~music Listening Club 1 - OK Computer
Here it is, the first album of our listening club: OK Computer by Radiohead. This is the first of the odd week classic-focused posts, and you get get further details on this project here. I'll stop spamming ~music with posts about this now, we'll only have one a week from here on out.
Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the band, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with OK Computer. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!
If you'd like to stream the album, it can be found on most streaming platforms here.
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Vote on next week's album here, we currently have a 7 way tie that needs to be broken!
I don't really have anything to say about this album that can't be written a thousand times better by someone else but this album was THE album that got me into music.
I remember when I was 13 (I'm 19 now) I had a friend who was REALLY into Radiohead and kept sending me links to their music. At the time, I hated it. A few months later, I went back to it and I was blown away. Paranoid Android was unlike anything I'd ever heard. Climbing Up the Walls left me feeling a bit unnerved. I listened to this album so many times I can't even count. I bought every version of the album on CD. I showed it to everyone I knew. From there, I started to really appreciate music and it allowed me to branch out and discover my own tastes. It's a bit cliche, but I really am thankful to this album for making me break out of feeling like music was boring.
I don't think the only way to have worthwhile thoughts on a piece of art is for it to be in unexplored territory. I think it's just as valid and just as interesting to hear why someone agrees with the consensus as it is to hear someone with a hot take.
This album seems to break through that threshold where music goes from a passive to an active experience for a lot of people, and that's an incredible thing to see. Something about it just drags people forcefully into caring about music.
I guess I'll be the odd one out: I don't think I've listened to OK Computer since I was 12-13.
Thom Yorke's voice doesn't do it for me in the slightest. The only song I'd say I'm very familiar with is Karma Police because of excessive radio air-play and the thought of that makes me a bit queasy.
However, in the spirit of this club, I'll give it my first listen in god knows how long.
I typically agree about his voice. I think I am just young enough to have not been exposed to Radiohead at the right time. I'm giving it another listen now, and I definitely appreciate their music more than I have in the past, though. Something that stands out to me is that a decent number of the indie rock bands I listen to now borrow some of their sound from Radiohead.
I'm with you on this. OKC was released when I was in college and everyone was flipping out over it. I remember one of my friends raving about it and playing some tracks for me when we were driving somewhere and I was not into it. Over the years I have heard some of the songs from time to time and they just don't do it for me. I feel like I should like it. I'm into progressive music, and musicians who I really respect have covered the songs, but I just don't get it. And like some others here, I don't like Yorke's voice at all.
I liked Kid A and Amnesiac a bit more. Hail to the Thief is the only Radiohead album I went back to for multiple listens and kept a copy of.
This is slightly off topic, but also related. If you'd like to hear what this album sounds like in Reggae form, check out Radiodread - Easy Star All-Stars version of OK Computer. They have done a number of reggae cover albums (Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt Peppers, Thriller) but I think this one is their best. Its not gimmicky, I promise. I saw them perform it live a number of times and its just excellent and so different from the source material.
I can never decide on a favourite album for any substantial length of time, but were you to ask me what my favourite album was at a random point in time I'd be statistically most likely to say this one. It's just fantastic. There's not a single bad song on it. Not even the oft-maligned Electioneering. Not even Fitter Happier - sure, it's hardly a disco smash-hit but as part of the cohesive whole it's perfect. This album will forever, I think, remain the benchmark for musical excellence in my mind. Other artists - and in fact, Radiohead themselves - have produced songs which are individually superior to the tracks on OK Computer - but taken as a 53 minute whole, it's special. Really, really special.
There is very little left to say about OK Computer that hasn't already been said, so I won't waste keystrokes reiterating the same tired superlatives that have been used by every other pasty white guy for whom this album is unrivalled in its sublimity.
The label told Radiohead this album was going to be hard to market, and that because of that it was uncommercial. It actually ended up reaching number 1 on the UK charts. Thom Yorke wanted a surprising atmosphere, but nothing crazy from what I read way back when. Which you hear right away on Airbag. The lyrics are pretty abstract. (The Bends was more personal.) Paranoid Android and Electioneering is a good example of the abstract lyrics. Paranoid Android is almost stream of consciousness. I was probably 13 or 14 when I first heard this. It would have been 2003 / 2004. Electioneering was always the standout song to me.
I'm going to be doing several listens over the course of this week, but after this one I just did, I have some thoughts:
I don't think I'm ever going to pin down exactly how I feel about OK Computer. I know talking about ratings a lot bothers some people, but mine for OKC fly around all over the place. I've had it as a 5 and I've had it as a 9...I never truly dislike it, but I go through periods of really souring on it and periods of coming to appreciate it again, and I think I'm currently on a swing of the latter.
My thing with this is that I have trouble with Radiohead tracks that are mostly based around Thom wailing or trying to sound beautiful. I don't think he can often carry vocally driven songs and I find that he can get really annoying at times. Other than the more straight up rock tracks like Paranoid Android, Exit Music, Karma Police, and Electioneering, every song has a couple of moments that stand out to me where it just sounds empty and like Thom really can't live up to what he wrote.
This is the fate of a lot of things that stick with me for a long time but that I also find glaring flaws in. Sometimes it's actually the same feeling. I feel that same awkward emptiness and unfulfilled expectations when I watch The Empire Strikes Back, but I also have periods where I can let that go and see the beauty that I fell in love with in the first place. Nothing can truly be untouchable once you adopt a mindset where you re-evaluate everything you like whenever possible, I guess.
