So why is Radiohead’s OK Computer on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
MMelancholy and gorgeous, yearning and strange.
Different descriptions and opinions come to mind every time I throw OK Computer on, but overall I’m always convinced that it’s a weird modern masterpiece.
“Karma Police” is arguably the best single Radiohead has produced to date, a song that manages to be slightly unsettling yet deeply compelling at the same time, a slow rock song broiling with anxiety and soul searching.
Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He’s like a detuned radio
Doing a little digging into the song’s meaning yielded this absolute gem of a paragraph and quote from Thom Yorke (via Wikipedia):
The title lyric originates from an inside joke; the members of Radiohead would threaten to call the “karma police” if someone did something bad. Yorke said the song was about stress and “having people looking at you in that certain [malicious] way”. He said: “It’s for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!”
As I listen to the opening section of “Paranoid Android,” I wonder if there’s ever been another band or musical outfit that has produced better “sad yet exciting” music (Pink Floyd? Beethoven? I’m open to suggestions here).
In any event, it’s incredible how this six and a half minute song evolves, kind of coiling in on itself until it slams you with a crushing guitar riff and hard rock section (that reminds us that this is the band that broke out to mainstream audiences with “Creep”).
And then there’s that deeply pleasing, ethereal vocal section that comes next, like we’re emerging out of some paranoid and frantic state to some new place, some new understanding.
Lyrically, “Paranoid Android” is deceptively simple, with lines like I may be paranoid, but I’m not an android. What are we to make of it? Whatever we wish, which is often the case with songs that I listen to multiple times and choose to invest in.
Here’s a really good if strictly faithful cover version of “Paranoid Android” by Weezer. If nothing else, it’s fun to hear Rivers Cuomo’s voice on lead vocals.
If OK Computer is a forward leaning album in terms of highlighting fears and concerns about how technology and modern society can breed alienation, loneliness, distrust, and societal breakdown, the purposely off putting “Fitter Happier” is just as prescient and relevant in 2025 as it was in 1997.
But Radiohead music can also often be rich and beautiful and even warm in tone. “Subterranean Homesick Alien” (a song title that plays off of Bob Dylan’s iconic “Subterranean Homesick Blues”) is a great example, and ties to work the band would later produce on albums including Kid A (#63 of best 1,000 albums ever) and In Rainbows (#549).
And the gorgeous “No Surprises” – which shows that Radiohead holds the ability to craft masterful pop songs among its many talents – interestingly is OK Computer’s most popular song by way of Spotify (nearly one billion plays as of this writing).
There’s a hopefulness to the sound and tone of “No Surprises,” which if nothing else is something for us to hold onto as the future hurls at us ever more quickly.
Some stats & info about Radiohead – OK Computer
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, British Bands, Britpop, Alternative Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #42
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was OK Computer released? 1997
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #63 out of 1,000
Radiohead’s OK Computer on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Radiohead’s OK Computer that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
This is what you get when you mess with us.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.