15 Facts About OK Computer

OK Computer is the third studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in Japan on 21 May 1997 and in the UK on 16 June 1997.

Album's lyrics depict a world fraught with rampant consumerism, social alienation, emotional isolation and political malaise; in this capacity, OK Computer has been said to have prescient insight into the mood of 21st-century life.

OK Computer received critical acclaim and has been cited by listeners, critics and musicians as one of the greatest albums of all time.

Songs of OK Computer do not have a coherent narrative, and the album's lyrics are generally considered abstract or oblique.

OK Computer described the words as a checklist of slogans for the 1990s; he considered it "the most upsetting thing I've ever written", and said it was "liberating" to give the words to a neutral-sounding computer voice.

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OK Computer said, 'The Tourist' doesn't sound like Radiohead at all.

OK Computer artwork is a computer-generated collage of images and text created by Yorke, credited under the pseudonym the White Chocolate Farm, and Stanley Donwood.

OK Computer was nominated for Grammy Awards as Album of the Year and Best Alternative Music Album at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards in 1998, winning the latter.

OK Computer has appeared frequently in professional lists of the greatest albums of all time.

David H Green of The Daily Telegraph called the album "self-indulgent whingeing" and maintains that the positive critical consensus towards OK Computer is an indication of "a 20th-century delusion that rock is the bastion of serious commentary on popular music" to the detriment of electronic and dance music.

OK Computer was recorded in the lead up to the 1997 general election and released a month after the victory of Tony Blair's New Labour government.

David Stubbs said that, where punk rock had been a rebellion against a time of deficit and poverty, OK Computer protested the "mechanistic convenience" of contemporary surplus and excess.

Steven Hyden of AV Club said that by 1999, starting with The Man Who, "what Radiohead had created in OK Computer had already grown much bigger than the band, " and that the album went on to influence "a wave of British-rock balladeers that reached its zenith in the '00s".

OK Computer triggered a minor revival of progressive rock and ambitious concept albums, with a new wave of prog-influenced bands crediting OK Computer for enabling their scene to thrive.

OK Computer was important because it reintroduced unconventional writing and song structures.