Though I think it's more common for the reverse to happen, I've found less and less joy in the slightly less traditional and "soft" tracks on here, while I love the radio-friendly ones more and more. For a long time this album had this feeling like there was more to uncover, and that if I became very familiar with it, wonderful intricacies would reveal themselves. I realized that's not the case for me a while ago, so I have to readjust to just thinking it's a very good album that I can put on and enjoy at most any time.
What happens a lot of the time is, we hear album and it means something to us during that period of our life, but then we come back later and listen to it and it just doesn't mean the same thing that it did for us. We still like it, but the significance just isn't there.
It's common to go through phases week to week, day to day, or month to month. OKC is one of my favorites and probably in my top 10, but it isn't a common go to.
I think its mostly because he doesn't have a lot of variation in his voice, sounds sort of monotonic I guess if that makes sense. Anyway what's your take on True Love Waits? I think he did a pretty good job in it.
(oops, looks like you posted this as a top level comment)
A Moon Shaped Pool is actually my favorite Radiohead album, as backwards as that sounds given what I've said about vocally driven Radiohead tracks. "True Love Waits," while nowhere near my favorite on the album, is definitely a solid addition. Thom's voice has this (veryveryveryslight) bit of edge to it that he didn't develop until recently which works much better. The voice of an older man struggling to maintain that same delivery that I never liked much before makes it much better, oddly enough. That said, I still mostly appreciate it for the instrumentation and it would've been really nice to have an instrumental version work as the outro.
Oh shit, I don't know how that happened, sorry I guess. The version of True Love Waits in A Moon Shaped Pool was done on piano IIRC? I never really liked that version a lot. I liked it better on guitar but that wasn't released on any album, only performed live I think. Anyway I agree that the instrumentation on it is really nice and is a very big reason for me to like this song, simple yet serene and beautiful.
Oops, I didn't even listen to the version you linked, just went straight to my library to revisit it.
It's odd, I actually think the guitar version works better as a more complete song, and I can ignore the flaws in Thom's vocal performance more easily. On the other hand, the instrumentation on the album version is intoxicating and even though it doesn't synergize as well, I think I still prefer it. Thanks for linking that!
I agree with you on your True Love Waits opinion, I'm not a massive fan of it but it's definitely not bad. I find that the original guitar-driven one without the huge focus on piano sounds much more pleasing to me, personally. Shame they never actually released a studio cut of it, but at least we have a good studio of the piano one and a good live one of the guitar version.
I was 18 when OK Computer came out. Before it released, I'd listened to Pablo Honey, The Bends and every B-Side I could find more times than I can count. A friend of mine lent me a copy of a tape (imagine that!) - on it was a live performance of Paranoid Android - although we didn't know it's name at the time.
It blew my mind.
Here was this 7 minute song that felt like a complete break from anything I'd heard them do before. It ended up being another song that I played the hell out of until the album came out. The album became the sound track to my first few years at University, and even now listening to it I tie different songs to different events that happened around that time of happiness and grief.
I feel I was lucky enough to be able to see the band live several times, and have enjoyed every single album since. Some of them were a slow burn needing to be revisited as I grew older to really appreciate.
I will always have a soft spot for OK Computer.
This album was one of my first albums that I listened to when I was first thinking "I should really explore more music." and it left a really big impression on me and I have a lot of respect for that. I've loved Radiohead for a long time but this one has been steadily declining on me for about the same amount of time. Sometimes it plateaus on where my opinion of it stays for a bit, but it has yet to start going back up. Other Radiohead records, however, have risen up and I've realized that I enjoy them quite a bit more than this one.
My favorites on this are not really the norms, aside from Let Down. I'd put Fitter Happier, and Lucky up there with it. Even when I was blown away by this album, I don't quite think I was blown away by a couple of the particular tracks that seem to be the majority of fan favorites: Exit Music and Paranoid Android. Do I still think they're good or great? Yeah, but I don't think they've ever really clicked in my head with something that made me go "wow, this is one of the best songs I've ever heard."
I have a lot of respect for this album, and I don't think that I'll ever dislike it, but maybe I've either tired out from listening to it too much originally or my taste has shifted. Oh, and like a few others have said here, I don't think Thom can usually pull off the vocal-heavy demanding tracks that he writes.
My issue with this record is frustratingly hard to articulate but I think it comes down to its just not feeling unique. When I first heard this record, it sounded like nothing else I had heard. But as I’ve fallen in love with Kid A and Amnesiac and as I’ve explored a lot more music, OK Computer just sounds vaguely boring. Over the last three months I’ve grown to dislike it; almost every track rubs me the wrong way somehow. It’s like Thom could have made a great experimental album and a great pop album and tried to do both but neither work and they just clash for the whole album and it’s a mess and I want to listen to Kid A.
Maybe a case of overburn? Have you listened to it too many times?
My favourite record of the 90s.
Thom Yorke's vocals are the best here from any Radiohead album, and the lyrics are brilliantly haunting, particularly on Climbing Up The Wall, Exist Music, and Subterranean Homesick Alien. It's accessible, beautiful, and just pessimistic enough. While Amnesiac is my faviurite Radiohead album, OKC is the one I would recommend to anyone getting into Radiohead.
Great album from a great band
Overall 8.5/10