OK Computer

OK Computer is the third studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in Japan on 21 May 1997 and in the UK on 16 June 1997. Radiohead self-produced the album with Nigel Godrich, an arrangement they have used for their subsequent albums. Radiohead recorded most of OK Computer in their rehearsal space in Oxfordshire and the historic mansion of St Catherine's Court in Bath in 1996 and early 1997. The band distanced themselves from the guitar-centred, lyrically introspective style of their previous album, The Bends. OK Computer's abstract lyrics, densely layered sound and eclectic influences laid the groundwork for Radiohead's later, more experimental work.

OK Computer
Studio album by
Radiohead
Released21 May 1997 (1997-05-21)
Recorded
  • 4 September 1995 ("Lucky")
  • July 1996 – March 1997
Studio
  • Canned Applause, Didcot, England
  • St Catherine's Court, Bath, England
Genre
Length53:21
Label
Producer
  • Nigel Godrich
  • Radiohead
Radiohead chronology
The Bends
(1995)		 OK Computer
(1997)		 No Surprises/Running from Demons
(1997)
Singles from OK Computer
  1. "Paranoid Android"
    Released: 26 May 1997
  2. "Karma Police"
    Released: 25 August 1997
  3. "Lucky"
    Released: December 1997 (FR)
  4. "No Surprises"
    Released: 12 January 1998

The album's lyrics depict a world fraught with rampant consumerism, social alienation, emotional isolation and political malaise; in this capacity, OK Computer has been said to have prescient insight into the mood of 21st-century life. The band used unconventional production techniques, including natural reverberation through recording on a staircase, and no audio separation. Strings were recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. Guitarist Ed O'Brien estimated that 80 per cent of the album was recorded live.

Despite lowered sales estimates by EMI, who deemed the record uncommercial and difficult to market, OK Computer reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and debuted at number 21 on the Billboard 200, Radiohead's highest album entry on the US charts at the time, and was soon certified 5× platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US. The songs "Paranoid Android", "Karma Police", "Lucky" and "No Surprises" were released as singles. The album expanded Radiohead's international popularity and has sold at least 7.8 million units worldwide. A remastered version with additional tracks, OKNOTOK 1997 2017, was released in 2017, marking the album's twentieth anniversary. In 2019, in response to an internet leak, Radiohead released MiniDiscs [Hacked], comprising hours of demos, rehearsals, live performances and other material.

OK Computer received critical acclaim and has been cited by listeners, critics and musicians as one of the greatest albums of all time. It was nominated for the Album of the Year and won Best Alternative Music Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards. It was also nominated for Best British Album at the 1998 Brit Awards. The album initiated a stylistic shift in British rock away from Britpop toward melancholic, atmospheric alternative rock that became more prevalent in the next decade. In 2014, it was included by the United States Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Background
Thom Yorke (pictured in 2001) and the band sought a less introspective direction than previous album The Bends.[4][5]

In 1995, Radiohead toured in support of their second album, The Bends (1995). Midway through the tour, Brian Eno commissioned them to contribute a song to The Help Album, a charity compilation organised by War Child; the album was to be recorded over the course of a single day, 4 September 1995, and rush-released that week.[6] Radiohead recorded "Lucky" in five hours with engineer Nigel Godrich, who had engineered on The Bends and produced several Radiohead B-sides.[7] Godrich said of the session: "Those things are the most inspiring, when you do stuff really fast and there's nothing to lose. We left feeling fairly euphoric. So after establishing a bit of a rapport work-wise, I was sort of hoping I would be involved with the next album."[8] Singer Thom Yorke said "Lucky" shaped the nascent sound and mood of their upcoming record:[7] "'Lucky' was indicative of what we wanted to do. It was like the first mark on the wall."[9]

Radiohead found touring stressful and took a break in January 1996.[10] They sought to distance their new material from the introspective style of The Bends. Drummer Philip Selway said: "There was an awful lot of soul-searching [on The Bends]. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring."[4] Yorke said he did not want to do "another miserable, morbid and negative record", and was "writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."[5]

The critical and commercial success of The Bends gave Radiohead the confidence to self-produce their third album.[7] Their label Parlophone gave them a £100,000 budget for recording equipment.[11][12] Guitarist Jonny Greenwood said "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".[13] According to guitarist Ed O'Brien, "Everyone said, 'You'll sell six or seven million if you bring out The Bends Pt 2,' and we're like, 'We'll kick against that and do the opposite'."[14] A number of producers, including major figures such as R.E.M. producer Scott Litt, were suggested,[15] but the band were encouraged by their sessions with Godrich.[16] They consulted him for advice on what equipment to use,[17] and prepared for the sessions by buying their own equipment, including a plate reverberator purchased from songwriter Jona Lewie.[7] Although Godrich had sought to focus his work on electronic dance music,[18] he outgrew his role as advisor and became the album's co-producer.[17]

Recording

In early 1996, Radiohead recorded demos for their third album at Chipping Norton Recording Studios, Oxford.[19] In July, they began rehearsing and recording in their Canned Applause studio, a converted shed near Didcot, Oxfordshire.[20] Even without the deadline that contributed to the stress of The Bends,[21] the band had difficulties, which Selway blamed on their choice to self-produce: "We're jumping from song to song, and when we started to run out of ideas, we'd move on to a new song ... The stupid thing was that we were nearly finished when we'd move on, because so much work had gone into them."[22]

The members worked with nearly equal roles in the production and formation of the music, though Yorke was still firmly "the loudest voice", according to O'Brien.[23] Selway said "we give each other an awful lot of space to develop our parts, but at the same time we are all very critical about what the other person is doing."[22] Godrich's role as co-producer was part collaborator, part managerial outsider. He said that Radiohead "need to have another person outside their unit, especially when they're all playing together, to say when the take goes well ... I take up slack when people aren't taking responsibility—the term producing a record means taking responsibility for the record ... It's my job to ensure that they get the ideas across."[24] Godrich has produced every Radiohead album since, and has been characterised as Radiohead's "sixth member", an allusion to George Martin's nickname as the "fifth Beatle".[25][26][27]

Radiohead decided that Canned Applause was an unsatisfactory recording location, which Yorke attributed to its proximity to the band members' homes, and Jonny Greenwood attributed to its lack of dining and bathroom facilities.[23] The group had nearly completed four songs: "Electioneering", "No Surprises", "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "The Tourist".[28] They took a break from recording to embark on an American tour in 1996, opening for Alanis Morissette, performing early versions of several new songs.[29]

During the tour, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann commissioned Radiohead to write a song for his upcoming film Romeo + Juliet and gave them the final 30 minutes of the film. Yorke said: "When we saw the scene in which Claire Danes holds the Colt .45 against her head, we started working on the song immediately."[30] Soon afterwards, the band wrote and recorded "Exit Music (For a Film)"; the track plays over the film's end credits but was excluded from the soundtrack album at the band's request.[31] The song helped shape the direction of the rest of the album; Yorke said it "was the first performance we'd ever recorded where every note of it made my head spin—something I was proud of, something I could turn up really, really loud and not wince at any moment."[7]

Most of OK Computer was recorded between September and October 1996 at St Catherine's Court, a rural mansion near Bath, Somerset.

Radiohead resumed recording in September 1996 at St Catherine's Court, a historic mansion near Bath owned by the actress Jane Seymour.[32] It was unoccupied but sometimes used for corporate functions.[33] The change of setting marked an important transition in the recording process. Greenwood, comparing the mansion to previous studio settings, said it "was less like a laboratory experiment, which is what being in a studio is usually like, and more about a group of people making their first record together".[33]

The band made extensive use of the different rooms and acoustics in the house. The vocals on "Exit Music (For a Film)" feature natural reverberation achieved by recording on a stone staircase, and "Let Down" was recorded in a ballroom at 3 a.m.[34] Isolation allowed the band to work at a different pace, with more flexible and spontaneous working hours. O'Brien said that "the biggest pressure was actually completing [the recording]. 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."[35] Yorke was satisfied with the recordings made at the location, and enjoyed working without audio separation, meaning that instruments were not overdubbed separately.[36] O'Brien estimated that 80 per cent of the album was recorded live,[33][36] and said: "I hate doing overdubs, because it just doesn't feel natural. ... Something special happens when you're playing live; a lot of it is just looking at one another and knowing there are four other people making it happen."[36][37] Many of Yorke's vocals were first takes; he felt that if he made other attempts he would "start to think about it and it would sound really lame".[38]

Radiohead returned to Canned Applause in October for rehearsals,[39] and completed most of OK Computer in further sessions at St. Catherine's Court. By Christmas, they had narrowed the track listing to 14 songs.[40] The strings were recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London in January 1997. The album was mixed over the next two months at various London studios, then mastered by Chris Blair at Abbey Road.[41] Godrich preferred a quick and "hands-off" approach to mixing, and said: "I feel like I get too into it. I start fiddling with things and I fuck it up ... I generally take about half a day to do a mix. If it's any longer than that, you lose it. The hardest thing is trying to stay fresh, to stay objective."[8]

Music and lyrics

Style and influences
The jazz fusion of Miles Davis (top, 1986) and political writings of Noam Chomsky (bottom, in 2005) influenced OK Computer.

