In the album’s opening track, “Airbag,” a song that Thom Yorke states was inspired by a traumatic car accident he experienced in 1987, there’s a conscious attempt to imitate acclaimed producer and performer DJ Shadow. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer.”īut it’s not just the musical prowess or far-gazing vision of Miles Davis that sets the stage for OK Computer. Yorke described Bitches Brew as possessing an “incredibly dense and terrifying sound,” and what he found inspiring about the album was its concept of “…building something up and watching it fall apart, that’s the beauty of it. According to Yorke, the inspiration for the nucleus of OK Computer was found in the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, an avant garde jazz album that continued Davis’s experimentation with electronic music and that went on to became an early progenitor of the jazz rock genre. It’s a realm filled with senselessness and uncertainty and a complete lack of a guarantee that any of it is going to work out. This all-around embracing of modern technology in OK Computer’s execution would serve to define the future of Radiohead’s sound for years to come.įrom the initial, thunderclap grind of guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s guitar on OK Computer’s opening track, “Airbag,” introduced by lead singer Thom Yorke’s apocalyptic lyrics “The next world war / Jackknifed juggernaut / I am born again,” to the closing, ghostly feel of the album’s final track, “The Tourist,” where Yorke’s weary and hollow voice pleads “Hey man, slow down / Slow down / Idiot, slow down / Slow down,” the listener is treated to a sonic tour de force, a musical journey into the depths of a world run amok. Radiohead made an intentional choice to distance OK Computer’s style and sound from their previous, introspective and guitar-heavy albums, and provided a DIY-electronica feel to their third album, replete with programmed drums, electronic keyboards, and instrumental samplings. Gone is the musical polish that produced such pop radio-friendly singles as “High and Dry,” “Fake Plastic Trees,” or the commercially successful mega-single “Creep.” In its place are twelve of the most uncannily appealing songs ever fashioned, songs that repeatedly lob into the listeners mindset chaotic images of riot police, technology, death, globalism, greed, tormented lives, extraterrestrials, and the folly of modern life. Upon listening to OK Computer, the stylistic fragments of their previous albums Pablo Honey and The Bends, albums that precipitated Radiohead’s rise in popularity, appear to be removed. In subsequent years, OK Computer has seen its popularity, relevance and influence grow to almost legendary proportions, and to this day, it’s hard to find a person who hasn’t felt the potency, acumen or downright panicky angst that songs like “Paranoid Android,” “Lucky,” “Karma Police,” or “No Surprises” incite. However, despite such criticism and lowered expectations, OK Computer went on to debut at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number twenty one on the Billboard 200, the English alt rockers top American entry up to that point. When released, OK Computer received widespread critical acclaim, despite its record label “EMI” and its sundry distributors finding the album to feel “uncommercial,” which was, in part, the very definition of what Radiohead was aiming for with their third album. Considering the melancholic complexion of OK Computer twenty years after its release, one has to wonder if Thom Yorke and company didn’t have access to a crystal ball, as its an album that depicts an emotionless world overwhelmed by widespread consumerism, and overshadowed by political turmoil and social narcissism, creating a vibe that sadly, feels uncannily familiar to our current times. That album, OK Computer, has been widely praised as a timeless work of art, a musical compilation comprising twelve influential and genre-shifting tracks that, looking back, seem almost prophetic in nature. Twenty years ago, legendary rockers Radiohead released an album that to this day still sounds as innovative and pertinent as when it was first released in the United States on June 1st, 1997. Twenty years after its release, Radiohead’s seminal album OK Computer, with its experimental sound and prophetic visions, continues to strike a resonance with our modern times.
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