1 post tagged “ok computer”

(Don't worry, I'm not going to start with some terrible bastardization of Sgt. Peppers. There was enough of that when Sgt. Peppers itself was 40 years old a couple of weeks ago, and probably in everything written about any album anniversary since, ever.)

Anyway, it was ten years ago today that Radiohead released OK Computer, and ever since people have been going on about it being the Greatest Album Of All Time andwhathaveyou. While I hate to agree with those awful British music magazines, and think that the GAOAT concept is probably a logical fallacy anyway, today I feel obliged to doff my cap in OK Computer's direction.

Ten years ago (ten years ago!) I bought the album on CD. I know people say this type of thing about old music all the time, about wearing out records till the needle broke and about songs changing their life, but here I go anyway: I distinctly recall sitting in my bedroom that same day listening to the album intently for the very first time and being totally fucking blown away. I thought it sounded amazing.

I was seventeen, and I think there's something formative about the music you hear when you're seventeen. Most people that I know, by or around that age, have settled on their taste in music. I know that's probably a controversial thing to say, and I've got friends who would shout at me across our pints for accusing them of something like that, but I think it's largely true. It's not because your taste becomes immutable, it doesn't (some of the electronic music that I now love would have been heaped with scorn by my seventeen year old self). It's not because I haven't encountered music that has the potential to effect me as much as OK Computer since. It's that I haven't listened to an album the same way since: sitting in my bedroom, inlay card in hand, concentrating on the speaker while the music played.

That last sentence probably gave you an idea of the type of seventeen year old I was, and probably explains things a bit more. I was about to go to college to study humanities and politics, and here was this great new music from my favourite band, music about riot shields and mobile phone pylons crackling in the sky (and so on). It was great, and I invited it in. It's a zeitgeist album, and I was of that time and place.

I still love new music and seek it out at every opportunity. But I'd be lying if I said that I still listen to new music the way I did ten years ago; fanatically, ravenously. I guess I don't have the time any more (my world became a lot bigger in the following year), or maybe I just don't have the energy to wade through all the crap that's out there. To some seventeen year old, it's not crap at all though.

I suppose I should stop navel-gazing and say something about the album. I still think it's fantastic. There are only a couple of other albums that I can think of that run so well from start to finish as a single piece of music. To me, it is totally evocative of a time and place, and I can smile when I think about it. It's layered with vivid detail. But there I go again, I can't separate OK Computer from my own experience of it and just talk about the music. If you want that, go read the Guardian or something, I'm sure they've got some very clever deconstruction of the whole thing, no doubt starting off with the requisite Sgt. Yorke pun.