid Android".^[16]
• Krzysztof Penderecki was an influence on Jonny Greenwood's string arrangement for "Climbing Up the Walls". ^[18]
• Nick Drake was praised by Thom Yorke during this time. Some have noted similarities in the melody of the Nick Drake song "Parasite", and Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien".
• Pink Floyd's Meddle (1971) album was highly praised by guitarist Jonny Greenwood during this time. However, Greenwood criticized other Pink Floyd albums, and the genre of "progressive rock". OK Computer received heavy comparison by the press to Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon (1973).
• Miles Davis's Bitches Brew was cited by Jonny as influencing much of his playing style. ^[18]
• Phil Spector's production style, as an influence on "Let Down".^[17]
• R.E.M., as an influence on "Let Down".
• The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, on the guitar sound of "No Surprises"^[17]
• Titles of songs by Indeep and Bob Dylan were referenced in titles of songs on OK Computer (see below).

[edit] Artwork and concept

The album's cover design is a collage of images and text by Stanley Donwood, who is credited with design on several Radiohead covers, along with lead singer/lyricist Thom Yorke (Yorke goes under the "White Chocolate Farm" in the OK Computer credits, changed to "Tchock" for the Kid A/Amnesiac sessions). Some of the text is hidden, including several phrases in Esperanto.^[19]

OK Computer is thought to depict a dystopia, and its artwork contains references to George Orwell's novels, especially Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, Yorke said, "Loads of the music on OK Computer is extremely uplifting. It's only when you read the words that you'd think otherwise."^[20] Another notable aspect of the album is an apparently circular narrative. In the opening song "Airbag", someone survives a horrific car crash, while the final song "The Tourist" contains the line "they ask me where the hell I'm going / at a thousand feet per second" and ends with a chorus of "hey man, slow down". However, the band said this had not been intentional, but they had noticed it after finalising the track listing. ^[18]

Radiohead maintain that although the songs have themes in common - speed, technology, the global economy, and modern life in the UK - any clear "story" is unintentional and they do not deem OK Computer to be a concept album.^[18] According to singer Thom Yorke, OK Computer is not a strictly personal album either, as each song is a "polaroid" from the viewpoint of a different person, even inspiring Yorke to vary his vocal style in each song.

[edit] Acclaim

OK Computer has been one of the most widely acclaimed^[1] and influential^[21] albums of the 1990s. It has not only spawned entire cover albums and been cited by many musicians as influences,^[21] but also has been cited in many critics' lists and audience polls.

• It was nominated for the 1997 Mercury Music Prize.
• In 2005 it was voted number 1 in a poll of 100 Greatest Albums conducted by the UK's Channel 4.
• In 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 94 in a list of greatest albums.
• In 2003, the album was ranked number 162 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
• In 2006 New Musical Express named it one of the "greatest British albums".
• In 2003, Pitchfork Media placed it at number 1 in a list of Top 100 Albums of the 1990s.
• Q Magazine readers voted it best album of all time twice, in 1998 and again in 2006.
• In June 2005 it was selected as Spin Magazine's number one album of the magazine's first 20 years (1985-2004)^[22]

[edit] Track listing

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

1. "Airbag" – 4:44 sample (help·info)
2. "Paranoid Android" – 6:23 sample (help·info)
3. "Subterranean Homesick Alien" – 4:27
4. "Exit Music (For a Film)" – 4:24 sample (help·info)
5. "Let Down" – 4:59 sample (help·info)
6. "Karma Police" – 4:22 sample (help·info)
7. "Fitter Happier" – 1:57
8. "Electioneering" – 3:51
9. "Climbing Up the Walls" – 4:45
10. "No Surprises" – 3:49 sample (help·info)
11. "Lucky" – 4:20 sample (help·info)
12. "The Tourist" – 5:25

• "Paranoid Android", "Karma Police" and "No Surprises" were released as singles. Each single's UK release was in two parts (CDs), each containing different B-sides. "Airbag" was not a single, but was released as the lead track of the 1998 Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP, a compilation of many of these OK Computer B-sides.
• "Let Down", "Lucky", and "Climbing Up the Walls" were released either as limited edition singles or promos. The single release of "Lucky" came almost two years before the rest of the album, as it was originally recorded for War Child's 1995 charity compilation, The Help Album. "Let Down" was originally planned as a follow-up single to "Paranoid Android". It was replaced with "Karma Police" when a music video made for "Let Down" was deemed unsatisfactory; the song was, however, released to radio stations in some countries. The "Climbing Up the Walls" promo featured remixes of the song by Zero 7 and Fila Brasilia.

