Next time you want to say “Well, maybe it’s not to your taste”, you might want to try saying it that way instead of saying, in effect, “Didn’t like the album? Must be something wrong with you, then.” Because that’s the way you came across, even if you didn’t mean to.
An it not turn into a Pit thread, why not? If your love for this album doesn’t stand up to a little critical analysis, you should maybe wonder if it’s just a nostalgia thing. I know I have one or two albums like that on the rack.
Now obviously I didn’t expect anyone to :smack: and cry, “My God, how could I have been so wrong?”, but I’m sure you’ll agree there’s a difference between having a spirited discussion and people spouting abuse rather than try to defend their side.
Where did you get that idea from? Oxford is anything but working class. A full quarter of its population are students at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, what industry there is is in the high-tech sector and believe me, the cost of living there is high.
Right. But like explained, it does say something about you- it says it’s not to your taste, and that’s all the comment meant.
I didn’t even get the album until about two years ago, so it’s hardly a nostalgia thing. I can talk about it critically for hours, but when somebody comes into a thread with a tone like yours I don’t see why I should bother.
Yes. Perhaps we have a difference of opinion on the meaning of “OK Computer is one of the most overrated albums ever made … It’s the pretentious musical masturbations of a whining middle-class twat, yet for some unknown reason people idolise it.”
I’m sure it is. From reading about the town and Radiohead I’ve gotten the impresion that despite the university, some parts of the town (or the families of the musicians in question) were not that well-off. The college town I live in right now is the same.
Hmm…last I’ve been there, Oxford was a fairly industrial city, outside the university center. While it’s no Wolverhampton or Manchester, there’s plenty of working class in Oxford and the surrounding area. Especially there and nearby Cowley, where what’s left of the British auto industry is located. (This may have changed by now.)
As to the OP, while I do think Thom Yorke could benefit from a good ass-kicking from time to time, and can be a bit of a pretentious, humorless twat, OK Computer is an absolutely justly lauded album. In my best of 90s list, I would put it at number three behind My Bloody Valentines Loveless (at number one), and Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
How anybody can categorize OK Computer as unlistenable is beyond me. You can say that about Amnesiac and Kid A before this album. OK Computer is a cohesive album. It’s got memorable melodies, intricate guitar work, playful experimentation with pop structure (I’ve always loved the 7/8 section of Paranoid Android. Not because of the time signature, but because it perfectly works and feels absolutely natural in context.) OK Computer is an album that oozes mood. It’s emotional (I don’t feel any pretension on their part. I feel it’s genuine and honest.) OK Computer, like Loveless, is an experience and is best appreciated as a whole. It’s not an album for any mood, but when the mood hits you, no other album will do. Listening to it is like being possessed by Yorke and feeling exactly what he was feeling when he recorded those songs. Really, his dynamic and timbral vocal range is incredible on this album.
If it’s not your cup of tea, I can understand. However, I find it nigh impossible to be dismissive of this album. Personally, I can’t stand Pink Floyd, but I can hardly dismiss them as being overrated and pretentious. I know there’s something there when I hear Floyd, but I just can’t connect to it. I don’t understand it. But many people do, so I think it would not be fair of me to wave the album off with a shrug of the shoulders.
One of my friends told me that OK Computer was one of the best albums ever made…kind of built it up a bit, you know? So I listened to it, and thought…eh. I guess it’s just not a style that I like, but even so I tried to listen to it with an ear for appreciation of the music itself, aside from my own preferences…and I still wasn’t particularly moved by it. Radiohead fans, what am I missing here? I think that Radiohead might be one of those things that I just don’t ‘get’.
Right. He takes himself a lot more seriously on later albums, as far as the humorlessness goes.
Kid A in particular. I Amesiac has more real songs, and I think it has some of their best.
I think that’s very apt. It’s not an album I can, or want to, listen to all the time. But when you have it on, you’re very much in the album’s space, it has a sustained mood from beginning to end. This is not in my opinion a pretentious album. It was from a group who’d had one big single and one pretty well-received rock album, and they were really beginning to stretch out. A lot of it is mopey, I don’t think you can argue with that, but pretension is another thing.
I like some of Floyd’s stuff and have a couple of their albums. There’s some good stuff. But if Radiohead is pretentious, I don’t even want to imagine what Pink Floyd is.
<Slight Hijack> I’ve been told by many people that based on my musical tastes I should love Radiohead. I’ve seen them live once in 1996 when they opened for Alanis Morissette. Let’s just say that I was less than impressed, though they may have had a lousy sound engineer. My favorite artists are Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, A Perfect Circle, Tori Amos, Dream Theater, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Ben Folds, and Van Halen. Though I like a lot of other music as well >700 CDs in my collection.
What album should I start with? </Slight Highjack> OK Computer?
Y’all have piqued my curiosity. I’m going to pick up OK Computer sometime in the next couple days and give it a listen. I’ll post my thoughts afterwards.
I find Radiohead as a band to be whiny and aggravating.
