Music Review: Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’ Album More Relevant than Ever

Something tells me that “Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments” would not have been a great title for Radiohead’s third album. It was apparently one in consideration, along with the slightly more appropriate “Ones and Zeroes,” referring to the binary language on which computers run. But the alternative-rock band went with something else: “OK Computer,” borrowed from a radio adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke considers it a “a really resigned, terrified phrase” that “refers to embracing the future, it refers to being terrified of the future, of our future, of everyone else’s. It’s to do with standing in a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines and computers and so on . . . and the sound it makes.”

There are a lot of machines and a lot of sounds on OK Computer, released 25 years ago this month. Fresh off the well-received alt-rock opus The Bends, Radiohead had already begun to transcend (to the band, and to Yorke especially) the oppressively omnipresent legacy of its first hit, “Creep.” But instead of making something like its last record, Radiohead attempted, in a somewhat paradoxical move that helps to define the album’s many tensions, to use the best production techniques and technology available in 1997 to capture a mood of intense, technology-driven unease. As Tim Footman wrote, “The musicians and producer are delighting in the sonic possibilities of modern technology; the singer, meanwhile, is railing against its social, moral, and psychological impact.” The result was an unexpectedly successful album — drummer Philip Selway said the record company thought what ended up being a multiplatinum album would be “commercial suicide” — that sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday, and that anticipated the social and cultural anxieties of today.

About the Author

Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

Something tells me that “Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments” would not have been a great title for Radiohead’s third album. It was apparently one in consideration, along with the slightly more appropriate “Ones and Zeroes,” referring to the binary language on which computers run. But the alternative-rock band went with something else: “OK Computer,” borrowed from a radio adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke considers it a “a really resigned, terrified phrase” that “refers to embracing the future, it refers to being terrified of the future, of our future, of everyone else’s. It’s to do with standing in a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines and computers and so on . . . and the sound it makes.”

There are a lot of machines and a lot of sounds on OK Computer, released 25 years ago this month. Fresh off the well-received alt-rock opus The Bends, Radiohead had already begun to transcend (to the band, and to Yorke especially) the oppressively omnipresent legacy of its first hit, “Creep.” But instead of making something like its last record, Radiohead attempted, in a somewhat paradoxical move that helps to define the album’s many tensions, to use the best production techniques and technology available in 1997 to capture a mood of intense, technology-driven unease. As Tim Footman wrote, “The musicians and producer are delighting in the sonic possibilities of modern technology; the singer, meanwhile, is railing against its social, moral, and psychological impact.” The result was an unexpectedly successful album — drummer Philip Selway said the record company thought what ended up being a multiplatinum album would be “commercial suicide” — that sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday, and that anticipated the social and cultural anxieties of today.