Track-by-Track Breakdown

For your listening pleasure, I highly recommend you seek out a legitimate copy of OK Computer to follow along with. It’s one of those albums that everybody should own in at least one format. It’s also an album that is meant to be played non-stop, it’s not necessarily a concept album, but the songs do form a cohesive mood and are meant to be listened to together.

Airbag

The album’s opening track is an atmospheric and multi-layered one, setting a tone for the rest of the album. The song’s rhythm is built on a syncopated, programmed drum loop based on a sampled recording, punctuated by Colin Greenwood’s sporadic bass line. The song builds a dense sonic atmosphere with electronic beeps and highly-processed guitars meshing to create a sound that balances traditional rock instrumentation with modern synths and other electronic elements. The song deals with the illusion of safety in modern transportation and alludes to reincarnation and automobile collisions, likely a reference to lead singer Thom Yorke’s own experience in a car wreck that made him forever weary of any kind of mechanized transport.

Paranoid Android

The second track is a multi-part masterpiece, successfully bridging four distinct and unrelated parts into an eclectic medley. The song features two key changes, two tempo changes, and even a change in time signature for one section. The song showcases Yorke’s vocal range, from delicate falsettos to sustained vibratos. It runs the gamut from calmly ticked-off and emotional to frenzied rage. The song manages to weave all these different elements without feeling disjointed, in fact it manages to sound beautifully chaotic and ambitious. To which Thom Yorke would comment:

“Ambition makes you look pretty ugly…”

Subterranean Homesick Alien

The album takes a turn for the serene with Subterranean Homesick Alien, the title of which is a reference to the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues. The song paints a sentimental picture of a world from the eyes of someone longing for extraterrestrial abduction to escape the boredom of everyday life. The guitars are heavily drenched in reverb and delay effects to create a spacey, otherworldly tone which, along with the electric piano, help contribute to the sense of tranquility.

“We hope your rules and wisdom choke you, and now we are one in everlasting peace.” -Exit Music (For a Film)

Exit Music (For a Film)

The story Romeo and Juliet was the inspiration for Exit Music (For a Film), telling the story of the two star-crossed lovers with Romeo pleading Juliet to run away with him. The lyrics could be a reference to suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning with the line “Keep breathing.” The song opens with slow, isolated acoustic guitar strumming before Thom Yorke’s Hauntingly resonant voice takes center stage. Yorke’s vocal track is colored with a rich, low-frequency response that gives it a lot of power and weight, while also featuring very high frequencies that give the whole track great presence and clarity. A synthesized choir lends to the overall eerie tone. The introduction of drums moves the song to its crescendo, with distorted bass and dissonant synthesizers building up to Yorke’s vocals soaring as the song’s tragic hero wishes death upon his lover’s father before finally accepting his fate.

Let Down

Perhaps OK Computer’s finest song is its 5th track Let Down. The title is in reference to the act of a plane descending but also about bleak, soul-crushing disappointment in continuing with the theme of transportational disillusion. The track begins with layered, arpeggiated guitars. The arrangement is beautiful and complex, with guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s simple arpeggios playing at a different time signature from the rest of the band, shifting from 5/8 to 3/8 while drummer Phil Selway keeps the rest of the song’s rhythm grounded in 4/4. Rich vocal melodies tinge the entire track, ultimately leading to a triumphant climax with Yorke delivering his highest, most sustained note of the entire album.

“Transport Motorways and tramlines Starting and then stopping Taking off and landing The emptiest of feelings Disappointed people Clinging on to bottles And when it comes it’s so, so disappointing.” -Let Down

Karma Police

Karma Police, one of the album’s standout tracks, is evocative and powerful. The track features a simple rhythm piano arrangement over a 4/4 time signature. Yorke’s vocals are both delicate and pronounced, driving the melody which gently moves the song towards its messy, distorted conclusion.

Fitter Happier

If an interlude’s intended purpose is to let the audience catch their breath and collect their thoughts, Fitter Happier is almost an anti-interlude, an outerlude. The track is an information overload, a greatest hits compilation of the follies of modern consumerism spoken entirely by a Macintosh voice synthesis application. The use of of a robotic voice to point out the loss of humanity inherent in a world run by computers is a salient point of the album, most poignantly communicated on this track more than any other.

Electioneering

The album’s sound makes a brief detour into more traditional The Bends-era alternative rock with Electioneering. It’s the most straightforward rock song on the album and one of the heaviest songs the band has ever recorded. The song features a prominent cowbell, easily the most “rock-and-roll” instrument ever. The song is also the most overtly political song the band has ever recorded, taking a cynical view of political campaigning and propaganda.

Climbing Up The Walls

Without a doubt the most unnerving song on the whole album, Climbing Up The Walls is as densely-layered as Let Down, but instead its many layers are used to build tension. The track begins with ambient noises and is kicked off by Selway’s droning, cold-sounding drums. The song is sung with two slightly inharmonic and distorted vocal tracks layered over one another, contributing to the song’s themes of schizophrenia and insanity as well as its overall unsettling mood. The track also features a 16-part string arrangement composed by Jonny Greenwood. This all builds up to a terrifically dissonant coda, punctuated by Yorke’s absolutely blood-curdling scream.

No Surprises

Music Video Courtesy of EMI Music

Recorded in a single take, No surprises is easily the most beautiful song on the entire album. The song’s dulcet opening is inspired by Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach Boys, a song recorded nearly 30 years prior, and one that reflects the glassy-eyed optimism of the 60's. Radiohead’s homage serves to reflect the intrinsic pessimism of contemporary society. The song’s arrangement is painfully tranquil, in sharp contrast to its grim lyrics that contemplate suicide. Everything from the mellow acoustic guitar, to the glockenspiel, to Yorke’s calm and reserved vocals help pacify the listener in the same way the song’s narrator is trying to pacify themselves.

Lucky

It all comes full-circle with the penultimate track Lucky. The album opens with a song about a car crash and ends with a song about a plane crash. Like the rest of the album, the song’s lyrics are optimistic without being overly sentimental. The song utilizes the band’s three guitarists beautifully, layering them all together into a dense sound mesh that builds to an anthemic climax.

The Tourist

The entire album is focused on the noise and bustle of modern society. The themes of alienation and depression are punctuated by the electronic sound of the album. The final track makes it a point to reign things in, to slow things down and let the message sink in. The lyrics are simple and do well to contrast leave the listener with a sense of catharsis. In the end for as depressed and disturbed as much of the album manages to sound, it actually ends on an optimistic note. The final sound on the whole album is a small bell making a “ding”, not unlike the one a plane makes shortly after takeoff.