Yorke said that the starting point for the record was the "incredibly dense and terrifying sound" of Bitches Brew, the 1970 avant-garde jazz fusion album by Miles Davis.[42] He described the sound of Bitches Brew to Q: "It was building something up and watching it fall apart, that's the beauty of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer."[38] Yorke identified "I'll Wear It Proudly" by Elvis Costello, "Fall on Me" by R.E.M., "Dress" by PJ Harvey and "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles as particularly influential on his songwriting.[7] Radiohead drew further inspiration from the recording style of film soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone and the krautrock band Can, musicians Yorke described as "abusing the recording process".[7] Jonny Greenwood described OK Computer as a product of being "in love with all these brilliant records ... trying to recreate them, and missing".[43]

According to Yorke, Radiohead hoped to achieve 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".[42] They expanded their instrumentation to include electric piano, Mellotron, cello and other strings, glockenspiel and electronic effects. Jonny Greenwood summarised the exploratory approach as "when we've got what we suspect to be an amazing song, but nobody knows what they're gonna play on it."[44] Spin characterised OK Computer as sounding like "a DIY electronica album made with guitars".[45]

Critics suggested a stylistic debt to 1970s progressive rock, an influence that Radiohead have disavowed.[46][47] According to Andy Greene in Rolling Stone, Radiohead "were collectively hostile to seventies progressive rock ... but that didn't stop them from reinventing prog from scratch on OK Computer, particularly on the six-and-a-half-minute 'Paranoid Android'."[29] Tom Hull believed the album was "still prog, but may just be because rock has so thoroughly enveloped musical storytelling that this sort of thing has become inevitable."[48] Writing in 2017, The New Yorker's Kelefa Sanneh said OK Computer "was profoundly prog: grand and dystopian, with a lead single that was more than six minutes long".[46]

Lyrics

The album's lyrics, written by Yorke, are more abstract compared to his personal, emotional lyrics for The Bends. Critic Alex Ross said the lyrics "seemed a mixture of overheard conversations, techno-speak, and fragments of a harsh diary" with "images of riot police at political rallies, anguished lives in tidy suburbs, yuppies freaking out, sympathetic aliens gliding overhead."[49] Recurring themes include transport, technology, insanity, death, modern British life, globalisation and anti-capitalism.[50] Yorke said: "On this album, the outside world became all there was ... I'm just taking Polaroids of things around me moving too fast."[51] He told Q: "It was like there's a secret camera in a room and it's watching the character who walks in—a different character for each song. The camera's not quite me. It's neutral, emotionless. But not emotionless at all. In fact, the very opposite."[52] Yorke also drew inspiration from books, including Noam Chomsky's political writing,[53] Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton's The State We're In, Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! and Philip K. Dick's VALIS.[54]

The songs of OK Computer do not have a coherent narrative, and the album's lyrics are generally considered abstract or oblique. Nonetheless, many musical critics, journalists, and scholars consider the album to be a concept album or song cycle, or have analysed it as a concept album, noting its strong thematic cohesion, aesthetic unity, and the structural logic of the song sequencing.[nb 1] Although the songs share common themes, Radiohead have said they do not consider OK Computer a concept album and did not intend to link the songs through a narrative or unifying concept while it was being written.[33][55][56] Jonny Greenwood said: "I think one album title and one computer voice do not make a concept album. That's a bit of a red herring."[57] However, the band intended the album to be heard as a whole, and spent two weeks ordering the track list. O'Brien said: "The context of each song is really important ... It's not a concept album but there is a continuity there."[55]

Tracks 1–6

The opening track, "Airbag", is underpinned by a beat built from a seconds-long recording of Selway's drumming. The band sampled the drum track with a sampler and edited it with a Macintosh computer, inspired by the music of DJ Shadow, but admitted to making approximations in emulating Shadow's style due to their programming inexperience.[58][59] The bassline stops and starts unexpectedly, achieving an effect similar to 1970s dub.[60] The song's references to automobile crashes and reincarnation were inspired by a magazine article titled "An Airbag Saved My Life" and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yorke wrote "Airbag" about the illusion of safety offered by modern transit, and "the idea that whenever you go out on the road you could be killed".[52] The BBC wrote about the influence of J. G. Ballard, especially his 1973 novel Crash, on the lyrics.[61] Music journalist Tim Footman noted that the song's technical innovations and lyrical concerns demonstrated the "key paradox" of the album: "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 ... It's a contradiction mirrored in the culture clash of the music, with the 'real' guitars negotiating an uneasy stand-off with the hacked-up, processed drums."[62]

Split into four sections with an overall running time of 6:23, "Paranoid Android" is among the band's longest songs. The unconventional structure was inspired by the Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", which also eschew a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure.[63] Its musical style was also inspired by the music of the Pixies.[64] The song was written by Yorke after an unpleasant night at a Los Angeles bar, where he saw a woman react violently after someone spilled a drink on her.[52] Its title and lyrics are a reference to Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.[64]

The use of electric keyboards in "Subterranean Homesick Alien" is an example of the band's attempts to emulate the atmosphere of Bitches Brew.[43][65] Its title references the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", and the lyrics describe an isolated narrator who fantasises about being abducted by extraterrestrials. The narrator speculates that, upon returning to Earth, his friends would not believe his story and he would remain a misfit.[66] The lyrics were inspired by an assignment from Yorke's time at Abingdon School to write a piece of "Martian poetry", a British literary movement that humorously recontextualises mundane aspects of human life from an alien perspective.[67]

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet inspired the lyrics for "Exit Music (For a Film)".[64] Initially Yorke wanted to work lines from the play into the song, but the final draft of the lyrics became a broad summary of the narrative.[31] He said: "I saw the Zeffirelli version when I was 13 and I cried my eyes out, because I couldn't understand why, the morning after they shagged, they didn't just run away. It's a song for two people who should run away before all the bad stuff starts."[68] Yorke compared the opening of the song, which mostly features his singing paired with acoustic guitar, to Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison.[69] Mellotron choir and other electronic voices are used throughout the track.[70] The song climaxes with the entrance of drums[70] and distorted bass run through a fuzz pedal.[26] The climactic portion of the song is an attempt to emulate the sound of trip hop group Portishead, but in a style that bass player Colin Greenwood called more "stilted and leaden and mechanical".[71] The song concludes by fading back to Yorke's voice, acoustic guitar and Mellotron.[31]

"Let Down" contains multilayered arpeggiated guitars and electric piano. Jonny Greenwood plays his guitar part in a different time signature to the other instruments.[72] O'Brien said the song was influenced by Phil Spector, a producer and songwriter best known for his reverberating "Wall of Sound" recording techniques.[58] The lyrics, Yorke said, are about a fear of being trapped,[68] and "about that feeling that you get when you're in transit but you're not in control of it—you just go past thousands of places and thousands of people and you're completely removed from it".[64] Of the line "Don't get sentimental / It always ends up drivel", Yorke said: "Sentimentality is being emotional for the sake of it. We're bombarded with sentiment, people emoting. That's the Let Down. Feeling every emotion is fake. Or rather every emotion is on the same plane whether it's a car advert or a pop song."[38] Yorke felt that scepticism of emotion was characteristic of Generation X and that it had informed the band's approach to the album.[73]

"Karma Police" has two main verses that alternate with a subdued break, followed by a different ending section.[74] The verses centre around acoustic guitar and piano,[74] with a chord progression indebted to the Beatles' "Sexy Sadie".[75][76][77] Starting at 2:34, the song transitions into an orchestrated section with the repeated line "For a minute there, I lost myself".[74] It ends with guitarist Ed O'Brien generating feedback using a delay effect.[58][76] The title and lyrics to "Karma Police" originate from an in-joke during The Bends tour; Jonny Greenwood said "whenever someone was behaving in a particularly shitty way, we'd say 'The karma police will catch up with him sooner or later.'"[64]

Tracks 7–12
A 1990s Macintosh LC II system. Radiohead used the synthesised voice of "Fred", included with older Macintosh software, to recite the lyrics of "Fitter Happier".[20]

"Fitter Happier" is a short musique concrète track that consists of sampled musical and background sound and spoken-word lyrics recited by "Fred",[20] a synthesised voice from the Macintosh SimpleText application.[78] Yorke wrote the lyrics "in ten minutes" after a period of writer's block while the rest of the band were playing.[68] He described the words as a checklist of slogans for the 1990s; he considered it "the most upsetting thing I've ever written",[64] and said it was "liberating" to give the words to a neutral-sounding computer voice.[68] Among the samples in the background is a loop from the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor.[78] The band considered using "Fitter Happier" as the album's opening track, but decided the effect was off-putting.[35]

Steve Lowe called the song "penetrating surgery on pseudo-meaningful corporations' lifestyles" with "a repugnance for prevailing yuppified social values".[75] Among the loosely connected imagery of the lyrics, Footman identified the song's subject as "the materially comfortable, morally empty embodiment of modern, Western humanity, half-salaryman, half-Stepford Wife, destined for the metaphorical farrowing crate, propped up on Prozac, Viagra and anything else his insurance plan can cover."[79] Sam Steele called the lyrics "a stream of received imagery: scraps of media information, interspersed with lifestyle ad slogans and private prayers for a healthier existence. It is the hum of a world buzzing with words, one of the messages seeming to be that we live in such a synthetic universe we have grown unable to detect reality from artifice."[80]

"Electioneering", featuring a cowbell and a distorted guitar solo, is the album's most rock-oriented track and one of the heaviest songs Radiohead has recorded.[81] It has been compared to Radiohead's earlier style on Pablo Honey.[78][82] The cynical "Electioneering" is the album's most directly political song,[83][84] with lyrics inspired by the Poll Tax Riots.[68] The song was also inspired by Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, a book analysing contemporary mass media under the propaganda model.[53] Yorke likened its lyrics, which focus on political and artistic compromise, to "a preacher ranting in front of a bank of microphones".[55][85] Regarding its oblique political references, Yorke said, "What can you say about the IMF, or politicians? Or people selling arms to African countries, employing slave labour or whatever. What can you say? You just write down 'Cattle prods and the IMF' and people who know, know."[7] O'Brien said the song was about the promotional cycle of touring: "After a while you feel like a politician who has to kiss babies and shake hands all day long."[30]

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki (pictured) inspired the string arrangement on "Climbing Up the Walls".

"Climbing Up the Walls" – described by Melody Maker as "monumental chaos"[86] – is layered with a string section, ambient noise and repetitive, metallic percussion. The string section, composed by Jonny Greenwood and written for 16 instruments, was inspired by modern classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. Greenwood said, "I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn't sound like 'Eleanor Rigby', which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years."[55] Select described Yorke's distraught vocals and the atonal strings as "Thom's voice dissolving into a fearful, blood-clotted scream as Jonny whips the sound of a million dying elephants into a crescendo".[43] For the lyrics, Yorke drew from his time as an orderly in a mental hospital during the Care in the Community policy of deinstitutionalising mental health patients, and a New York Times article about serial killers.[30] He said:

This is about the unspeakable. Literally skull-crushing. I used to work in a mental hospital around the time that Care in the Community started, and we all just knew what was going to happen. And it's one of the scariest things to happen in this country, because a lot of them weren't just harmless ... It was hailing violently when we recorded this. It seemed to add to the mood.[68]

"No Surprises", recorded in a single take,[87] is arranged with electric guitar (inspired by the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice"),[88] acoustic guitar, glockenspiel and vocal harmonies.[89] The band strove to replicate the mood of Louis Armstrong's 1968 recording of "What a Wonderful World" and the soul music of Marvin Gaye.[30] Yorke identified the subject of the song as "someone who's trying hard to keep it together but can't".[7] The lyrics seem to portray a suicide[80] or an unfulfilling life, and dissatisfaction with contemporary social and political order.[90] Some lines refer to rural[91] or suburban imagery.[54] One of the key metaphors in the song is the opening line, "a heart that's full up like a landfill"; according to Yorke, the song is a "fucked-up nursery rhyme" that "stems from my unhealthy obsession of what to do with plastic boxes and plastic bottles ... All this stuff is getting buried, the debris of our lives. It doesn't rot, it just stays there. That's how we deal, that's how I deal with stuff, I bury it."[92] The song's gentle mood contrasts sharply with its harsh lyrics;[93][94] Steele said, "even when the subject is suicide ... O'Brien's guitar is as soothing as balm on a red-raw psyche, the song rendered like a bittersweet child's prayer."[80]

