All music is derivative of some other music and OK Computer is. I hear elements of certain records from the past cleverly melded into their songs. I must admit to jealousy, as a part time musician and wannabe songwriter (who has sold 400...YES 400 :)) albums. I wish I'd come up with the songs, musical ideas and the harmonically expansive big sellers they did.
I've always thought there is something about Radiohead is extremely British, you can almost hear the Britishness, a sense of gloomy foreboding, an unease of societal issues, the everlasting misery of the climate is inherent, :) and it extols that cold, forever cloudy greyness one grows up with in the long winters. Ray Davies was always very good at this in some of his British flavoured songs like "Dead End Street" & "Shangri-La"
I can tell you first hand ....It's hard to be this miserable in a sunshiny blue sky country !
I see OK Computer as an important album, a much more musically sophisticated album that say, anything by other popular bands of the time, like Oasis for example. Surely there would be no Muse if there hadn't been Radiohead?
Unusual chord sequences and time signatures. The albums longest track "Paranoid Android" seems to me to owe it's formula to The Beatles "Happiness Is A Warm Gun". Not in a sense of melody or even chord structure but more in a sense of 3 (even 4) differing passages that feel as if they belong together. Not many bands seem to be able to fit this many completely disparate components into 1 song. I remember buying The Beatles White Album and thinking that.
Another big nod to The White Album (Specifically the track "Sexy Sadie") comes in the copied chord sequence and direct feel in the track "Karma Police" "This is what you'll get" refrain, melodically slightly different but harmonically exactly the same. I must admit I copped that first time I heard it :)
An inordinate amount of care was taken over the recording of this album, any fool can tell that! Delay & reverb were carefully selected, and I believe natural reverb was used largely in some manor house that probably one of their parents owned :)
I've worked out the harmony structures for all this album and can confirm there are many what I call "deep dives" where the music is kinda tootling along then suddenly - Wham! another atonal heavy guitar laden onslaught down the the minor 3rd chord from the more optimistic major root key. Like in "Sexy Sadie" G-F# (happyish) then Bminor, (hang on, something serious is happening) also plenty of 9th and diminished chord tones .....They do this quite a bit and I must admit it's very effective.
Anyway, I hear a lot of Miles Davis "Bitches Brew" period with the thick sonic layering and unusual appearance of instruments, like the sudden appearance of a tasteful Bass guitar halfway through the verse of "Airbag" and then it suddenly disappears, then re-appears later. Nice touch.
That heavy guitar in "Airbag" is very King Crimsonesque especially their song "Fallen Angel" in fact I think Crimson are a big influence RH, you can hear at the beginning of "Airbag" the distorted guitar doubled up with a cello (an old Crimson thing).
What RH achieved though was similar to Pink Floyd, commercial sales with music that has unusual disparate elements (especially time signatures), Crimson never achieved mainstream popularity like Floyd (and RH) did.
It's an important album though and I really like it. They do borrow but the sound of Radiohead is pretty unique and their sound is their own, this sound was something fresh in the 90's. I personally think "Paranoid Android" is the most inventive and interesting single since "Strawberry Fields Forever" but that's just my opinion and I don't expect anybody to agree with me :)
There are some albums that I think of as representative of that decade (for me) "Dark Side Of The Moon" 70's, Sgt Pepper 60's. "Thriller" 80's..... OK Computer imo is the album of the 90s and a fine phsyc/art rock album it is.
Well done Radiohead, a genuine classic, I'll go for 8/10
