Radioheads OK Computer :: Music Musical Essays

Radioheads OK Computer In the mid-1990s, rock and roll experienced another of its many transitions. During the proto(prenominal) 90s, the grunge scene, emanating from Seattle and its surrounding area, enthralled the y pop outh of the time with the music of such acts as Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. This surge in high-distortion, high angst rock snapped the genre out of the doldrums of glam-metal, which, for a long time, dominated the rock music racks of record stores across America. By 1997, grunge was dead, its end spurred by the death of Kurt Cobaine, the impending separation of Soundgarden, and the increasing vapidity of Pearl Jam. At the same time, bubble gum pop made its comeback, thanks to acts like Hanson and the Spice Girls (even today, irritatingly saccharine acts like the Backstreet Boys and their obviously infinite clones dominate pop charts). Fortunately, in the summer of 1997, the British rock band Radiohead released OK Computer, which received twain critical acclaim and commercial success, a rare combination in todays music scene. The phonograph album caught enough attention in both respects that it was later nominated for both best alternative album and album of the year, and received the former award (Hilburn C-6). OK Computer is important because it is one of the few albums released in this decade that has an key message Radiohead, while never coming out and stating it, does an excellent job a blending subtlety with clarity. By both its lyrical and musical complexity, OK Computer covers a broad emotional range, evoking, as David Cheal puts it, gloom and alienation but you also get warmth and yearning (15). Dimitri Ehrlich adds that, as a whole, the album is unglossy, unhandsome, and every bit as complex as modern life (56). Paranoid Android expresses this complexity at a level in which licking and alienation come hand in hand. The song, clocking at nearly seven minutes, begins with the elegant plucking of an acoustic guitar and lead singer Thom Yorkes statement of bile When I am king, you will be first against the wall. After a brief guitar break, the song begins its tremulous diatribe on the loss of identity wherefore dont you remember my name? / Off with his head now, off with his head.