How OK Computer Heard the Wired Future Coming, 29 Years Early

OK Computer runs 53 minutes across 12 tracks and sounds like nothing else Radiohead had made before it. The band trades plain guitar rock for something colder and stranger: dread about technology and modern life, wrapped in melodies that still work as songs. It succeeds because the mood never covers the writing beneath it.

The Track List, In Order

The album opens with Airbag, a clear statement — the guitar tone is strange from the first note, and the rhythm keeps starting over. Paranoid Android follows at 6:23 and earns every second of it, moving through several distinct parts without losing the thread. It’s the record’s most discussed track, and it deserves the attention.

Subterranean Homesick Alien and Exit Music (for a Film) sit back to back and both rank among the album’s best. The first is quiet and odd, the second builds from a whisper to a wall of sound that still hits hard. Let Down follows, layering ringing guitars into something that feels like motion sickness turned beautiful.

Karma Police is the closest thing here to a proper single, and it’s a fine one — a piano line under a lament that turns bitter without ever losing its melody. Then comes Fitter Happier, barely two minutes long, an artificial voice reading a list of modern advice phrases. It is not really a song, more a diagnosis, and it changes how the songs around it sound.

The second half of the record asks more of the listener. Electioneering is the album’s one true rock song, all rough riffing and a driving beat, a deliberate change of pace. Climbing Up the Walls is the record’s most troubling moment, a gradual build that plays like fear set to music. No Surprises and Lucky both stand out — the first for its soft melody hiding despair beneath it, the second for its patient payoff. The Tourist closes the album at 5:25, easing everything down, ending on exhaustion rather than resolution.

Six tracks get singled out again and again, and for good reason:

1. Paranoid Android — the track most known for carrying the record, ambitious in shape and still its high point.
2. Karma Police — the most direct melody on the album, and its most bitter words.
3. Exit Music (For a Film) — the peak of the record, building from near silence to something harsh and moving.
4. No Surprises — the quietest protest song on the record.
5. Subterranean Homesick Alien — the strangest use of atmosphere on the first half.
6. Let Down — the one that rewards repeat listens the most.

How the Record Was Scored

Source	Score
Metacritic	100/100

That is the one figure on record, and it puts OK Computer at the very top of the scale. No other score is confirmed here, so none is listed.

Final Score

OK Computer does not age because it was not built around a moment — it was built around a feeling, the low hum of dread that comes with living inside machines you don’t fully understand. Every track carries its weight, from the long, changing Paranoid Android down to the short reading of Fitter Happier. Nothing here feels like filler, and nothing here feels dated.

This is a 10 of 10.

The recordOK Computer Radiohead12 tracks · 53 min

1. Airbag4:44
2. Paranoid Android6:23
3. Subterranean Homesick Alien4:28
4. Exit Music (for a Film)4:25
5. Let Down4:59
6. Karma Police4:22
7. Fitter Happier1:57
8. Electioneering3:51
9. Climbing Up the Walls4:45
10. No Surprises3:49
11. Lucky4:20
12. The Tourist5:25

90s music · album review · Britpop · OK Computer · Radiohead