“OK Computer” can be loosely defined as a concept album: a song cycle unified by the late-capitalist affective landscape that it simultaneously mirrors and reproduces in a listener. Yorke’s opening lines on the song “Lucky” proved prophetic: “I’m on a roll / I’m on a roll this time . . . ” “OK Computer” was greeted as an instant classic, and Radiohead was named band of the year by both Rolling Stone and Spin. (That style, and the Donwood/Yorke collaboration, will be on display at the London gallery show “ Test Specimens” later this month.) The promotional campaign was helped by the album’s distinctive visual style-smudged, generic human figures along with airline safety-brochure images, superimposed on a ghostly freeway interchange rendered in a bleak wash of bone white and pale blue-created by the artist Stanley Donwood in collaboration with Yorke. How is this going to be received?” Despite the label’s reservations, they put considerable marketing muscle behind “OK Computer,” buying full-page ads in the British music press.
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According to Selway, the band’s label was initially nonplussed when they listened to it: “When we first delivered the album to Capitol, their first reaction was, more or less, ‘Commercial suicide.’ They weren’t really into it. Had the band called it quits, Radiohead would likely be remembered as a mid-list act from the nineties who enjoyed a devoted following but for whom commercial success remained elusive. Their next album, “The Bends,” from 1995, is a much richer and more confident record, but without a big radio-friendly hit. But Radiohead’s three-guitar attack, and their penchant for complex arrangements and soaring choruses, provided a framework for the band to build on. The five-piece from Oxford, England (Yorke, lead vocals and guitar Ed O’Brien, guitar the brothers Jonny Greenwood, guitar, and Colin Greenwood, bass and Phil Selway, drummer) had declared on their fourth single that “Pop Is Dead” what, exactly, would replace it wasn’t yet clear.
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Its pop power derives from a stark sonic contrast that’s at the heart of many of Radiohead’s best songs: the aural clash of Thom Yorke’s brittle, ethereal voice against an instrumental wash of noisy menace: “I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo / What the hell am I doing here? / I don’t belong here.” The song’s popularity typecast the band in ways that they struggled to break free from, much as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had done to Nirvana earlier, and for almost seven years, Radiohead refused to play “Creep” at their shows. “Creep” was an infectious anthemic ballad of self-loathing with a sing-along chorus. The band’s single “Creep,” from their 1993 début, “Pablo Honey,” spent half the year on the British charts, peaking at No.
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When Radiohead released their third album, “OK Computer,” on May 21, 1997, they were a band that a typical indie-rock fan would know-but maybe not well.