[edit] Track information

• "Airbag" was based on singer Thom Yorke's distrust in mechanised transport, brought on by a car accident that Yorke experienced in 1987 with his girlfriend at the time. Thom was unharmed but his girlfriend suffered whiplash; the song was originally titled "Last Night an Airbag Saved My Life", a play on "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life", a song by Indeep.^[16] The song contains sleigh bells, and the guitar riff is doubled on a cello.
• "Paranoid Android", a reference to the depressed robot Marvin from Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is an amalgamation of three songs, inspired by the The Beatles song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", where three songs are similarly blended together. In an earlier form the song ended with a long organ solo, and the final version makes use of mellotron, earning comparisons to 1970s progressive rock. Some of the lyrics were written after Yorke went to a Los Angeles bar and saw a high woman screaming after another patron accidentally spilled a drink on her, becoming the "kicking squealing gucci little piggy" of the song.
• "Subterranean Homesick Alien" is a play on the title of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues".^[16] It was written by Thom after his car stalled in the middle of a dirt track. He also based some of the lyrics on an essay he wrote in school describing what would happen if an alien landed in your garden.^[23]
• "Exit Music (For a Film)" appeared in the end credits of Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet film, but Thom asked for it to be left off the film's soundtrack album because it was being saved for the band's own album. Yorke had originally tried to write lyrics using only Shakespeare's actual text from the play, before settling on allusive lyrics.^[16]
• "Let Down" was recorded early in the morning in a ballroom. The song contains several guitar parts playing at the same time in different time signatures. It was originally not on the track list of the album, but earned its place as it was felt to be perfect following Exit Music. A video made for the song, said to include collages similar to the album cover, and slow motion footage of the band performing, was deemed not suitable for release.
• The ending sound of "Karma Police" comes from a tape delay machine that distorted the sound when the repeat time is shortened and the feedback is placed at 100%. This effect, made by guitarist Ed O'Brien, achieves the "crashing" machine sound. The piano riff of the song has been noted for its similarities to the Beatles' song "Sexy Sadie".
• "Fitter Happier" is 'sung' by a computer voice similar to the voice Stephen Hawking's computer uses. However, it is in fact that of the default voice for MacinTalk Pro spoken text software on Apple Computer's Power Macintosh. Thom wrote the lyrics originally planning to sing them himself, but said the effect was strangely more emotional when he tried having them "read" by the computer.^[16] This song contains one of the first piano parts in a Radiohead song written by Thom Yorke, as Yorke was just beginning to play piano at the time.
• "Electioneering" has been suspected of being guitarist Jonny Greenwood's least favoured on the album. He said in 1998, "Seems like there's always a song or two on every album, which is kind of a dead end, and isn't going anywhere. I don't know about OK Computer, but I'm starting to think that 'Electioneering' is the end of something for us. It's alright, but there's nothing to come after it, that's it, maybe."^[24] The band have never played the song live since the tours supporting OK Computer. Thom Yorke says this song was written as if done by "a preacher in front of a set of microphones", and Ed O'Brien said that the message is about how the band was required to go out and sell their albums like a politician has to sell himself.^[16]
• "Climbing Up the Walls" was the first track the band had recorded that they believed to be "scary". The lyrics and idea of the song originally came from Yorke's experience as an orderly in a mental hospital. The string arrangement on the song was by guitarist Jonny Greenwood, and was Greenwood's first such arrangement on a Radiohead album. The climax of the song includes sixteen violinists, each tuned half a step apart.
• An early form of "No Surprises" entitled "No Surprises, Please", featured completely different lyrics, except for the titular chorus, which spoke of a man waiting for his girlfriend. This is a stark contrast to the later lyrics which deal with wanting to lead a "quiet life". One of the main instruments in the song is a glockenspiel.
• "Lucky" evolved from Ed experimenting with his effects pedal line up at the sound check for a concert in Japan, where he was strumming the strings above the nut. This sound can be heard on the intro to "Lucky". The song was originally recorded for Help, a charity project released in 1995. It was one of the first songs the band had recorded with producer Nigel Godrich, and only an inability to improve on the song saw it released on the album in identical form.
• "The Tourist" was written by Jonny^[16] while sitting in a park in Paris watching tourists quickly moving and not acknowledging the beautiful place around them. It was a last minute addition as the album's final track,^[23] with some band members having wanted "No Surprises" to end the album.

[edit] Release history

OK Computer was released in various countries in 1997.

Country	Date	Label	Format	Catalogue numbers
United Kingdom	June 16, 1997	Parlophone	CD	7243 8 55229 2 5
United States	July 1, 1997	Capitol Records	CD	7243 8 55229 2 5

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Making OK Computer: quotes by band members on the process
• The album, song by song: 1997 interview with the band
• OK Computer and 1984 Comparison Thesis (archived from defunct fan site Follow Me Around)

v • d • e Radiohead
Thom Yorke • Jonny Greenwood • Ed O'Brien • Colin Greenwood • Phil Selway
Discography
Albums: Pablo Honey • The Bends • OK Computer • Kid A • Amnesiac • Hail to the Thief • TBA
EPs: Manic Hedgehog • Drill • Itch • My Iron Lung • No Surprises/Running from Demons • Airbag/How Am I Driving? • I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings • COM LAG
Singles: "Creep" • "Anyone Can Play Guitar" • "Pop Is Dead" • "Stop Whispering" • "My Iron Lung" • "High and Dry"/"Planet Telex" • "Fake Plastic Trees" • "Just" • "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" • "Lucky" • "Paranoid Android" • "Karma Police" • "No Surprises" • "Pyramid Song" • "Knives Out" • "There There" • "Go to Sleep" • "2 + 2 = 5"
DVDs: Live at the Astoria • 7 Television Commercials • Meeting People Is Easy • The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time
Related articles
Nigel Godrich • Stanley Donwood • Dead Air Space • Covers of Radiohead songs • Rare songs • Trivia
Other projects
Bodysong • The Eraser • Spitting Feathers
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