OK Computer by Radiohead

OK Computer, Radiohead's third album, arrived on 21 May 1997, and it's the sound of a guitar band deciding the guitar wasn't enough. With producer Nigel Godrich they cut most of it in their rehearsal space in Oxfordshire and at St Catherine's Court, a grand old mansion in Bath, through 1996 and into early 1997, with strings taped at Abbey Road. They let the rooms do the work, leaning on natural reverb and keeping overdubs to a minimum, yet the result is dense and layered, a long way from the bruised, guitar-heavy confessions of The Bends.

What it's about is the future and how badly it's going: consumerism run amok, alienation, machines, crooked politics, travel, conformity, paranoia and death, delivered in lyrics that come at you sideways. "Airbag" jolts, "Paranoid Android" lurches like a nervous breakdown set to music, "Karma Police" sways and sneers, "Let Down" glistens, and "No Surprises" hums a lullaby for the numbed-out. "Lucky" was a single too.

EMI thought it was uncommercial. It went to number one in Britain, entered the Billboard 200 at number 21, the band's best US debut at the time, and has sold at least 7.8 million copies. It won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album and was up for Album of the Year, it nudged British rock away from Britpop toward something moodier, and in 2014 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.