Radioheads OK Computer :: Music Musical Essays

Radio headrooms OK Computer In the mid-1990s, arguing and plunk experienced another of its many transitions. During the early 90s, the grunge scene, emanating from Seattle and its surrounding area, delighted the youth of the time with the harmony of such acts as Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. This soar 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 breakup of Soundgarden, and the increase vapidity of Pearl Jam. At the same time, bubble gum emerge made its comeback, thanks to acts like Hanson and the Spice Girls (even today, irritatingly saccharine acts like the Backstreet Boys and their evidently infinite clones dominate pop charts). Fortunately, in the summer of 1997, the British rock band Radiohead released OK Computer, which authorized both crit ical acclaim and commercial success, a rare combination in todays music scene. The album caught enough attention in both respects that it was subsequent 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 fewer albums released in this decade that has an underlying message Radiohead, while never plan of attack out and stating it, does an excellent job a blending subtlety with clarity. By both its lyrical and musical complexity, OK Computer covers a encompassing emotional range, evoking, as David Cheal puts it, gloom and delirium but you also captivate warmth and yearning (15). Dimitri Ehrlich adds that, as a whole, the album is unglossy, unhandsome, and every human action as complex as modern life (56). Paranoid humanoid expresses this complexity at a level in which frustration and alienation come hand in hand. The song, clocking at nearly septette minu tes, begins with the elegant plucking of an acoustic guitar and lead singer Thom Yorkes statement of impudence 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 individuality Why dont you remember my name? / Off with his head now, off with his head.