Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer': The Story Behind Every Song

Radiohead had dabbled in orchestration before OK Computer — the gentle strings on "Fake Plastic Trees" help elevate that ballad to classic status. But they leaped in that area with "Climbing Up the Walls," which uses darkness and dissonance to amplify the song's haunted-house atmosphere....

OK Computer 's turbulent penultimate tune dates back to The Bends tour of summer 1995 when Brian Eno recruited Radiohead for the War Child charity LP The Help Album . “We took the hard option and recorded a brand-new son...

Yorke delivered the album's dystopian manifesto with "Fitter Happier" ... well, sort of. The ambient interlude features creepy text-to-speech lines ("Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week / Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries / At ease ") partly ripped ...

OK Computer 's experimental opener, built around Phil Selway's chopped-up drums, draws on Yorke's uneasy relationship with automobiles. A decade earlier, he was involved in a car accident that left his girlfriend injured, though the singer walked away unharmed (at least physically). The ...

For the record's spacey third track, Radiohead tried to emulate the electric keys and warm textures of Miles Davis' 1970 jazz-fusion classic Bitches Brew . Yorke also drew on an old-school essay about being an alien from another planet: "You’ve landed and you’re standing in the middle of...

“It was a band catchphrase for a while on tour – whenever someone was behaving in a particular shitty way, we’d say, 'The karma police will catch up with him sooner or later,'” Greenwood told Melody Maker ...

The narcotic calm of "No Surprises" can't help but feel a bit eerie amid OK Computer 's paranoia. But it's a rare song here that doesn't mask its prettiness, utilizing a twinkling glockenspiel, Ed O’Brien’s chiming guitar and a rainbow of vocal harmonies. “It was meant to be like a nurse...

OK Computer 's epic centerpiece is a collage, combining a series of unrelated musical ideas and pulling inspiration from multiple sources. For example, the title is a nod to Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and also a tongue-in...

If it's one of Radiohead's most cinematic songs, there's a logical reason: The band did indeed write "Exit Music" for a film, Baz Luhrmann 's adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet . Yorke had a clear vision, having wat...

Perhaps the most divisive song on OK Computer , this snarling rocker is indeed a bit more straightforward, both musically and lyrically, than what surrounds it. The politically minded track, Yorke told Select...

It's the emotional anchor of OK Computer : a subtly complex singalong that crescendos into a wall of falsetto. Ironically, it's about emotional detachment, "the emptiest of feelings." Reflecting on the song to Humo ...