"Lucky" was inspired by the Bosnian War. Sam Taylor said it was "the one track on [The Help Album] to capture the sombre terror of the conflict", and that its serious subject matter and dark tone made the band "too 'real' to be allowed on the Britpop gravy train".[95] The lyrics were pared down from many pages of notes, and were originally more politically explicit.[35] The lyrics depict a man surviving an aeroplane crash[83] and are drawn from Yorke's anxiety about transportation.[84] The musical centerpiece of "Lucky" is its three-piece guitar arrangement,[11] which grew out of the high-pitched chiming sound played by O'Brien in the song's introduction,[52] achieved by strumming above the guitar nut.[96] Critics likened its lead guitar to Pink Floyd and, more broadly, arena rock.[97][9][98][99]

The album ends with "The Tourist", which Jonny Greenwood wrote as an unusually staid piece where something "doesn't have to happen ... every three seconds". He said, "'The Tourist' doesn't sound like Radiohead at all. It has become a song with space."[30] The lyrics, written by Yorke, were inspired by his experience of watching American tourists in France frantically trying to see as many tourist attractions as possible.[68] He said it was chosen as the closing track because "a lot of the album was about background noise and everything moving too fast and not being able to keep up. It was really obvious to have 'Tourist' as the last song. That song was written to me from me, saying, 'Idiot, slow down.' Because at that point, I needed to. So that was the only resolution there could be: to slow down."[42] The "unexpectedly bluesy waltz" draws to a close as the guitars drop out, leaving only drums and bass, and concludes with the sound of a small bell.[11]

Title

The title OK Computer is taken from the 1978 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, in which the character Zaphod Beeblebrox speaks the phrase "Okay, computer, I want full manual control now." The members of Radiohead listened to the series on the bus during their 1996 tour and Yorke made a note of the phrase.[29] "OK Computer" became a working title for the B-side "Palo Alto", which had been considered for inclusion on the album.[100] The title stuck with the band; according to Jonny Greenwood, it "started attaching itself and creating all these weird resonances with what we were trying to do".[53]

Yorke said the title "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."[57] He described the title as "a really resigned, terrified phrase", to him similar to the Coca-Cola advertisement "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing".[53] Wired writer Leander Kahney suggests that it is an homage to Macintosh computers, as the Mac's speech recognition software responds to the command "OK computer" as an alternative to clicking the "OK" button.[101] Other titles considered were Ones and Zeroes—a reference to the binary numeral system—and Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments.[100]

Artwork
A page of the OK Computer booklet with logos, white scribbles and text in Esperanto and English. The motif of two stick figures shaking hands, repeated on the disc label on CD and LP releases, was described by Yorke as symbolising exploitation.[35]

The OK Computer artwork is a computer-generated collage of images and text created by Yorke, credited under the pseudonym the White Chocolate Farm, and Stanley Donwood.[102] Yorke commissioned Donwood to work on a visual diary alongside the recording sessions. Yorke explained, "If I'm shown some kind of visual representation of the music, only then do I feel confident. Up until that point, I'm a bit of a whirlwind."[54] The blue-and-white palette was,[103] according to Donwood, the result of "trying to make something the colour of bleached bone".[104] The image of two stick figures shaking hands appears in the liner notes and on the disc label in CD and LP releases. Yorke explained the image as emblematic of exploitation: "Someone's being sold something they don't really want, and someone's being friendly because they're trying to sell something. That's what it means to me."[35] The image would later be used as the artwork for Radiohead's first compilation album, Radiohead: The Best Of.[35] Explaining the artwork's themes, Yorke said, "It's quite sad, and quite funny as well. All the artwork and so on ... It was all the things that I hadn't said in the songs."[35]

Motifs in the artwork include motorways, aeroplanes, families with children, corporate logos and cityscapes.[105] The photograph of a motorway on the cover was likely taken in Hartford, Connecticut, where Radiohead performed in 1996.[106] The words "Lost Child" feature prominently on the cover, and the booklet artwork contains phrases in the constructed language Esperanto and health-related instructions in both English and Greek. The Uncut critic David Cavanagh said the use of non-sequiturs created an effect "akin to being lifestyle-coached by a lunatic".[11] White scribbles, Donwood's method of correcting mistakes rather than using the computer function undo,[104] are present everywhere in the collages.[107] The liner notes contain the full lyrics, rendered with atypical syntax, alternate spelling[84] and small annotations.[nb 2] The lyrics are also arranged and spaced in shapes that resemble hidden images.[108] In keeping with the band's then-emerging anti-corporate stance, the production credits contain the ironic copyright notice "Lyrics reproduced by kind permission even though we wrote them."[109]

Release and promotion

Commercial expectations

According to Selway, Radiohead's American label Capitol saw the album as "'commercial suicide'. They weren't really into it. At that point, we got the fear. How is this going to be received?"[4] Yorke recalled: "When we first gave it to Capitol, they were taken aback. I don't really know why it's so important now, but I'm excited about it."[110] Capitol lowered its sales forecast from two million to half a million.[111] In O'Brien's view, only Parlophone, the band's British label, remained optimistic, while global distributors dramatically reduced their sales estimates.[112] Label representatives were reportedly disappointed with the lack of marketable singles, especially the absence of anything resembling Radiohead's 1992 hit "Creep".[113] "OK Computer isn't the album we're going to rule the world with", Colin Greenwood predicted at the time. "It's not as hitting-everything-loudly-whilst-waggling-the-tongue-in-and-out, like The Bends. There's less of the Van Halen factor."[43]

Marketing
The lyrics to "Fitter Happier" and images adapted from the album artwork were used on advertisements in music magazines, signs in the London Underground and shirts (shirt design pictured).

Parlophone launched an unorthodox advertising campaign, taking full-page advertisements in high-profile British newspapers and tube stations with lyrics for "Fitter Happier" in large black letters against white backgrounds.[4] The same lyrics, and artwork adapted from the album, were repurposed for shirt designs.[35] Yorke said they chose the "Fitter Happier" lyrics to link what a critic called "a coherent set of concerns" between the album artwork and its promotional material.[35]

Other unconventional merchandise included a floppy disk containing Radiohead screensavers and an FM radio in the shape of a desktop computer.[114] In America, Capitol sent 1,000 cassette players to prominent members of the press and music industry, each with a copy of the album permanently glued inside.[115] Capitol president Gary Gersh said, "Our job is just to take them as a left-of-centre band and bring the centre to them. That's our focus, and we won't let up until they're the biggest band in the world."[116]

Radiohead planned to produce a video for every song on the album, but the project was abandoned due to financial and time constraints.[117] According to "No Surprises" video director Grant Gee, the plan was scrapped when the videos for "Paranoid Android" and "Karma Police" went over budget.[118] Also scrapped were plans for trip hop group Massive Attack to remix the album.[119]

Radiohead's website was created to promote the album, which went live at the time of its release, making the band the first to manage an online presence.[120] Their first fansite, "atease", was made shortly following the album's release, with its title taken from "Fitter Happier".[120] In 2017, during OK Computer's 20th anniversary, Radiohead's website was temporarily restored to its 1997 state.[121]

Singles

Radiohead chose "Paranoid Android" as the lead single, despite its unusually long running time and lack of a catchy chorus.[77][86] Colin Greenwood said the song was "hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit shifter [radio stations] can have been expecting", but that Capitol supported the choice.[86] The song premiered on the Radio 1 programme The Evening Session in April 1997[122] and was released as a single in May 1997.[123] On the strength of frequent radio play on Radio 1[86] and rotation of the song's music video on MTV,[124] "Paranoid Android" reached number three in the UK, giving Radiohead their highest chart position.[125]

"Karma Police" was released in August 1997 and "No Surprises" in January 1998.[126] Both singles charted in the UK top ten, and "Karma Police" peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.[127][128] "Lucky" was released as a single in France, but did not chart.[129] "Let Down", considered for release as the lead single,[130] was issued as a promotional single in September 1997 and charted on the Modern Rock Tracks chart at number 29.[128] Meeting People Is Easy, Grant Gee's rockumentary following the band on their OK Computer world tour, premiered in November 1998.[131]

Tour

Radiohead embarked on a world tour in promotion of OK Computer, the "Against Demons" tour, commencing at the album launch in Barcelona on 22 May 1997.[132] The tour took the band across the UK and Ireland, continental Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia,[133] concluding on 18 April 1998 in New York.[134] It was taxing for the band, particularly Yorke, who said: "That tour was a year too long. I was the first person to tire of it, then six months later everyone in the band was saying it. Then six months after that, nobody was talking any more."[135] The tour included Radiohead's first headline Glastonbury Festival performance on 28 June 1997; despite technical problems that almost caused Yorke to abandon the stage, the performance was acclaimed and cemented Radiohead as a major live act.[136] Rolling Stone described it as "an absolute triumph", and in 2004 Q called it the greatest concert of all time.[137]

Sales

OK Computer was released in Japan on 21 May, in the UK on 16 June, in Canada on 17 June and in the US on 1 July.[138] It was released on CD, double-LP vinyl record, cassette and MiniDisc.[139] It debuted at number one in the UK with sales of 136,000 copies in its first week.[140] In the US, it debuted at number 21 on the Billboard 200.[141] It held the number-one spot in the UK for two weeks and stayed in the top ten for several more, becoming the UK's eighth-bestselling record that year.[142]

By February 1998, OK Computer had sold at least half a million copies in the UK and 2 million worldwide.[83] By September 2000, it had sold 4.5 million copies worldwide.[143] The Los Angeles Times reported that by June 2001 it had sold 1.4 million copies in the US, and in April 2006 the IFPI announced it had sold 3 million copies across Europe.[144][145] It has been certified triple platinum in the UK[146] and double platinum in the US,[147] in addition to certifications in other markets. By May 2016, Nielsen SoundScan figures showed OK Computer had sold 2.5 million digital album units in the US, plus 900,000 sales measured in album-equivalent units.[148] Twenty years to the week after its release, the Official Charts Company recorded total UK sales of 1.5 million, including album-equivalent units.[140] Tallying American and European sales, OK Computer has sold at least 6.9 million copies worldwide (or 7.8 million with album-equivalent units).[nb 3]

