Product 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'.

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: #729 in Music
• Released on: 1997-05-01
• Number of discs: 1

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

Customer Reviews

best album of the past 25 years
it is over 11 years since i bought this album. i listened to it a few times with no real hallelujah moments. then it clicked. i listened to the album as a whole, i listened to the album with the lyrics sheet open. and then it became the soundtrack for my summer. the memories associated with this album were brilliant but then so was the music. every track is unique, the lyrics are awesome, yorke's voice has at least 5 styles, the guitar play, cut up drums, soundscape are magical. i listened to the album again yesterday and it prompted this review. you must respect radiohead for not re writing the bends but creating something bigger and better. brilliant, absolutely brilliant

Ratings track by track
Here are my individual ratings (out of 10) for tracks on the best album ever made on Planet Earth!
Airbag 9;Paranoid Android 8.5;Subterranean Homesick Alien 8.5;Exit (Music for a film) 9;Let Down 10;Karma Police 9; Fitter Happier 2;Electioneering 6;Climbing up the Walls 10;No Suprises 8;Lucky 9; the Tourist 9

Musical genious
I must say that after listening to 'The Bends' for the past couple of months, it took a while to adapt to the ever progressing style that Radiohead have adopted with each album. The introduction to new techniques and sounds make the third album a refreshing take on the final decade of the 20th century, that shaped a lot of music we hear today.

From the outset, OK Computer produces unusual and fascinating tracks, each of them leaving a unique fingerprint behind them. The ability to relate to the music as the songs evolved from more synthesised sounds, to deep and complex rhythms truly set the basis for what would ultimately define OK Computer as a masterpiece in music.

While many would say that this is the product of Radioheads finest work, I would say that is is only a fragment of the style that can be differentiated from one album to the next. In purchasing OK Computer, you fill in one piece of the puzzle that creates the overall picture of Radiohead's talents, as each release is so diverse relative to previous Radiohead tracks.

Overall I would, without a shadow of a doubt, recommend this album to anyone who wishes to expand their musical appetite. I think that it would be useful also to read differing reviews about this CD before purchasing it, as I am only putting forward my own opinion. After all, one of music's many purposes is to provoke differences in opinion!