OK Computer
OK Computer is the third studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 21 May 1997. With their producer, Nigel Godrich, Radiohead recorded most of OK Computer in their rehearsal space in Oxfordshire and the historic mansion of St Catherine's Court in Bath in 1996 and early 1997. They distanced themselves from the guitar-centred, lyrically introspective style of their previous album, The Bends. OK Computers abstract lyrics, densely layered sound and eclectic influences laid the groundwork for Radiohead's later, more experimental work.
The lyrics depict a dystopian world fraught with rampant consumerism, social alienation, technological anxiety and political corruption, while also exploring themes of transport, conformity, paranoia, death, modern British life and globalisation. In this capacity, OK Computer is said to have prescient insight into the mood of 21st-century life. Radiohead used unconventional production techniques, including natural reverberation, and no audio separation. Strings were recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. Most of the album was recorded live.
EMI had low expectations of OK Computer, deeming it uncommercial and difficult to market. However, it reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and debuted at number 21 on the Billboard 200, Radiohead's highest album entry on the US charts at the time, and was certified five times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US. It expanded Radiohead's international popularity and sold at least 7.8 million copies worldwide. "Paranoid Android", "Karma Police", "Lucky" and "No Surprises" were released as singles.
OK Computer received widespread acclaim from critics and has been cited as one of the greatest albums of the 1990s and all time. It was nominated for Album of the Year and won Best Alternative Music Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards. It was also nominated for Best British Album at the 1998 Brit Awards. The album initiated a shift in British rock away from Britpop toward melancholic, atmospheric alternative rock that became more prevalent in the next decade. In 2014, it was added by the US Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". A remastered version with additional tracks, OKNOTOK 1997 2017, was released in 2017. In 2019, in response to an internet leak, Radiohead released MiniDiscs |MiniDiscs , comprising hours of additional material.
Background
In 1995, Radiohead toured in support of their second album, The Bends. Midway through the tour, Brian Eno commissioned them to contribute a song to The Help Album, a charity compilation organised by War Child; the album was to be recorded over the course of a single day, 4 September 1995, and rush-released that week. Radiohead recorded "Lucky" in five hours with Nigel Godrich, who had engineered The Bends and produced several Radiohead B-sides. Godrich said of the session: "Those things are the most inspiring, when you do stuff really fast and there's nothing to lose. We left feeling fairly euphoric. So after establishing a bit of a rapport work-wise, I was sort of hoping I would be involved with the next album." The singer, Thom Yorke, said "Lucky" shaped the nascent sound and mood of their upcoming record: Lucky' was indicative of what we wanted to do. It was like the first mark on the wall."Radiohead found touring stressful and took a break in January 1996. They sought to move away from the introspective style of The Bends. The drummer, Philip Selway, said: "There was an awful lot of soul-searching . To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring." Yorke said he did not want to do "another miserable, morbid and negative record", and was "writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."
The critical and commercial success of The Bends gave Radiohead the confidence to self-produce their third album. Their label, Parlophone, gave them a £100,000 budget for recording equipment. The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, said "the only concept that we had for this album was that we wanted to record it away from the city and that we wanted to record it ourselves". According to the guitarist Ed O'Brien, "Everyone said, 'You'll sell six or seven million if you bring out The Bends Pt 2,' and we're like, 'We'll kick against that and do the opposite'." A number of producers were suggested, including major figures such as Scott Litt, but Radiohead were encouraged by their sessions with Godrich. They consulted him for advice on equipment, and prepared for the sessions by buying their own, including a plate reverberator purchased from the songwriter Jona Lewie. Although Godrich had sought to focus on electronic dance music, he outgrew his role as advisor and became the album's co-producer.