But Ok Computer as a statement about the alienation of the individual in the information age is brilliant. I find it to be very well structured (the cyclical bookends of Airbag and The Tourist with the “next please” bell at the very end tied everything up very nicely). The lyrics are literate but not self-consciously oblique. And the music- well the music is amazing. Exit Music makes bring me to tears through the force of its desperation while Let Down does the same because it is so beautiful.
The wonder of OK Computer is summed up for me after the bridge on Let Down where there is an explosion of random electronic blips- at once joyous and isolating.
And to top it off, the album, in what could have been a messy pile of pretention (i.e. The Wall), still manages to rock hard…
Given your tastes, I think OK Computer would be a good entry to Radiohead, although for something a little more straightforward, The Bends is an excellent rock record, too. If you want to get a little bit more experimental, try Kid A. To be perfectly honest, OK Computer and The Bends are the only Radiohead albums I listen to on a somewhat regular basis.
I had some spare time tonight, so I went out and bought a copy of OK Computer and gave it a listen on the best pair of headphones I have.
I didn’t know whether I’d realize the brilliance of it all or think of it as the most pretentious piece of crap ever put out, but I was fully expecting that I wouldn’t like it. It would be no tragedy–it’s hard to imagine anything topping some of the worst albums I’ve ever spent $15 on, and at least I could say that I had heard it.
So I was completely surprised as I found myself really digging the first track. I kept waiting for things to fall apart, for the experimentalism to be too much, or for monotony to set in, but it didn’t happen. This is a good album, and definitely worth listening to. I didn’t think much of Radiohead after Pablo Honey and The Bends, but this definitely changed my mind. I don’t know that I’ll be looking into any of their other stuff, but I’m glad I have this album.
Mind you, it’s in no danger of cracking my top ten, and it’s definitely not the best album of any decade, but it’s good.
I think that’s a fair first impression. Not to push anything on you, but it IS an album that merits multiple listens. There’s a lot of stuff just barely at or below the surface, and it contributes a lot once you can listen for it.
I didn’t expect to like it either. I knew everybody in college loved Radiohead and that just sort of turned me off. I felt it was music for mopey, pretentious downers. ‘Music to feel bad to,’ that kind of thing. But a bunch of my friends were big time fans, and they woodshedded for a couple of weeks and actually performed the whole album for the dorm - three guitars, a DJ, glockenspiel, well-made videos in the background and everything. I just went to videotape it, but I was surprised to find that it really rocked. Hard. It was Electioneering that really blew me away and that’s still my favorite, but there were some other great moments too. I’m glad I was ‘forced’ to listen to it.
Also, as far as Radiohead and pretension goes: granting that it is what it is, the band seems to have a pretty grounded and unpretentious approach. In particular, they always reject the suggestion that they make concept albums (people say this of OK Computer in particular, I did too). They usually say they’re just making pop music. It’s very ambitious and intentionally challenging pop music, which is going to make people point fingers, but I don’t see the band members trying to make it something it’s not.
I just had to find this thread while sitting here at work. In spite of the fact, that I listened to this album all of last week, I want more. Now I have to sit here for another 7 hours until I can go home and listen to it. Damn you Ilsa for starting this thread. All I can do is sit and whistle Electioneering to myself.
I don’t think I can give you a list, cause I can think of too many good albums that are stylistically very different and therefore pretty much incomparable.
I picked up on some of that–I’ve actually gotten pretty good at listening beneath the surface–but I’ll be looking for more.
One thing I don’t understand: why was “Karma Police” chosen as the first single rather than “Electioneering”? It seems like the latter would generate a lot more sales.
IMO, not a weak track in the whole thing. Every song is near-perfectly placed. From “Airbag”, to “Paranoid Android”, and on all the way to “The Tourist”.
My favorite part of the album is toward the end of “Let Down”, where Thom goes into falsetto when he sings “You know where you are”, and he holds that note, while the music builds up.
Fair enough. I guess I should have specified “(pop) rock albums.” I was just curious what your listening background was. I’m not going to try to convince you OK Computer is the best album, or anything.
But Marley is right about listening to it multiple times. I would say that pretty much all my top albums took many many listens before they became my favorites. Loveless certainly took some patience. Pet Sounds didn’t click until maybe the tenth listen.
The fact you enjoyed it on first listen is a pretty good sign, though.
It’s a fair question. I’m not much for pop rock after about 1985 or so, so I’d be hard-pressed to pick a best album from the 90s. I mostly listen to metal, so I’m coming from a very different background from most of the people here.
The more I think about it, the more OK Computer reminds me of Anathema’s last two albums (A Fine Day To Exit and A Natural Disaster). Those would probably go over very well in this crowd.
I love OK Computer, but I will not listen to “Exit Music (For a Film).” Never. I hate that song, and it just gets in the way of the rest of the album. “Fitter Happier,” on the other hand, is a perfect intermission, and “Electioneering” is a totally rockin’ way to start off the second half. “Subterranean Homesick Alien” is my favorite, especially the line where Thom sings, “I’d show them the stars, and the meaning of life…they’d shut me away, but I’d be all right.” I honestly can’t think of another CD that I like more. I guess OK Computer is a concept album, but it doesn’t seem gimmicky at all.