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Contemporaneous reviews (in 1997)
Review scores
SourceRating
Chicago Tribune[149]
Entertainment WeeklyB+[150]
The Guardian[81]
Los Angeles Times[151]
NME10/10[97]
Pitchfork10/10[152]
Q[93]
Rolling Stone[153]
Select5/5[154]
Spin8/10[45]

OK Computer was almost uniformly praised. Critics described it as a landmark release of far-reaching impact and importance,[155][156] but noted that its experimentalism made it a challenging listen. According to Tim Footman, "Not since 1967, with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had so many major critics agreed immediately, not only on an album's merits, but on its long-term significance, and its ability to encapsulate a particular point in history."[157] In the British press, the album garnered favourable reviews in NME,[97] Melody Maker,[158] The Guardian[81] and Q.[93] Nick Kent wrote in Mojo that "Others may end up selling more, but in 20 years' time I'm betting OK Computer will be seen as the key record of 1997, the one to take rock forward instead of artfully revamping images and song-structures from an earlier era."[77] John Harris wrote in Select: "Every word sounds achingly sincere, every note spewed from the heart, and yet it roots itself firmly in a world of steel, glass, random-access memory and prickly-skinned paranoia."[154]

The album was well received by critics in North America. Rolling Stone,[153] Spin,[45] the Los Angeles Times,[151] the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,[159] Pitchfork[152] and the Daily Herald[160] published positive reviews. In The New Yorker, Alex Ross praised its progressiveness, and contrasted Radiohead's risk-taking with the musically conservative "dadrock" of their contemporaries Oasis. Ross wrote: "Throughout the album, contrasts of mood and style are extreme ... This band has pulled off one of the great art-pop balancing acts in the history of rock."[161] Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork lauded the record's emotional appeal, writing that it "is brimming with genuine emotion, beautiful and complex imagery and music, and lyrics that are at once passive and fire-breathing".[162]

Reviews for Entertainment Weekly,[150] the Chicago Tribune,[149] and Time[163] were mixed. Robert Christgau from The Village Voice said Radiohead immersed Yorke's vocals in "enough electronic marginal distinction to feed a coal town for a month" to compensate for the "soulless" songs, resulting in "arid" art rock.[164] In an otherwise positive review, Andy Gill wrote for The Independent: "For all its ambition and determination to break new ground, OK Computer is not, finally, as impressive as The Bends, which covered much the same sort of emotional knots, but with better tunes. It is easy to be impressed by, but ultimately hard to love, an album that luxuriates so readily in its own despondency."[165]

Accolades

OK Computer was nominated for Grammy Awards as Album of the Year and Best Alternative Music Album at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards in 1998,[166] winning the latter.[167] It was also nominated for Best British Album at the 1998 Brit Awards.[168] The album was shortlisted for the 1997 Mercury Prize, a prestigious award recognising the best British or Irish album of the year. The day before the winner was announced, oddsmakers had given OK Computer the best chance to win among ten nominees, but it lost to New Forms by Roni Size/Reprazent.[169]

The album appeared in many 1997 critics' lists and listener polls for best album of the year. It topped the year-end polls of Mojo, Vox, Entertainment Weekly, Hot Press, Muziekkrant OOR, HUMO, Eye Weekly and Inpress, and tied for first place with Daft Punk's Homework in The Face. The album came second in NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Spin and Uncut. Q and Les Inrockuptibles both listed the album in their unranked year-end polls.[170]

Praise for the album overwhelmed the band; Greenwood felt the praise had been exaggerated because The Bends had been "under-reviewed possibly and under-received."[42] They rejected links to progressive rock and art rock, despite comparisons to Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon.[171] Yorke responded: "We write pop songs ... There was no intention of it being 'art'. It's a reflection of all the disparate things we were listening to when we recorded it."[57] He was nevertheless pleased that listeners identified their influences: "What really blew my head off was the fact that people got all the things, all the textures and the sounds and the atmospheres we were trying to create."[172]

Legacy

Retrospective appraisal
Professional ratings
Retrospective reviews (after 1997)
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[173]
The A.V. ClubA[174]
Blender[175]
Christgau's Consumer GuideB−[176]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[177]
MusicHound Rock5/5[178]
Q[179]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[180]
Slant Magazine[181]
Tom Hull – on the WebB+[48]

OK Computer has appeared frequently in professional lists of the greatest albums of all time. A number of publications, including NME, Melody Maker, Alternative Press,[182] Spin,[183] Pitchfork,[184] Time,[185] Metro Weekly[186] and Slant Magazine[187] placed OK Computer prominently in lists of best albums of the 1990s or of all time. It was voted number 4 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums 3rd Edition (2000). Rolling Stone ranked it 42 on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020.[188] It was previously ranked at 162 in 2003[189] and 2012.[190] Retrospective reviews from BBC Music,[191] The A.V. Club[174] and Slant[181] received the album favourably. Rolling Stone gave the album five stars in the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, with critic Rob Sheffield saying, "Radiohead was claiming the high ground abandoned by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, U2, R.E.M., everybody; and fans around the world loved them for trying too hard at a time when nobody else was even bothering."[180] "Most would rate OK Computer the apogee of pomo texture", Christgau said in retrospect.[192] According to Acclaimed Music, a site which uses statistics to numerically represent reception among critics, OK Computer is the 8th most celebrated album of all time.[193] In 2014, the United States National Recording Preservation Board selected the album for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, which designates it as a sound recording that has had significant cultural, historical or aesthetic impact in American life.[194]

The album has been cited by some as undeserving of its acclaim. In a poll surveying thousands conducted by BBC Radio 6 Music, OK Computer was named the sixth-most overrated album.[195] David H. Green of The Daily Telegraph called the album "self-indulgent whingeing" and maintains that the positive critical consensus towards OK Computer is an indication of "a 20th-century delusion that rock is the bastion of serious commentary on popular music" to the detriment of electronic and dance music.[196] The album was selected as an entry in "Sacred Cows", an NME column questioning the critical status of "revered albums", in which Henry Yates said "there's no defiance, gallows humour or chink of light beneath the curtain, just a sense of meek, resigned despondency" and criticised the record as "the moment when Radiohead stopped being 'good' [compared to The Bends] and started being 'important'".[197] In a Spin article on the "myth" that "Radiohead Can Do No Wrong", Chris Norris argues that the acclaim for OK Computer inflated expectations for subsequent Radiohead releases.[198] Christgau felt "the reason the readers of the British magazine Q absurdly voted OK Computer the greatest album of the 20th century is that it integrated what was briefly called electronica into rock". Having deemed it "self-regarding" and overrated, he later warmed to the record and found it indicative of Radiohead's cerebral sensibility and "rife with discrete pleasures and surprises".[199]

Commentary, interpretation and analysis
In interviews after the album's release, Thom Yorke criticised Tony Blair (pictured in 1998) and his New Labour government – echoing the album's pervasive theme of political disillusionment.

OK Computer was recorded in the lead up to the 1997 general election and released a month after the victory of Tony Blair's New Labour government. The album was perceived by critics as an expression of dissent and scepticism toward the new government and a reaction against the national mood of optimism. Dorian Lynskey wrote, "On May 1, 1997, Labour supporters toasted their landslide victory to the sound of 'Things Can Only Get Better.' A few weeks later, OK Computer appeared like Banquo's ghost to warn: No, things can only get worse."[200] According to Amy Britton, the album "showed not everyone was ready to join the party, instead tapping into another feeling felt throughout the UK—pre-millennial angst. ... huge corporations were impossible to fight against—this was the world OK Computer soundtracked, not the wave of British optimism."[201]

In an interview, Yorke doubted that Blair's policies would differ from the preceding two decades of Conservative government. He said the public reaction to the death of Princess Diana was more significant, as a moment when the British public realised "the royals had had us by the balls for the last hundred years, as had the media and the state."[35] The band's distaste with the commercialised promotion of OK Computer reinforced their anti-capitalist politics, which would be further explored on their subsequent releases.[202]

Critics have compared Radiohead's statements of political dissatisfaction to those of earlier rock bands. David Stubbs said that, where punk rock had been a rebellion against a time of deficit and poverty, OK Computer protested the "mechanistic convenience" of contemporary surplus and excess.[203] Alex Ross said the album "pictured the onslaught of the Information Age and a young person's panicky embrace of it" and made the band into "the poster boys for a certain kind of knowing alienation—as Talking Heads and R.E.M. had been before."[49] Jon Pareles of The New York Times found precedents in the work of Pink Floyd and Madness for Radiohead's concerns "about a culture of numbness, building docile workers and enforced by self-help regimes and anti-depressants".[204]

The album's tone has been described as millennial[33][205] or futuristic,[206] anticipating cultural and political trends. According to The A.V. Club writer Steven Hyden in the feature "Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation", "Radiohead appeared to be ahead of the curve, forecasting the paranoia, media-driven insanity, and omnipresent sense of impending doom that's subsequently come to characterise everyday life in the 21st century."[207] In 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, Tom Moon described OK Computer as a "prescient ... dystopian essay on the darker implications of technology ... oozing [with] a vague sense of dread, and a touch of Big Brother foreboding that bears strong resemblance to the constant disquiet of life on Security Level Orange, post-9/11."[208] Chris Martin of Coldplay remarked that, "It would be interesting to see how the world would be different if Dick Cheney really listened to Radiohead's OK Computer. I think the world would probably improve. That album is fucking brilliant. It changed my life, so why wouldn't it change his?"[209]

The album inspired a radio play, also titled OK Computer, which was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2007. The play, written by Joel Horwood, Chris Perkins, Al Smith and Chris Thorpe, interprets the album's 12 tracks into a story about a man who awakens in a Berlin hospital with memory loss and returns to England with doubts that the life he's returned to is his own.[210]

Influence

A lot of people have taken OK Computer and said, 'This is the yardstick. If I can attain something half as good, I'm doing pretty well.' But I've never heard anything really derivative of OK Computer—which is interesting, as it shows that what Radiohead were doing was probably even more complicated than it seemed.

—Josh Davis (DJ Shadow)[211]

The whole sound of it and the emotional experience crossed a lot of boundaries. It tapped into a lot of buried emotions that people hadn't wanted to explore or talk about.

