It’s even there in the album’s title – if you surround it with quotation marks, “OK Computer” looks like a Siri command we use with our smartphones.īut the real, tangible significance of OK Computer is musical. While the onward rush of technology is frightening, the only way to cope is to embrace it, albeit cautiously. Rather, Yorke’s lyrics are as meditative and humanistic as they are anxious and alienated. As much as OK Computer is wary about technology and mankind’s ability to cope with its rapid advances, it is hardly the rantings of some Luddite, irrational phobic. Many credibly point to the terrifying, sub-two-minute interlude ‘Fitter Happier’, consisting of nothing more than a sinister piano atmosphere and an emotionless ‘Fred’ Mackintosh computer voice, as being the thematic core that ties OK Computer together.Īnother key to its appeal is that, despite the unmistakable sense of pre-millennial tension and dread that enfuses the album, the outlook isn’t all bleak.
Yorke’s lyrics are impressionistic, with broken prose style creating lyric pieces moving and meaningful both in and of themselves and as part of the overall song and OK Computer as a whole. It is not filled with the kind of hubristic, ‘I Told You So’ hectoring that so often hobbles records that address grand political ideas, and neither do its tracks scan as counter-cultural ‘anthems’ or protest songs. However, both now and at the time, Radiohead were keen to emphasise that OK Computer was NOT intended to be a concept album. Yorke’s ability to detect these creeping trends in contemporary society, let alone express them in such a humanistic tone without coming across as earnest or sloganeering, spoke to a ferocious and sensitive intellect behind the compositional skill. OK Computer sense of unease and anxiety seemed to presage the 2017 of distant, disconnected politicians, unaccountable corporate power and the rictus neo-liberalism of Tony Blair and David Cameron.
Yorke’s near-future is one of vacuous consumerism, social alienation and democracy manipulated by hidden special interests and aided by technological dependency and mass entertainment. Thom Yorke’s lyrical content seemed to evoke premonitions of life how it came to be lived in the West in the 21 st century, depictions that have become more uncannily and eerily accurate as time passes. Influenced by: The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, King Crimson, Can, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., My Bloody Valentine, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Bj örk, DJ ShadowĪs the horrors of the last couple of years have unfolded like a slow-motion car crash via 24-hour rolling news coverage, and as the twin forces of automation and the gig economy have ravaged Western job security, many have reappraised Radiohead’s 1997 epic OK Computer and imbued it with extra political and social significance, on top of its obvious importance as a musical masterpiece.
Influenced: Mogwai, Mansun, Blur, The Beta Band, Sparklehorse, Grandaddy, Bj örk, Sigur R ós, Doves, Coldplay, Muse, Elbow, Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, Bright Eyes, The Killers, Broken Social Scene, Foals, Yeasayer, Everything Everything, Bombay Bicycle Club, Alt-J
0 kommentar(er)
