The festering sociopathy within our culture spawns the numerous characters who populate OK Computer’s decaying landscape, from prima donna paranoiacs and adrenaline junkies, to overconfident politicians, doomed adolescent lovers, predatory home invaders, glum conspiracy theorists, and aimless wanderers at the hearts of neon-lit global metropolises, surrounded by nonsensical blinking signs and symbols. Whether or not Radiohead intended to redefine popular culture may be subject to debate, but in releasing OK Computer, the group created a powerful homage to an over-medicated, hyper-individualistic society, speaking on the modern world’s behalf as few had done.
Within OK Computer, there exists a contentment informed by the knowledge that what occurs around us is not unfathomable, but was in fact predicted long ago. The bleak dystopian vision of OK Computer shook audiences back in 1997, but has grown increasingly and uncomfortably familiar to millennials and Gen Z, now preparing to inherit a fevered meta-earth left behind by their parents and grandparents. What Radiohead, coming off the success of 1995’s The Bends, did was define a new era of cultural malaise-the restructuring of the workers’ collective consciousness through increased technological advancement, into somnolent states of removal at the whim of scheming representatives, and the relegation of a populace plugged into alternate planes of reality. Equal parts accessible alt and innovative art rock, the groundbreaking OK Computer climbed international charts and captivated a generation of disillusioned youths seeking to document their sociocultural loss of identity and steep slide into Baudrillard-esque hyperreality. Radiohead’s third studio album served not only to usurp its predecessors, but to alter our understanding of modern music as well.
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