Fresh off the global success of their sophomore album The Bends, a young group of self-confessed nerds called Radiohead retreated to a 16th-century haunted mansion in the English countryside to plan their next move. After six months, the result was a generation-defining reaction against the music that dominated the mainstream in 1997. Thus, a new masterpiece OK Computer was born.
OK Computer is frequently called one of the best albums of all time. To coincide with the 20th anniversary of their iconic record, Radiohead released a remastered edition featuring eight B-sides and three previously unreleased studio tracks under the title OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017 (also stylised as OKNOTOK). The digital and CD release dropped on Friday, June 23.
The original album defied the expectations of fans and Radiohead’s label, becoming an immediate success. The band embarked on a journey to push the limits of genres and experiment with digital sounds, sample chopping, and prog rock and jazz influences, while its leader Thom Yorke’s struggled with anxiety and paranoia (a culmination of spending nearly four years straight in a tour bus).
OK Computer proved durable over two decades and remains as relevant as ever. Yorke’s lyrics and vocal delivery captured an unsettling existentialism at a time when technology was threatening to take over the world and the turn of the millennium had people literally predicting the apocalypse.
It’s now clear that this is not the only shape the album could’ve taken. The OKNOTOK package reveals an interesting blueprint for what might have been. Their first two albums Pablo Honey (1993) and The Bends (1995) established Radiohead as a solid rock band perfectly suited to the introspective melancholy and self-loathing of the grunge movement of the early ’90s. The B-sides featured on OKNOTOK, such as “Lift” and “Palo Alto,” would have put them back into that pigeonhole.
In what would become the band’s hallmark, Radiohead’s refusal to conform also led them to reject the genre of Britpop that was dominating the British charts and they were often lumped in with. As Yorke explained to Rolling Stone:
The whole Britpop thing made me fucking angry…I hated it. It was backwards-looking, and I didn’t want any part of it.
The passion for advancing pop music past genre and trend carries over into Yorke’s writing. Read today, the lyrics sound prophetic; Yorke’s words of warning about the onslaught of technology in modern society resonate with the ubiquity of the internet today, but were written in a time long before smartphones and social media.
On “Paranoid Android”, Generation X’s answer to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Yorke sings:
That’s it, sir, you’re leaving
The crackle of pigskin
The dust and the screaming
The yuppies networking
The panic, the vomit
The existential angst and sonic turmoil of “Paranoid Android” made for the unlikeliest smash hit of 1997. With its 6-minute surrealist cartoon music video, the song helped Radiohead established themselves as an unusual and uncompromising force to be reckoned with.
Radiohead fans are notoriously obsessive. While OK Computer is treated with near religious reverence for its musical and lyrical themes, Yorke explained that much of the album was simply his way of dealing with life as a touring musician. Fear of isolation and disconnection were threatening his personal life, and technology became his vehicle for those feelings.
The cold, monotone electronic voice of Microsoft Sam is featured on the interlude track “Fitter Happier,” a vaguely Orwellian manifesto describing life as a citizen in an urban, technological dystopia. Most distressingly, the lyrics build to a climax of describing mankind as nothing more than a laboratory animal:
Calm
Fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig in a cage on antibiotics
This bleak view of mankind’s future also figures into Radiohead’s penchant for protest music and politics. “Electioneering” endures as a track describing the political elite’s exploitation of the ruled class. In 1997, Tony Blair was elected as a new center-left leader of the U.K., moving away from the Labour Party’s traditional working class base. The political disillusionment at the time was merely a foreshadowing of the hysterical pitch U.K. politics — let alone global politics — has reached in 2017.
With mass surveillance, bank collapses, whistleblowers, and fear of terrorism being exploited for political gain, our era is perfectly suited for a Radiohead soundtrack.
Riot shields, voodoo economics
It’s just business, cattle prods and the I.M.F
I trust I can rely on your vote
Part of the band’s politics has also been active engagement in climate change. They’ve long been advocates of sustainable practices (their official website is named w.a.s.t.e. headquarters, and they have released merchandise made entirely of recycled plastic. The band’s concern for the planet reflects the political discourse more than 20 years later.
On the B-side “Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2),” Yorke also warns of society’s obsession with plastic, while ironically reminding us not to worry about our actions.
Leukemia, schizophrenia, polyethylene
There is no significant risk to your health
She used to be beautiful once as well
The rest of the B-sides reveal a less grandiose, more human band. “I Promise” is a joyfully melancholy track, and OKNOTOK’s final track “How I Made My Millions” is a stripped-back piano ballad with Yorke singing mournfully about loss in love.
Ultimately, it’s this human connection that has allowed OK Computer to endure. Everyone feels alienated from time to time, and to have a soundtrack for those thoughts and emotions is a uniquely precious experience. Yorke was merely exploring and sharing those feelings he had experienced since childhood but intensified as he grew older: “Maybe a lot of other people feel the same way, but I’m not about to run up and down the street asking everybody if they’re as lonely as I am,” he said.
OK Computer changed the landscape of music. Its blend of digital and acoustic instrumentation, cerebral aspirations leading to commercial and critical success, and influence on future generations of artists are unmissable. Impressively, every subsequent Radiohead album has been just as different and unpredictable as its predecessor.
Radiohead’s continual reinvention, and proven success after more than twenty years as a group is proof that their title as musical prophets/savior-figures may not be entirely unfounded. After conquering their headlining set at Coachella, and ongoing global tour in support of their ninth album, there is no need to slow down in the slightest for Radiohead.
This article was originally published on Genius.com, June 29, 2017.
