Track Listing

1. Airbag
2. Paranoid Android
3. Subterranean Homesick Alien
4. Exit Music (For A Film)
5. Let Down
6. Karma Police
7. Fitter Happier
8. Electioneering
9. Climbing Up The Walls
10. No Surprises
11. Lucky
12. Tourist

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1263 in Music
• Released on: 1997-05-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Whilst one suspects some kind of pre-millennial hysteria prompted Q magazine's readers to vote OK Computer The Greatest Album Ever Made scarcely five months after its release, it certainly doesn't look stupid up there in the pantheon. Following the hot red rock attack of 1995's The Bends, OK Computer heads out into the cold deep space of prog-rock and comes back with stuff that makes mere pop earthlings like Stereophonics tremble. Whilst the eight-minute-long "Paranoid Android" comes across like "Bohemian Rhapsody" with a gun held to its head, and "Electioneering" is a little too like a kiddy-version of Blood And Chocolate-era Elvis Costello to be truly revelatory, the rest of OK Computer spans the sublime to the ridiculously sublime. Thom Yorke had been obsessed with Ennio Morricone during the recording of the album (in a haunted mansion, fact-fans), and it shows on the expansive space-dream of "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and the endlessly comforting closer "The Tourist". And if neither "No Surprises" (played on a toy guitar with Yorke and Ed O'Brien harmonising like a two-man Crowded House) nor "Lucky" (recorded in one day for the Bosnian aid album War Child--it reduced Yorke to tears the first time he heard it played back) make the hairs on your skin spit with electricity, then maybe you're with the Q reader who voted for Anita by Anita Dobson. --Caitlin Moran

CD Description
'OK Computer' is Radiohead's third studio album, and is thefollow up to their breakthrough second album 'The Bends'. Combining elements of bombastic prog rock with alternating time signatures and traditional pop songwriting, the album is a marked departure from the sound of the band's two previousefforts. Includes the singles 'Paranoid Android', 'Karma Police' and 'No Surprises'.

Customer Reviews

Unique, moving, brilliant.
A friend of mine once said that Radiohead were the kind of band who it was easy to admire, and yet difficult to like. I always agreed, preferring the accessibility of bands like Oasis and The Stereophonics to the intensive coolie labour it could sometimes take to listen to Radiohead. Then, last summer, I went to see Radiohead play at Victoria Park in London. And I saw the light.

This album can ask a lot of the listener, but if you can really give into the music and just let it carry you off, you can become so consumed by these songs that you find yourself suddenly opening your eyes at the end of a track, blinking in surprise at the fact that you are actually back in the real world. They tear your soul open, and force you to confront those feelings for which you probably don't even have a name. Despair perhaps, numbness perhaps, but above all, the way it can sometimes feel just to be a human in the 20th Century.

It's hard to pick a stand out track (even the pretty much tune free "Fitter, Happier" makes for compelling listening), but "Exit Music (for a film)" is one of the most touching, fragile and beautiful songs you will ever hear. When you consider Thom Yorke wrote it as a soundtrack to the end of Romeo and Juliet, the lyrics become even more intense; "Today, we escape, we escape". "Don't lose your nerve. I can't do this - alone".

If you have ever felt alone, disenfranchised, pointless or depressed, this record will connect with you in a way you may have never thought possible. And that contact will make you feel better. Less alone. It makes you feel like there are other people out there who feel like this. It's a record which takes you on a journey through the darker parts of the soul. A record about how it feels to be human.

Oh, and it's very, very good (did I mention that?).

Why'd I leave it so long?
After being a fan of music and in particular rock music for many years i finally decided to give radiohead a chance and bought ok computer, i'm not really sure why I waited so long but they never seemed to appeal to me, maybe it was a lack of instantly catchy tunes, who knows. So i insert the CD, first listen i was moderately impressed and went and bought 'the bends', having now listened to both albums uncountable times i have really been drawn in by the radiohead spell and find every listen reveals something new, either in the lyrics or music, a new understanding is achieved, it onlys leaves me wondering why the hell I left it so long before I conceded. For people who may face the same situation the two albums mentioned are definitely the places to start and give them at least 6 or 7 listens each, if you're not appreciating the music by then maybe try 10 or 20 listens, it will happen eventually. Overall a monumental record which quite rightly is widely regarded as one of the best of all time, personal favourites are 'Airbag' and 'Karma Police'. 10 out of 10.

The greatest album ever made?
Although it may seem like an insincere superlative when considering such legendary albums as Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, or Love's Forever Changes, Radiohead's opus OK Computer is, in my opinion, the greatest record of all time. Never has any other album left me with such an incredible feeling of hope, desperation, beauty and, above all, the sense that I had just heard something remarkable.
Whilst it would be easy to dismiss OK Computer as over-hyped, pretentious, or similar to Pink Floyd, there is an incredible amount of substance to the album (and for the record, I loathe all post-Syd Floyd!) From the hard-hitting opener Airbag and the astounding Paranoid Android, to the epic Lucky and the uplifting closer The Tourist, it truly is an album of unadulterated genius, and the album that established Radiohead as the definitive band of a generation.