Recording
In early 1996, Radiohead recorded demos at Chipping Norton Recording Studios, Oxfordshire. In July, they began rehearsing and recording in their Canned Applause studio, a converted shed near Didcot, Oxfordshire. Even without the deadline that contributed to the stress of The Bends, the band had difficulties, which Selway blamed on their choice to self-produce: "We're jumping from song to song, and when we started to run out of ideas, we'd move on to a new song ... The stupid thing was that we were nearly finished when we'd move on, because so much work had gone into them."The members worked with nearly equal roles in the production and formation of the music, though Yorke was still firmly "the loudest voice", according to O'Brien. Selway said, "We give each other an awful lot of space to develop our parts, but at the same time we are all very critical about what the other person is doing." Godrich's role as co-producer was part collaborator and part managerial outsider. He said that Radiohead "need to have another person outside their unit, especially when they're all playing together, to say when the take goes well ... I take up slack when people aren't taking responsibility—the term 'producing a record' means taking responsibility for the record ... It's my job to ensure that they get the ideas across." Godrich has produced every Radiohead album since, and has been characterised as Radiohead's "sixth member", an allusion to George Martin's nickname as the "fifth Beatle".
Radiohead decided that Canned Applause was an unsatisfactory recording location, which Yorke attributed to its proximity to the band members' homes, and Jonny Greenwood attributed to its lack of dining and bathroom facilities. They had nearly completed "Electioneering", "No Surprises", "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "The Tourist". They took a break from recording to tour America in 1996, opening for Alanis Morissette, performing early versions of several new songs. Greenwood said his main memory of the tour was of "playing interminable Hammond organ solos to an audience full of quietly despairing teenage girls".
During the tour, Baz Luhrmann commissioned Radiohead to write a song for his upcoming film Romeo + Juliet and gave them the final 30 minutes of the film. Yorke said: "When we saw the scene in which Claire Danes holds the Colt.45 against her head, we started working on the song immediately." Soon afterwards, Radiohead wrote and recorded "Exit Music ", which plays over the film's end credits but was excluded from the soundtrack album at their request. The song helped shape the direction of OK Computer. Yorke said it "was the first performance we'd ever recorded where every note of it made my head spin—something I was proud of, something I could turn up really, really loud and not wince at any moment".
File:St Catherines Court1.jpg|thumb|left|Most of OK Computer was recorded between September and October 1996 at St Catherine's Court, a rural mansion near Bath, Somerset.
Radiohead resumed recording in September 1996 at St Catherine's Court, a historic mansion near Bath owned by the actress Jane Seymour. It was unoccupied but sometimes used for corporate functions. The change of setting marked an important transition in the recording process. Greenwood said it "was less like a laboratory experiment, which is what being in a studio is usually like, and more about a group of people making their first record together".
The band made extensive use of the different rooms and acoustics in the house. The vocals on "Exit Music " feature natural reverberation achieved by recording on a stone staircase, and "Let Down" was recorded in a ballroom at 3 am. Isolation allowed the band to work at a different pace, with more flexible and spontaneous working hours. O'Brien said that "the biggest pressure was actually completing . We weren't given any deadlines and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. We were delaying it because we were a bit frightened of actually finishing stuff."
Yorke was satisfied with the recordings made at the house, and enjoyed working without audio separation, meaning that instruments were not overdubbed separately. O'Brien estimated that 80 per cent of the album was recorded live, and said: "I hate doing overdubs, because it just doesn't feel natural. ... Something special happens when you're playing live; a lot of it is just looking at one another and knowing there are four other people making it happen." Many of Yorke's vocals were first takes; he felt that if he made other attempts he would "start to think about it and it would sound really lame".
Radiohead returned to Canned Applause in October for rehearsals, and completed most of OK Computer in further sessions at St. Catherine's Court. By Christmas, they had narrowed the track listing to 14 songs. Additional recording took place at the Church in Crouch End, London. The strings were recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London in January 1997. Godrich mixed OK Computer at various London studios. He preferred a quick and "hands-off" approach to mixing, and said: "I feel like I get too into it. I start fiddling with things and I fuck it up ... I generally take about half a day to do a mix. If it's any longer than that, you lose it. The hardest thing is trying to stay fresh, to stay objective." OK Computer was mastered by Chris Blair at Abbey Road and completed on 6 March 1997.