—James Lavelle[212]

The release of OK Computer coincided with the decline of Britpop.[nb 4] Through OK Computer's influence, the dominant UK guitar pop shifted toward an approximation of "Radiohead's paranoid but confessional, slurry but catchy" approach.[213] Many newer British acts adopted similarly complex, atmospheric arrangements; for example, the post-Britpop band Travis worked with Godrich to create the languid pop texture of The Man Who, which became the fourth best-selling album of 1999 in the UK.[214] Some in the British press accused Travis of appropriating Radiohead's sound.[215] Steven Hyden of AV Club said that by 1999, starting with The Man Who, "what Radiohead had created in OK Computer had already grown much bigger than the band," and that the album went on to influence "a wave of British-rock balladeers that reached its zenith in the '00s".[207]

OK Computer's popularity influenced the next generation of British alternative rock bands,[nb 5] and established musicians in a variety of genres have praised it.[nb 6] Bloc Party[216] and TV on the Radio[217] listened to or were influenced by OK Computer; TV on the Radio's debut album was titled OK Calculator as a lighthearted tribute.[218] Radiohead described the pervasiveness of bands that "sound like us" as one reason to break with the style of OK Computer for their next album, Kid A.[219]

Although OK Computer's influence on rock musicians is widely acknowledged, several critics believe that its experimental inclination was not authentically embraced on a wide scale. Footman said the "Radiohead Lite" bands that followed were "missing [OK Computer's] sonic inventiveness, not to mention the lyrical substance."[220] David Cavanagh said that most of OK Computer's purported mainstream influence more likely stemmed from the ballads on The Bends. According to Cavanagh, "The populist albums of the post-OK Computer era—the Verve's Urban Hymns, Travis's Good Feeling, Stereophonics' Word Gets Around, Robbie Williams' Life thru a Lens—effectively closed the door that OK Computer's boffin-esque inventiveness had opened."[11] John Harris believed that OK Computer was one of the "fleeting signs that British rock music might [have been] returning to its inventive traditions" in the wake of Britpop's demise.[221] While Harris concludes that British rock ultimately developed an "altogether more conservative tendency", he said that with OK Computer and their subsequent material, Radiohead provided a "clarion call" to fill the void left by Britpop.[221]

OK Computer triggered a minor revival of progressive rock and ambitious concept albums, with a new wave of prog-influenced bands crediting OK Computer for enabling their scene to thrive. Brandon Curtis of Secret Machines said, "Songs like 'Paranoid Android' made it OK to write music differently, to be more experimental ... OK Computer was important because it reintroduced unconventional writing and song structures."[47] Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree said, "I don't think ambition is a dirty word any more. Radiohead were the Trojan Horse in that respect. Here's a band that came from the indie rock tradition that snuck in under the radar when the journalists weren't looking and started making these absurdly ambitious and pretentious—and all the better for it—records."[222] However, Pitchfork journalist Marc Hogan argued that OK Computer marked an "ending point" for the rock-oriented album era, as its dual level of mainstream and critical success went unmatched by any guitar-based album in subsequent decades.[223] In 2005, Q named OK Computer the tenth best progressive rock album.[224]

Reissues and compilations

Radiohead left EMI, parent company of Parlophone, in 2007 after failed contract negotiations. EMI retained the copyright to Radiohead's back catalogue of material recorded while signed to the label.[225] After a period of being out of print on vinyl, EMI reissued a double LP of OK Computer on 19 August 2008, along with later albums Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief, as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series.[226] OK Computer became the year's tenth best-selling vinyl record, selling almost 10,000 units.[227] The reissue was connected in the press to a general climb in vinyl sales and cultural appreciation of records as a format.[228][229]

"Collector's Edition" reissue

EMI reissued OK Computer again on 24 March 2009, alongside Pablo Honey and The Bends, without Radiohead's involvement. The reissue came in two editions: a 2-CD "Collector's Edition" and a 2-CD, 1-DVD "Special Collector's Edition". The first disc contains the original studio album, the second disc contains B-sides collected from OK Computer singles and live recording sessions, and the DVD contains a collection of music videos and a live television performance.[230] All the material on the reissue had been previously released.[231]

Professional ratings
"Collector's Edition" (2009)
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[232]
The A.V. ClubA[233]
Paste100/100[234]
Pitchfork10/10[235]
Rolling Stone[236]
Q[237]
Uncut[238]

Press reaction to the reissue expressed concern that EMI was exploiting Radiohead's back catalogue. Larry Fitzmaurice of Spin accused EMI of planning to "issue and reissue [Radiohead's] discography until the cash stops rolling in".[230] Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal said it was "hard to look at these reissues as anything other than a cash-grab for EMI/Capitol—an old media company that got dumped by their most forward-thinking band."[231] Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone defended the release, saying: "While it's easy to accuse Capitol of milking the cash cow once again, these sets are pretty comprehensive."[239]

The reissue was critically well received, although reception was mixed about the supplemental material. Reviews in AllMusic,[232] Uncut,[238] Q,[237] Rolling Stone,[236] Paste[234] and PopMatters[240] praised the supplemental material, but with reservations. A review written by Scott Plagenhoef for Pitchfork awarded the reissue a perfect score, arguing that it was worth buying for fans who did not already own the rare material. Plagenhoef said, "That the band had nothing to do with these is beside the point: this is the final word on these records, if for no other reason that the Beatles' September 9 remaster campaign is, arguably, the end of the CD era."[235] The A.V. Club writer Josh Modell praised the bonus disc and DVD, and said the album was "the perfect synthesis of Radiohead's seemingly conflicted impulses".[233]

In April 2016, XL Recordings acquired Radiohead's back catalogue. The "collector's editions" of Radiohead albums, issued without Radiohead's approval, were removed from streaming services.[241] In May 2016, XL reissued Radiohead's back catalogue on vinyl, including OK Computer.[242]

OKNOTOK 1997 2017

On 23 June 2017, Radiohead released a 20th-anniversary OK Computer reissue, OKNOTOK 1997 2017, on XL. The reissue includes a remastered version of the album, plus eight B-sides and three previously unreleased tracks: "I Promise", "Man of War" and "Lift". The special edition includes books of artwork and notes and an audio cassette of demos and session recordings, including previously unreleased songs.[243] OKNOTOK debuted at number two on the UK Album Chart,[244] boosted by Radiohead's third headline performance at Glastonbury Festival.[245] It was the best-selling album in independent UK record shops for a year.[246]

MiniDiscs [Hacked]

In early June 2019, nearly 18 hours of demos, outtakes and other material recorded during the OK Computer period leaked online. On 11 June, Radiohead made the archive available to stream or purchase from the music sharing site Bandcamp for 18 days, with proceeds going to the environmental advocacy group Extinction Rebellion.[247]

Track listing

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

  1. "Airbag" – 4:44
  2. "Paranoid Android" – 6:23
  3. "Subterranean Homesick Alien" – 4:27
  4. "Exit Music (For a Film)" – 4:24
  5. "Let Down" – 4:59
  6. "Karma Police" – 4:21
  7. "Fitter Happier" – 1:57
  8. "Electioneering" – 3:50
  9. "Climbing Up the Walls" – 4:45
  10. "No Surprises" – 3:48
  11. "Lucky" – 4:19
  12. "The Tourist" – 5:24

Personnel
  • Nigel Godrich – committing to tape, audio level balancing
  • Radiohead – committing to tape, music
    • Thom Yorke
    • Jonny Greenwood
    • Philip Selway
    • Ed O'Brien
    • Colin Greenwood
  • Stanley Donwood – pictures
  • The White Chocolate Farm – pictures
  • Gerard Navarro – studio assistance
  • Jon Bailey – studio assistance
  • Chris Scard – studio assistance
  • Chris "King Fader" Blair – mastering
  • Nick Ingman – string conducting
  • Matt Bale – additional artwork

Charts

Certifications and sales
Sales certifications for OK Computer
Region CertificationCertified units/sales
Argentina (CAPIF)[286] Platinum 60,000^
Australia (ARIA)[287] Platinum 70,000^
Belgium (BEA)[288] 2× Platinum 100,000*
Canada (Music Canada)[289] 4× Platinum 400,000
France (SNEP)[290] 2× Gold 200,000*
Italy (FIMI)[291]
sales since 2009 		Platinum 50,000*
Japan (RIAJ)[292] Gold 100,000^
Netherlands (NVPI)[293] Platinum 100,000^
New Zealand (RMNZ)[294] Platinum 15,000^
Norway (IFPI Norway)[295] Gold 25,000*
Spain (PROMUSICAE)[296] Gold 50,000^
Sweden (GLF)[297] Gold 40,000^
Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)[298] Gold 25,000^
United Kingdom (BPI)[299] 5× Platinum 1,579,415[140]
United States (RIAA)[300] 2× Platinum 2,000,000^
Summaries
Europe (IFPI)[301] 3× Platinum 3,000,000*

* Sales figures based on certification alone.
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

Notes

Footnotes
  1. Conversely, other critics have also argued that OK Computer is a concept album only in part, or in a nontraditional or qualified sense, or is not a concept album at all. See Letts 2010, pp. 28–32
  2. For example, the line "in a deep deep sleep of the innocent" from "Airbag" is rendered as ">in a deep deep sssleep of tHe inno$ent/completely terrified". See Footman 2007, p. 45
  3. The LA Times reported US sales of 1.4 million in 2001, before Nielsen SoundScan had begun tracking digital sales in 2003—therefore, this amount only included non-digital sales on CD, cassette, and LP. Forbes reported 2.5 million in digital sales and 900,000 in album-equivalent units in 2016, bringing the US total to at least 3.9 million (or 4.8 million with album-equivalent units). BBC News reported 3 million in sales across Europe in 2006, bringing the worldwide total to at least 6.9 million (or 7.8 million with album-equivalent units). Music Week reported that the album had sold 1.5 million units in the UK by 2017; however, the 2006 European sales figure included UK sales up to that time and, as such, adding the 2017 UK sales figure to the total would result in erroneous double counting of UK units sold before 2006. Exact sales figures from other territories are not known. OK Computer has certainly sold more than 7.8 million units worldwide, but it is impossible to say how many more with any certainty.
  4. Britpop, which reached its peak popularity in the mid-1990s and was led by bands such as Oasis, Blur and Pulp, was typified by nostalgic homage to British rock of the 1960s and 1970s. The genre was a key element of the broader cultural movement Cool Britannia. Starting in 1997, a number of events marked the end of the genre's heyday; these included Blur spurning the conventional Britpop sound on Blur and Oasis' Be Here Now failing to live up to the expectations of critics and the public. See Footman 2007, pp. 177–178
  5. Specifically, critics have cited the album's influence on Muse, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Keane, Travis, Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, Editors and Elbow. See:
  6. Musicians who have praised the album include R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, DJ Shadow, former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, Manic Street Preachers member Nicky Wire, The Divine Comedy frontman Neil Hannon, Mo' Wax label owner James Lavelle, Sonic Youth and Gastr del Sol member and experimental musician Jim O'Rourke, former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder and contemporary composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. See:

