20 Years On ... How Radiohead's 'OK Computer' Killed Britpop With Its Dark Dystopian Vision.
Prepare for dehumanisation
OK Computer. What a monster of an album. Musically complex, its 12 songs were foreboding, textured, crammed with snatches of white noise and electronic flourishes, and at times sublimely beautiful.
Lyrically, singer Thom Yorke eyed the future with twitchy fear, singing about the march of technology and its dehumanising effects, machines spiraling out of control, alienation, artificial intelligence and sensory overload. Within months of Vanity Fair proclaiming that "London Swings Again!", OK Computer’s nervous jolt suggested a darker reality.
Britpop extinguished
OK Computer stamped on the smouldering fag end of Britpop. Ironically, Radiohead hadn’t planned a big statement with OK Computer. The album’s technological bent – sonically, at least – stemmed largely from the band resisting pressure to repeat the straight rock sound of previous album, 1995's global smash The Bends.
Thematically, the album quickly proved uncannily prescient. This is one of the reasons it endures. Within months of its release, Cool Britannia unraveled: Blair became engulfed in the Ecclestone Affair funding scandal, Gallagher’s Oasis released the rotten Be Here Now album, and the untimely death of Princess Diana darkened the nation’s mood. Within a year of its release, pre-Millennium angst took hold.
Internet rising
Global internet usage had doubled since Blair’s election and people were increasingly fearful that the computers upon which our infrastructure relied would crash as we hurtled into the new century.
The apocalypse would play out on the new 24-hour rolling news channels, assuming the Y2K bug hadn’t torpedoed them too. OK Computer’s dystopian warnings suddenly felt like a snapshot of the current world.
Life is messy and technology is scary. Perhaps, in writing about a future that quickly became a reality, OK Computer is just too close to the bone of modern reality.
I also wrote an article on Radiohead, interesting band. Mine partially covered how the rights for "Creep" were assigned to "The Hollies" in a lawsuit. It's an interesting conversation fact for when Radiohead comes up.
That's a very interesting Radiohead nugget @lexiconical :) Thanks for that.
Thanks brother for sharing
good morning
Congrats for the
1001 followers
It's a long road to 1K followers! ... and still my follows sit at zero ;)
What would I have to do to make you follow me? ;-)
Remove my allergy to the follow button ;)
Would it help to add "The chosen one - by mindhunter" to my description? ;)
Allergy persists :D
Interesting review, bit harsh to put the blame on them for ending britpop!
Although this album is quality when
compared to some of the crap trying to jump on to the tail end of britpop, for me they pulled clear of every other band in the UK with the following albums - Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the thief sounded like nothing else on Earth at the time and I still love this era of their history!
Big fan of the Kid A album too. After this album every band sounded like a clone of Radiohead: Travis, Coldplay etc etc.
Yeah I was going to cite Travis and Dodgy as being two of the poorer Britpop nominees!
Coldplay retired in glory but whatever happened to Dodgy??! Ha ha!
Hopefully someone 'rained' on their parade in epic fashion!
Ha ha! Sounds like a Dodgy ending!! :)
You should be sleeping now brother!
Streemian.com takes care of the posting when I'm asleep ... Zzzzzzzz! ....
Wait.... streemian posts content too?! I need a bot to create me some 🤑 Posts!
It doesn't create the posts ... it just schedules to post them when your asleep :)
Now that is something I could use. I see you've noticed the main action takes place during GMT darkness too!
Yes! And it keeps grabbing you new followers whilst your asleep too :)
Good point, when I actually come up with something worth posting I'm going to give it a shot!
I absolutely love it! I just passed 1K followers last night whilst I was asleep! Check it out @abh12345
https://streemian.com/