The Underrated Humor of Radiohead's <em>OK Computer</em>
The band’s masterpiece of 20 years ago communicated panic with a strangely charming smirk.
In Rolling Stone’s recent cover story on the 20th anniversary of Radiohead’s OK Computer, singer Thom Yorke says that if he could go back to 1997 he’d tell his younger self to “lighten the fuck up.” But I don’t know—to listen to the newly reissued OK Computer is to be struck by the one aspect of the album that’s still somehow underrated: its humor.
Yes, Radiohead is perhaps the modern pop-rock act most described with the word “gloom.” Yes, ’s lyrics touch on car crashes, plane crashes, crushing disappointment, suicide by poison, and “a cat tied to a