Citations
  1. "10 Essential '90s Alt-Rock Albums". Treble. 25 July 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  2. "OK Computer - Rolling Stone". Rolling Stone. 10 July 1997. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
  3. Christgau, Robert (2000). "R". Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0312245602. Retrieved 11 June 2020 – via robertchristgau.com.
  4. Cantin, Paul (19 October 1997), "Radiohead's OK Computer confounds expectations", Ottawa Sun
  5. Richardson, Andy (9 December 1995), "Boom! Shake the Gloom!", NME
  6. Footman 2007, p. 113.
  7. Irvin, Jim (July 1997), "Thom Yorke tells Jim Irvin how OK Computer was done", Mojo
  8. Robinson, Andrea (August 1997), "Nigel Godrich", The Mix
  9. Randall 2000, p. 161.
  10. Footman 2007, p. 33.
  11. Cavanagh, David (February 2007), "Communication Breakdown", Uncut
  12. Dalton, Stephen (August 2001), "How to Disappear Completely", Uncut
  13. Glover, Arian (1 August 1998), "Radiohead—Getting More Respect.", Circus
  14. Q, January 2003
  15. Footman 2007, p. 34.
  16. Randall 2000, p. 189.
  17. Randall 2000, pp. 190–191.
  18. Beauvallet, JD (25 January 2000), "Nigel the Nihilist", Les Inrockuptibles
  19. Selway, Philip (June 2017). "X-Posure with John Kennedy". Radio X (Interview). Interviewed by John Kennedy. Archived from the original on 7 November 2021.
  20. Doyle, Tom (April 2008), "The Complete Radiohead", Q
  21. Randall 2000, p. 194.
  22. Folkerth, Bruce (13 August 1997), "Radiohead: Ignore the Hype", Flagpole
  23. Randall 2000, p. 195.
  24. Walsh, Nick Paton (November 1997), "Karma Policeman", London Student, University of London Union
  25. McKinnon, Matthew (24 July 2006). "Everything in Its Right Place". CBC. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  26. Wylie, Harry (November 1997), "Radiohead", Total Guitar
  27. Pettigrew, Jason (September 2001), "How to Reinvent Completely", Alternative Press
  28. Footman 2007, p. 25.
  29. Greene, Andy (31 May 2017), "Radiohead's rhapsody in gloom: OK Computer 20 years later", Rolling Stone, archived from the original on 31 May 2017
  30. "Radiohead: The Album, Song by Song, of the Year", HUMO, 22 July 1997
  31. Footman 2007, p. 67.
  32. Randall 2000, p. 196.
  33. Masuo, Sandy (September 1997), "Subterranean Aliens", Request
  34. Footman 2007, p. 35.
  35. Harris, John (January 1998), "Renaissance Men", Select
  36. Vaziri, Aidin (October 1997), "British Pop Aesthetes", Guitar Player
  37. Diehl, Matt (June 2004), "The 50th Anniversary of Rock: The Moments - 1996/1997: Radio Radiohead Get Paranoid", Rolling Stone
  38. Sutcliffe, Phil (October 1999), "Radiohead: An Interview with Thom Yorke", Q
  39. Randall 2000, p. 198.
  40. Randall 2000, p. 199.
  41. Randall 2000, p. 200.
  42. DiMartino, Dave (2 May 1997). "Give Radiohead Your Computer". Yahoo! Launch. Archived from the original on 14 August 2007.
  43. Moran, Caitlin (July 1997), "Everything was just fear", Select, p. 87
  44. Bailie, Stuart (21 June 1997), "Viva la Megabytes!", NME
  45. Walters, Barry (August 1997), "Radiohead: OK Computer (Capitol)", Spin, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 112–13, retrieved 6 April 2020
  46. Sanneh, Kelefa (19 June 2017), "The Persistence of Prog Rock", The New Yorker, archived from the original on 12 June 2017
  47. Allen, Matt (14 June 2007), "Prog's progeny", The Guardian, archived from the original on 4 April 2010
  48. Hull, Tom (15 April 2007). "April 2007 Notebook". Tom Hull – on the Web. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  49. Ross 2010, p. 88.
  50. Footman 2007, pp. 142–150.
  51. Sutherland, Mark (24 May 1997), "Rounding the Bends", Melody Maker
  52. Sutcliffe, Phil (1 October 1997), "Death is all around", Q
  53. Sakamoto, John (2 June 1997), "Radiohead talk about their new video", Jam!
  54. Lynskey, Dorian (February 2011), "Welcome to the Machine", Q
  55. Wadsworth, Tony (20 December 1997), "The Making of OK Computer", The Guardian
  56. Letts 2010, pp. 32.
  57. Clarke 2010, p. 124.
  58. Randall, Mac (1 April 1998). "Radiohead interview: The Golden Age of Radiohead". Guitar World. Archived from the original on 3 October 2012.
  59. Footman 2007, p. 42.
  60. Footman 2007, p. 43.
  61. Dowling, Stephen (20 April 2009). "What pop music tells us about JG Ballard". BBC. Archived from the original on 23 April 2009. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  62. Footman 2007, p. 46.
  63. Randall 2000, pp. 214–215.
  64. Sutherland, Mark (31 May 1997), "Return of the Mac!", Melody Maker
  65. Footman 2007, p. 62.
  66. Footman 2007, pp. 60–61.
  67. Footman 2007, pp. 59–60.
  68. Moran, Caitlin (July 1997). "I was feeling incredible hysteria and panic ...". Select: 92.
  69. Randall 2000, p. 154.
  70. Footman 2007, p. 66.
  71. Dalton, Stephen (September 1997), "The Dour & The Glory", Vox
  72. Footman 2007, p. 73.
  73. Gaitskill, Mary (April 1998), "Radiohead: Alarms and Surprises", Alternative Press
  74. Huey, Steve. "Karma Police". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 10 December 2010.
  75. Lowe, Steve (December 1999), "Back to Save the Universe", Select
  76. Footman 2007, p. 79.
  77. Kent, Nick (July 1997), "Press your space next to mine, love", Mojo
  78. Randall 2000, pp. 158–159.
  79. Footman 2007, p. 86.
  80. Steele, Sam (July 1997), "Grand Control to Major Thom", Vox
  81. Sullivan, Caroline (13 June 1997), "Aching Heads", The Guardian
  82. Footman 2007, pp. 93–94.
  83. "The 100 Greatest Albums in the Universe", Q, February 1998
  84. Kuipers, Dean (March 1998), "Fridge Buzz Now", Ray Gun
  85. Randall 2000, p. 226.
  86. Sutherland, Mark (4 March 1998), "Rounding the Bends", Melody Maker
  87. Harris, John; Simonart, Serge (August 2001), "Everything in Its Right Place", Q
  88. Footman 2007, p. 110.
  89. Janovitz, Bill, "No Surprises", AllMusic, archived from the original on 10 December 2010
  90. Footman 2007, pp. 108–109.
  91. Berman, Stuart (July 1997), "Outsiders", Chart
  92. Micallef, Ken (17 August 1997). "I'm OK, You're OK". Yahoo! Launch. Archived from the original on 1 January 2013.
  93. Cavanagh, David (July 1997), "Moonstruck", Q, no. 130, archived from the original on 23 April 2000, retrieved 11 April 2019
  94. Kara, Scott (September 2000), "Experimental Creeps", Rip It Up
  95. Taylor, Sam (5 November 1995), "Gives You the Creeps", The Observer
  96. "Ed O'Brien – 100 Greatest Guitarists: David Fricke's Picks". Rolling Stone. 3 December 2010. Archived from the original on 9 September 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
  97. Oldham, James (14 June 1997), "The Rise and Rise of the ROM Empire", NME, archived from the original on 17 August 2000, retrieved 6 April 2020
  98. Taylor, Sam (5 November 1995), "Mother, Should I Build a Wall?", The Observer
  99. Shelley, Jim (13 July 1996), "Nice Dream?", The Guardian
  100. Footman 2007, pp. 36–37.
  101. Kahney, Leander (1 February 2002), "He Writes the Songs: Mac Songs", Wired, archived from the original on 13 April 2012
  102. Krüger, Sascha (July 2008), "Exit Music", Visions (in German)
  103. Griffiths 2004, p. 79.
  104. Dombal, Ryan (15 September 2010). "Take Cover: Radiohead Artist Stanley Donwood". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 30 August 2011.
  105. Footman 2007, pp. 127–130.
  106. Bowe, Miles (9 May 2017). "Is this the highway Radiohead's OK Computer cover is based on?". FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music. Archived from the original on 10 May 2017. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
  107. Griffiths 2004, p. 81.
  108. Arminio, Mark (26 June 2009), "Between the Liner Notes: 6 Things You Can Learn By Obsessing Over Album Artwork", Mental floss, archived from the original on 6 October 2012
  109. Odell, Michael (September 2003), "Inside the Mind of Radiohead's Mad Genius!", Blender
  110. Strauss, Neil (July 1997), "The Pop Life: The Insane Clown Posse, recalled by Disney and now in demand Promoting Radiohead", The New York Times
  111. Randall 2000, p. 202.
  112. Randall 2000, p. 242.
  113. Blashill, Pat (January 1998), "Band of the Year: Radiohead", Spin
  114. Martins, Chris (29 March 2011). "Radiohead Gives Out Free Newspaper in LA: Here's a Top Eight List of the Band's Most Peculiar Swag". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 23 April 2012. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  115. Randall 2000, p. 243.
  116. Hoskyns, Barney (October 2000), "Exit Music: Can Radiohead save rock music as we (don't) know it?", GQ
  117. Clarke 2010, p. 113.
  118. Scovell, Adam (15 January 2018). "The Bends? Grant Gee On The Day Thom Yorke Nearly Drowned For Art". The Quietus. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  119. "Massive Attack Drops Plans To Remix Radiohead, Teams With Cocteau Twins". MTV News. 4 March 1998. Archived from the original on 21 June 2012.
  120. Jeremy, Gordon (12 May 2016). "Internet Explorers: The Curious Case of Radiohead's Online Fandom". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 12 May 2016. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
  121. Plaugic, Lizzie (2 May 2017). "Radiohead restores the '1997 version' of its website for OK Computer remaster". The Verge. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  122. Randall 2000, p. 201.
  123. Broc, David (June 2001), "Remembering the Future – Interview with Jonny Greenwood", MondoSonoro
  124. Gulla, Bob (October 1997), "Radiohead: At Long Last, a Future for Rock Guitar", Guitar World
  125. Randall 2000, pp. 242–243.
  126. Clarke 2010, pp. 117–119.
  127. "Radiohead | full Official Chart History". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  128. "Radiohead Chart History: Alternative Songs". Billboard. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  129. Footman 2007, p. 116.
  130. Footman 2007, p. 74.
  131. Clarke 2010, p. 134.
  132. Randall 2000, pp. 202–203.
  133. Footman 2007, p. 203.
  134. Randall 2000, p. 247.
  135. Paphides, Peter (August 2003), "Into the Light", Mojo
  136. White, Adam (23 June 2017). "Radiohead's Glastonbury 1997 set was 'like a form of hell', according to guitarist Ed O'Brien". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 23 June 2017. Retrieved 24 June 2017.
  137. Greene, Andy (18 July 2013). "Flashback: Radiohead Live in 1997". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
  138. Footman 2007, p. 38.
  139. Footman 2007, p. 126.
  140. Jones, Alan (30 June 2017). "Official Charts Analysis: Ed Sheeran's ÷ returns to No.1 following Glastonbury appearance". Music Week. Intent Media. Archived from the original on 27 June 2019. Retrieved 22 February 2019. The first of six No. 1 albums for Radiohead, OK Computer debuted atop the chart this week in 1997 on sales of 136,476 copies, and is the Oxfordshire band's biggest seller, with a to-date tally of 1,579,415 including 16,172 from sales-equivalent streams.
  141. "Radiohead's 'OK Computer' Made Them Our 1997 "Band of the Year"". Spin. 16 June 2017. Archived from the original on 31 August 2019. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  142. "End of Year Album Chart Top 100 - 1997 | Official Charts Company". www.officialcharts.com. Retrieved 25 May 2022.
  143. Sexton, Paul (16 September 2000), "Radiohead won't play by rules", Billboard
