Read today, the lyrics sound prophetic Yorke’s words of warning about the onslaught of technology in modern society resonate with the ubiquity of the internet today, but were written in a time long before smartphones and social media. The passion for advancing pop music past genre and trend carries over into Yorke’s writing. It was backwards-looking, and I didn’t want any part of it.
The whole Britpop thing made me fucking angry…I hated it. In what would become the band’s hallmark, Radiohead’s refusal to conform also led them to reject the genre of Britpop that was dominating the British charts and they were often lumped in with. The B-sides featured on OKNOTOK, such as “Lift” and “Palo Alto,” would have put them back into that pigeonhole.
Their first two albums Pablo Honey (1993) and The Bends (1995) established Radiohead as a solid rock band perfectly suited to the introspective melancholy and self-loathing of the grunge movement of the early ’90s. The OKNOTOK package reveals an interesting blueprint for what might have been. It’s now clear that this is not the only shape the album could’ve taken. Yorke’s lyrics and vocal delivery captured an unsettling existentialism at a time when technology was threatening to take over the world and the turn of the millennium had people literally predicting the apocalypse. OK Computer proved durable over two decades and remains as relevant as ever. The band embarked on a journey to push the limits of genres and experiment with digital sounds, sample chopping, and prog rock and jazz influences, while its leader Thom Yorke’s struggled with anxiety and paranoia (a culmination of spending nearly four years straight in a tour bus). The original album defied the expectations of fans and Radiohead’s label, becoming an immediate success.
The digital and CD release dropped on Friday, June 23. To coincide with the 20th anniversary of their iconic record, Radiohead released a remastered edition featuring eight B-sides and three previously unreleased studio tracks under the title OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017 (also stylized as OKNOTOK). OK Computer is frequently called one of the best albums of all time. Thus, a new masterpiece OK Computer was born. After six months, the result was a generation-defining reaction against the music that dominated the mainstream in 1997. Fresh off the global success of their sophomore album The Bends, a young group of self-confessed nerds called Radiohead retreated to a 16th-century haunted mansion in the English countryside to plan their next move.
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