LogFAQs > #953962486

Radiohead - OK Computer results

Participants sorted by deviation from final results:
CasanovaZelos (10)
VeryInsane (14)
Jesse_Custer (20)
RyoCaliente (20)
Seginustemple (22)
neonreaper (24)
SpikeSetsFire (26)
HBJDubs (28)
TheArkOfTurus (30)
Giggsalot (30)
Johnbobb (32)
Snake5555555555 (36)
Evillordexdeath (36)
ChainLTTP (42)
Seanchan (42)
MetalmindStats (42)
Raetsel_Lapin (44)

General Album Comments:

Snake5555555555: Progressive rock for the slacker generation, combining introspective, slow-burning songs with moments of explosive hard rock, political diatribe and harsh commentaries on social isolation in an increasingly technologically-reliant age. It's downright impossible to truly listen to this album and not come away from it feeling something. Radiohead wear their influences on their sleeves here, mainly The Beatles but artists like Bob Dylan, ambient artists like The Orb, trip hop in Portishead, & classical composers get their due here too, but Radiohead smartly doesn't pigeonhole themselves and instead gets wildly creative with their compositions, and veer from the progressive-metal-esque Electioneering, which is one of the most prevalent political songs on the album, to the lush electronica structures of Exit Music, to the haunting ambient soundtracks that score terrifying lyrical motifs in tracks like Climbing Up the Walls or The Tourist, accompanied by absolutely gorgeous and ear-catching string arrangements. I would be remiss to not mention Airbag with its stop-start rhythm that is as addicting and catchy as it is frightfully meaningful as it paints a picture of car crashes and other transportation tragedies. There is no crack in Radiohead's armor, from start to finish Radiohead captivates with some of the best storytelling in music, and even tracks like Fitter Happier which run the risk of alienating even some of RH's most devout followers come across as charming and fitter to the album's overall themes (and it's an experimentation I tend to love despite its low ranking here). It's an album that totally lives up to the hype and you could spend hours dissecting the lyrical themes and instrumentation but I think it's best to just let it speak for itself.

ChainLTTP: The greatest album of all time. This is hard to rank because I feel differently about the songs individually vs how they fit into the album. But here goes nothing

CasanovaZelos: OK Computer is my favorite album of 1997 and #22 of all-time. It's hard to say anything that hasn't already been said; alongside Nevermind, this is THE big album of the 90s, and has the benefit of an obsessive online fanbase analyzing every detail. Rock and roll had been put through a blender in 1996, and Radiohead helped pick up the pieces and put them in a new direction, shedding alternative for something bigger and almost ethereal. This is one of those rare albums where no two songs sound the same, yet they all go so perfectly together. Hard rockers like "Paranoid Android" and "Electioneering" are expertly contrasted against the drifting atmosphere of "Subterranean Homesick Alien" or the subtly sinister "Climbing Up the Walls." Where The Bends was exceptional if familiar alternative, with all its focus on guitars and all that makes rock rock, OK Computer is all about atmosphere. Yet that's not to imply they went easy on the instrumentation; every layer of these songs is richly detailed. The end result is an album like nothing before it, with too large of a scope for anyone else to successfully imitate.

Giggsalot: Seminal, justifiably canonized, must-listen, etc. OK Computer flows effortlessly, and the perfect production and thematic consistency can fool you into thinking that the songwriting is a lot more even than it actually is. In that way, it's a pretty perfect example of the album form, and deserves its status. As with quite a lot of albums of that kind, though, there's a very strong argument that it doesn't even stand out in its own creators' discography divorced of the sociocultural context from which it came. Still, I'd love for my 4th - 5th album to be this good!

Evillordexdeath: For me, Radiohead's hot streak from The Bends through Kid A is one of the most impressive in all of music, with every track on all three albums being nothing short of excellent. OK Computer might actually be my least-favorite of the three, but even so it's one of those albums where it feels bad to have to choose a song to put in last place.

Seanchan: I will maintain I am generally positive on this album though I don't have anywhere near the reverence that I think a lot of the people in this topic do. I also found it really hard to do this ranking and I suspect this might be a very different ordering if I did more listens.

Johnbobb: Overall I really dug this album, way more than I thought I would. It's got a little bit of grunge, a little bit of electronic, and heavy dose of rock, all with Thom Yorke's iconic voice. I will say the album definitely has a quality dip about halfway through. Everything leading up to and including Karma Police is excellent, but after Fitter Happier, it feels a little more generic, though it's still not without it's highlights.

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My top 100 games (with write-ups): https://foolfantastic.com/top-100-video-games-project/