  144. Hilburn, Robert (3 June 2001), "Operating on His Own Frequency", Los Angeles Times, archived from the original on 18 January 2013
  145. "James Blunt album sales pass 5m". BBC News. 8 April 2006. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012.
  146. "British album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer". British Phonographic Industry. Archived from the original on 11 May 2011. Enter OK Computer in the field Search. Select Title in the field Search by. Select album in the field By Format. Click Go{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  147. "American album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer". Recording Industry Association of America. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  148. DeSantis, Nick (10 May 2016), "Radiohead's Digital Album Sales, Visualized", Forbes, archived from the original on 22 February 2019, retrieved 29 January 2018
  149. Kot, Greg (4 July 1997), "Radiohead: OK Computer (Capitol)", Chicago Tribune, archived from the original on 18 January 2013
  150. Browne, David (11 July 1997), "OK Computer", Entertainment Weekly, archived from the original on 30 September 2012
  151. Scribner, Sara (29 June 1997), "Radiohead, 'OK Computer,' Capitol", Los Angeles Times, retrieved 6 April 2020
  152. Schreiber, Ryan (1997), "Radiohead: OK Computer: Pitchfork Review", Pitchfork, archived from the original on 3 March 2001, retrieved 16 May 2009
  153. Kemp, Mark (10 July 1997), "OK Computer", Rolling Stone, archived from the original on 17 January 2011, retrieved 29 September 2008
  154. Harris, John (July 1997). "Ground control to Major Thom". Select: 92.
  155. Footman 2007, pp. 181–182.
  156. Clarke 2010, p. 121.
  157. Footman 2007, p. 182.
  158. Parkes, Taylor (14 June 1997), "Review of OK Computer", Melody Maker
  159. Masley, Ed (8 August 1997). "Turn up your Radiohead". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
  160. "File This One: 'Computer' Complex, but Worthwhile". Daily Herald. 15 August 1997. Archived from the original on 8 August 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2017 – via Highbeam.
  161. Ross, Alex (29 September 1997), "Dadrock", The New Yorker, archived from the original on 18 July 2008, retrieved 29 September 2008
  162. Schreiber, Ryan. "Radiohead: OK Computer: Pitchfork Review". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 3 March 2001. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  163. Farley, Christopher John (25 August 1997), "Lost in Space", Time, archived from the original on 12 November 2011
  164. Christgau, Robert (23 September 1997), "Consumer Guide", The Village Voice, archived from the original on 26 August 2011
  165. Gill, Andy (13 June 1997), "Andy Gill on albums: Radiohead OK Computer Parlophone", The Independent, archived from the original on 4 March 2016, retrieved 27 July 2013
  166. "Brits vie for Grammys". BBC News. Archived from the original on 29 March 2016.
  167. "The 1998 Grammy Award Winners". The New York Times. 26 February 1998. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  168. Sinclair, David (7 February 1998), "Brits Around the World '98: Four to Watch For", Billboard, p. 48
  169. Williams, Alexandra (29 August 1998). "It is Size that counts as Roni wins Mercury prize". The Independent. Archived from the original on 6 September 2016.
  170. Footman 2007, pp. 183–184.
  171. Varga, George (November 2001), "Radiohead's Jazz Frequencies", JazzTimes
  172. Gill, Andy (5 October 2007), "Ok computer: Why the record industry is terrified of Radiohead's new album", The Independent, archived from the original on 3 November 2012
  173. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "OK Computer – Radiohead". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 21 November 2018. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  174. Thompson, Stephen (29 March 2002), "Radiohead: OK Computer", The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 29 June 2011
  175. Slaughter, James. "Radiohead: OK Computer". Blender. Archived from the original on 27 September 2009. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  176. Christgau, Robert (2000). "R". Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0312245602. Retrieved 11 June 2020 – via robertchristgau.com.
  177. Larkin, Colin (2011). "Radiohead". The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th concise ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
  178. Graff, Gary, ed. (1998). "Radiohead". MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide (2nd ed.). Schirmer Trade Books. ISBN 0825672562.
  179. "Radiohead: OK Computer". Q. No. 393. January 2019. p. 104.
  180. Sheffield 2004, p. 671.
  181. Cinquemani, Sal (27 March 2007), "Radiohead: OK Computer", Slant Magazine, archived from the original on 9 August 2011
  182. Footman 2007, p. 185.
  183. Smith, RJ (September 1999), "09: Radiohead: OK Computer", Spin
  184. DiCrescenzo, Brent (17 November 2003). "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 22 June 2009.
  185. Tyrangiel, Josh (2 November 2006), "OK Computer – The ALL-TIME 100 Albums", Time, archived from the original on 31 July 2011
  186. Gerard, Chris (4 April 2014). "50 Best Alternative Albums of the '90s". Metro Weekly. Archived from the original on 21 February 2016.
  187. "Best Albums of the '90s". Slant Magazine. 14 February 2011. Archived from the original on 9 August 2011.
  188. Greene, Andy (24 September 2020). "Rolling Stone 500: Radiohead's Futuristic Breakthrough 'OK Computer'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  189. "162 OK Computer – Radiohead". Rolling Stone. 2004. Archived from the original on 29 July 2011.
  190. "500 Greatest Albums of All Time Rolling Stone's definitive list of the 500 greatest albums of all time". Rolling Stone. 2012. Archived from the original on 25 September 2019. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
  191. Lusk, Jon (5 August 2011). "Radiohead: OK Computer". BBC Music. BBC. Archived from the original on 18 August 2011.
  192. Christgau, Robert (18 February 2003). "Party in Hard Times". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on 26 October 2018. Retrieved 25 October 2018.
  193. "Radiohead". Acclaimed Music. Archived from the original on 26 May 2019. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  194. "Complete National Recording Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 9 March 2020. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  195. "Most Overrated Album in the World". BBC Radio 6 Music. October 2005. Archived from the original on 8 April 2012.
  196. Green, David H. (18 March 2009). "OK Computer Box Set: Not OK Computer". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 15 October 2011.
  197. Yates, Henry (3 April 2011). "Sacred Cows – Is Radiohead's 'OK Computer' Overrated?". NME. Archived from the original on 11 July 2011.
  198. Norris, Chris (9 November 2009). "Myth No. 1: Radiohead Can Do No Wrong". Spin. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016.
  199. Christgau, Robert (8 July 2003). "No Hope Radio". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on 25 March 2014. Retrieved 25 October 2018.
  200. Lynskey 2011, pp. 496.
  201. Britton 2011, pp. 259–261.
  202. Clarke 2010, p. 142.
  203. Radiohead: OK Computer – A Classic Album Under Review (DVD). Sexy Intellectual. 10 October 2006.
  204. Pareles, Jon (28 August 1997). "Miserable and Loving It: It's Just So Very Good to Feel So Very, Very Bad". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 August 2009.
  205. "Is OK Computer the Greatest Album of the 1990s?", Uncut, 1 January 2007, archived from the original on 24 July 2011
  206. Dwyer, Michael (14 March 1998), "OK Kangaroo", Melody Maker
  207. Hyden, Steven (25 January 2011), "Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? Part 8: 1997: The ballad of Oasis and Radiohead", The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 1 August 2011
  208. Moon 2008, pp. 627–628.
  209. McLean, Craig (27 May 2005), "The importance of being earnest", The Guardian, archived from the original on 27 September 2011
  210. Kharas, Kev (16 October 2007). "Radiohead: OK Computer play live on BBC this Friday". Drowned in Sound. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  211. "Uncut #117". citizeninsane.eu. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  212. SPIN. September 1999.
  213. "The 50 Greatest Bands: 15", Spin, February 2002
  214. Gulla, Bob (April 2000), "A Marriage Made in Song", CMJ New Music Monthly
  215. Sullivan, Kate (May 2000), "Travis", Spin
  216. Nunn, Adie (4 December 2003), "Introducing Bloc Party", Drowned in Sound, archived from the original on 6 August 2011, retrieved 29 July 2011
  217. Harrington, Richard (13 April 2007), "TV on the Radio: Coming in Loud and Clear", The Washington Post, archived from the original on 2 November 2012
  218. Sellers, John (11 April 2011), "Tough Questions for TVOTR's Tunde Adebimpe", Spin, archived from the original on 9 December 2011
  219. Murphy, Peter (11 October 2001), "How I learned to stop worrying and loathe the bomb", Hot Press, archived from the original on 25 May 2011
  220. Footman 2007, p. 219.
  221. Harris 2004, p. 369.
  222. "It's back ... Prog rock assaults album charts". BBC News. 23 September 2009. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2012.
  223. Hogan, Marc (20 March 2017). "Exit Music: How Radiohead's OK Computer Destroyed the Art-Pop Album in Order to Save It". Pitchfork. Retrieved 11 March 2010.
  224. Brown, Jonathan (27 July 2010). "A-Z of progressive rock". Belfast Telegraph. Archived from the original on 5 November 2016. Retrieved 5 November 2016.
  225. Sherwin, Adam (28 December 2007), "EMI accuses Radiohead after group's demands for more fell on deaf ears", The Times, archived from the original on 4 February 2015, retrieved 4 February 2015
  226. "Coldplay, Radiohead to be reissued on vinyl", NME, 10 July 2008, archived from the original on 16 February 2012
  227. V, Petey (9 January 2009), "Animal Collective Rides Vinyl Wave into '09, Massive 2008 Vinyl Sales Figures Confuse Everyone but B-52s Fans", Tiny Mix Tapes, archived from the original on 24 September 2010
  228. Kreps, Daniel (8 January 2009), "Radiohead, Neutral Milk Hotel Help Vinyl Sales Almost Double in 2008", Rolling Stone, archived from the original on 31 July 2011
  229. "The 7in. revival – fans get back in the groove", The Independent, 18 July 2008, archived from the original on 1 November 2010
  230. Fitzmaurice, Larry (15 January 2009), "Radiohead's First Three Albums Reissued with Extras", Spin, archived from the original on 22 January 2009
  231. Dombal, Ryan (14 January 2009), "Radiohead's First Three Albums Reissued and Expanded", Pitchfork, archived from the original on 17 March 2009
  232. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, "OK Computer [Collector's Edition] [2CD/1DVD]", AllMusic, archived from the original on 12 May 2012
  233. Modell, Josh (3 April 2009), "Pablo Honey / The Bends / OK Computer", The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 15 October 2011
  234. Kemp, Mark (27 March 2009), "Radiohead: Pablo Honey, The Bends, OK Computer (reissues)", Paste, archived from the original on 30 March 2009
