“No Surprises” by Radiohead

"No Surprises" was the fourth and final single from OK Computer, Radiohead's 1997 album, arriving in 1998. Thom Yorke wrote it in 1995 while the band were on the road with R.E.M., and Nigel Godrich produced it with the band. The sound is a deliberate lullaby: Jonny Greenwood's glockenspiel, a soft chiming guitar and a childlike innocence borrowed from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

Yorke called it a warped nursery rhyme, and that's the trick of it. The melody could rock a cradle, but the words seethe with dissatisfaction at the social and political order, quiet despair tucked under a calm surface. Grant Gee's video kept the camera on Yorke as a helmet around his head slowly filled with water. It reached number four in the UK, and in 2011 NME ranked it 107th among the best tracks of the previous 15 years.

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