THE 50(ish) GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME…
OK Computer, Lockdown & Start Again
Album #3 : Radiohead — OK Computer
At sometime in around June 2020 I thought to myself: ‘There is nothing more crushingly boring than a national lockdown.’ The quizzes, the never leaving the house, the endless repetition of “you’re on mute, you’re on mute, you’re on mute!”
Oh, how wrong I was. Because now we have the new, winter edition of the lockdown. And it is much, much worse.
Now I long for the sunny afternoons and evenings sat in the car park of my flat, cold beer in hand, lamenting the fact that there was nowhere to go. Now, we exist in a permanent frozen state — both physically and meteorologically — and on the one occasion per day you are allowed to leave the house, you risk freezing to death or, worse, the public humiliation of slipping and hurting your bum-bum. Because you can guarantee that as soon as you fall over a group of kids will materialise, ready to laugh at you. “That’s an illegal gathering!” you’ll shout, prone on the ground, but they won’t hear you over their laughter.
So, with the national mood as low as it could ever get, let’s hope this week’s randomly chosen album is a cheery and uplifting one…
NOPE.
Sorry. It is OK Computer by Radiohead, an album I spent most of my school career defending against people calling it ‘depressing’. And whilst I stand by that argument (it isn’t depressing, it is a masterpiece) I can now understand a little bit where my fellow pupils were coming from. Here is a selection of lyrics from OK Computer:
“We hope that you choke”
“I’ve given all I can it’s not enough”
“Bring down the government, they don’t speak for us”
“When I am king, you will be first against the wall”
As well as being morose, any one of those could be a Donald Trump tweet. What a shame we can no longer check… The last one is actually from Paranoid Android, a song which perfectly encapsulates OK Computer. The thinking man’s Bohemian Rhapsody, it is a song that really defines an era for Radiohead — because it is a rock song, but it is also a bit weird.
On that note, it was basically impossible to pick one album by Radiohead for this list, but I chose OK Computer because it was the album that really catapulted Radiohead forward and it was the first where things started to get a little bit odd. This was the point when Yorke et al realised they could get away with the unusual and the eccentric and people would go along with it.
This album is a near flawless masterpiece and it has really stood the test of time. It is almost 24 years old. If I hadn’t heard it before and you told me if was released last week, I would probably believe you (and not least because the Coronavirus pandemic has destroyed my sense of time). Yes, the lyrics can be a little depressing, but the music itself is often absolutely euphoric. The last verse and chorus of Let Down just make you feel alive.
As I would regularly try and explain to my fellow high school pupils, Radiohead are not depressing once you start to look beyond the obvious. The same is true of lockdown, I suppose. At first, everything seems dark, cold and bleak but then small glimmers of hope start to shine through — you catch up with an old friend via a zoom, you save a bit of money, you find uses for your newfound free time…
The other day I learned an Irish phrase. Apparently, they say that the nights are getting lighter “by a cockerel’s step” each day. Where I sit to work from home, I get to see the sun going down and the sunsets have been magnificent — the orange and pink and purple hues smeared across the watery winter sky — but they have also been just a few minutes later each day. Likewise, the number of Covid cases across the UK makes for devastating reading but news of the vaccination spreads, slowly but surely, across the country. I am starting to hear of friends and relatives who work in healthcare getting doses, the elderly and infirm getting the protection they need.
I am not saying we are out of the woods yet but, amongst the gloom, a small shard of light pierces through. Lighter each day if only by a cockerel’s step.
And I listen, watch and wait on, enraptured.
Thanks for reading — over the course of 2021, I’ll be reviewing 50(ish) of the greatest albums ever recorded. You can see the list here.