  235. Plagenhoef, Scott (16 April 2009). "Radiohead: Pablo Honey: Collector's Edition / The Bends: Collector's Edition / OK Computer: Collector's Edition". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 17 April 2009.
  236. Hermes, Will (30 April 2009), "OK Computer (Collector's Edition)", Rolling Stone, archived from the original on 22 January 2013
  237. Segal, Victoria (May 2009), "Reissues: Radiohead", Q
  238. Richards, Sam (8 April 2009), "Album review: Radiohead Reissues – Collectors Editions", Uncut, archived from the original on 6 December 2010
  239. Kreps, Daniel (15 January 2009), "Radiohead's First Three Albums Reissued with Extras", Rolling Stone, archived from the original on 3 August 2011
  240. McCarthy, Sean (18 December 2009), "The Best Re-Issues of 2009: 18: Radiohead: Pablo Honey / The Bends / OK Computer / Kid A / Amnesiac / Hail to the Thief", PopMatters, archived from the original on 20 December 2009
  241. Christman, Ed (4 April 2016). "Radiohead's Early Catalog Moves From Warner Bros. to XL". Billboard. Retrieved 6 May 2017.
  242. Spice, Anton (6 May 2016). "Radiohead to reissue entire catalogue on vinyl". www.thevinylfactory.com. Archived from the original on 26 August 2016. Retrieved 6 May 2017.
  243. Atkins, Jamie (22 June 2017). "OK Computer – OKNOTOK 1997-2017 - Record Collector Magazine". recordcollectormag.com. Archived from the original on 25 June 2017. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
  244. "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Archived from the original on 9 September 2018. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
  245. Beech, Mark. "The Glastonbury Effect: Radiohead Back At Top Of U.K. Chart, Foo Fighters Follow". Forbes. Archived from the original on 27 June 2017. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  246. "Radiohead tops list of best-selling albums in independent record stores - Independent.ie". Independent.ie. Archived from the original on 21 April 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
  247. Terry, Josh (11 June 2019). "Radiohead Officially Release 18 Hours of Leaked 'OK Computer' Sessions". Vice. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  248. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Australian-charts.com. Archived from the original on 10 May 2012.
  249. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Austriancharts.at. Archived from the original on 13 March 2012.
  250. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Ultratop.be. Archived from the original on 21 October 2012.
  251. "Top Albums/CDs", RPM, vol. 65, no. 17, 30 June 1997, archived from the original on 10 November 2012
  252. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Dutchcharts.nl. Archived from the original on 12 October 2012.
  253. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Finnish Charts Portal. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
  254. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Lescharts.com. Archived from the original on 12 May 2012.
  255. "Chartverfolgung / Radiohead / Longplay". musicline.de. Archived from the original on 16 October 2011. Retrieved 6 August 2011.
  256. "1997/28 heti Album Top 40 slágerlista" (in Hungarian). MAHASZ. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  257. "IRMA – Irish charts". Retrieved 5 July 2017.
  258. "Classifiche". Musica e Dischi (in Italian). Retrieved 28 May 2022. Set "Tipo" on "Album". Then, in the "Artista" field, search "Radiohead".
  259. "Radiohead – OK Computer". charts.nz. Archived from the original on 1 October 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  260. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Norwegian Charts Portal. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
  261. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Spanishcharts.com. Archived from the original on 22 July 2011.
  262. "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  263. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Swedishcharts.com. Archived from the original on 13 March 2012.
  264. "Radiohead – OK Computer". Hitparade.ch. Archived from the original on 10 November 2012.
  265. "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  266. "Radiohead Chart History: Billboard 200". Billboard. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  267. "ARIA Charts – End of Year Charts – ARIA Charts – End of Year Charts – Top 100 Albums 1997". ARIA. Archived from the original on 10 April 2013. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  268. "Jaaroverzichten 1997" (in French). Ultratop. Archived from the original on 22 October 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  269. "Rapports annuels 1997" (in French). Ultratop. Archived from the original on 6 November 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  270. "Jaaroverzichten – Album 1997" (in Dutch). MegaCharts. Archived from the original on 22 September 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  271. "Year in Focus – European Top 100 Albums 1997" (PDF). Music & Media. Vol. 14, no. 52. 27 December 1997. p. 7. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  272. "Classement Albums – année 1997" (in French). Archived from the original on 15 December 2013. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  273. "End of Year Charts 1997". Recorded Music NZ. Archived from the original on 10 May 2017. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  274. "Year list Album (incl. Collections), 1997". Sverigetopplistan (in Swedish). Retrieved 19 December 2020.
  275. "Top 100 Albums 1997". Music Week. 17 January 1998. p. 29.
  276. "Billboard 200 – 1997 Year-end charts". Billboard. Archived from the original on 27 April 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  277. "ARIA Charts – End of Year Charts – ARIA Charts – End of Year Charts – Top 100 Albums 1998". ARIA. Archived from the original on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  278. "RPM's Top 100 CDs of '98". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  279. "Year in Focus – European Top 100 Albums 1998" (PDF). Music & Media. Vol. 15, no. 51. 19 December 1998. p. 8. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  280. "End of Year Charts 1998". Recorded Music NZ. Archived from the original on 25 January 2020. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  281. "Best Sellers of 1998 – Albums Top 100". Music Week. 16 January 1999. p. 9.
  282. "Billboard 200 – 1998 Year-end charts". Billboard. Archived from the original on 20 August 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  283. "Najlepiej sprzedające się albumy w W.Brytanii w 1999r" (in Polish). Z archiwum...rocka. Archived from the original on 27 September 2012. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  284. "Canada's Top 200 Alternative albums of 2002". Jam!. Archived from the original on 2 September 2004. Retrieved 28 March 2022.
  285. "Jaaroverzichten 2007 - Midprice" (in Dutch). Ultratop. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  286. "Discos de Oro y Platino" (in Spanish). CAPIF. Archived from the original on 20 August 2011. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  287. "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 1997 Albums" (PDF). Australian Recording Industry Association. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
  288. "Ultratop − Goud en Platina – albums 2007". Ultratop. Hung Medien. Retrieved 30 October 2012.
  289. "Canadian album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer". Music Canada. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  290. "French album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer" (in French). Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique.
  291. "Italian album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer" (in Italian). Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana. Retrieved 19 June 2017. Select "2017" in the "Anno" drop-down menu. Select "OK Computer" in the "Filtra" field. Select "Album e Compilation" under "Sezione".
  292. "Japanese album certifications – レディオヘッド – OKコンピューター" (in Japanese). Recording Industry Association of Japan. Retrieved 15 September 2013. Select 1998年4月 on the drop-down menu
  293. "Dutch album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer" (in Dutch). Nederlandse Vereniging van Producenten en Importeurs van beeld- en geluidsdragers. Retrieved 30 August 2018. Enter OK Computer in the "Artiest of titel" box.
  294. "New Zealand album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer". Recorded Music NZ. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  295. "IFPI Norsk platebransje Trofeer 1993–2011" (in Norwegian). IFPI Norway. Retrieved 30 October 2012.
  296. Solo Exitos 1959–2002 Ano A Ano: Certificados > 1995–1999. Iberautor Promociones Culturales. 2005. ISBN 84-8048-639-2. Archived from the original on 27 December 2013. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  297. "Guld- och Platinacertifikat − År 1987−1998" (PDF) (in Swedish). IFPI Sweden. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 May 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2012.
  298. "The Official Swiss Charts and Music Community: Awards (Radiohead; 'OK Computer')". IFPI Switzerland. Hung Medien. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
  299. "British album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  300. "American album certifications – Radiohead – OK Computer". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
  301. "IFPI Platinum Europe Awards – 2006". International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 25 September 2012.

Bibliography
  • Britton, Amy (2011). Revolution Rock: The Albums Which Defined Two Ages. AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1-4678-8710-6.
  • Clarke, Martin (2010). Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless. London: Plexus. ISBN 978-0-85965-439-5.
  • Footman, Tim (2007). Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album. New Malden: Chrome Dreams. ISBN 978-1-84240-388-4.
  • Griffiths, Dai (2004). OK Computer. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1663-2.
  • Harris, John (2004). Britpop!: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock. Cambridge: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81367-X.
  • Letts, Marianne Tatom (2010). Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely. Profiles in Popular Music. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35570-6.
  • Lynskey, Dorian (2011). 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-167015-2.
  • Moon, Tom (2008). "OK Computer". 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. New York: Workman. pp. 627–628. ISBN 978-0-85965-439-5. Archived from the original on 6 August 2011.
  • Randall, Mac (2000). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story. New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks. ISBN 0-385-33393-5.
  • Ross, Alex (2010). Listen to This. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-18774-3.
  • Sheffield, Rob (2004). "Radiohead". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York: Fireside. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.