OK Computer

Brad Taste 10s Re-review: Pt. 1

You've been lied to, I'm not reviewing it again, I don't have much to say about it that I haven't said in my original review, this album is the best piece of music I've heard. So, instead of a review, I just wanna list three amazing encounters with some of the songs on this album in cinema.

1. One of the best episodes of Black Mirror, "Shut Up And Dance" has a very climatic, cathartic ending with Exit Music making it even more memorable. Go watch it.

2. The first episode in the sixth season of House M.D. features No Surprises right at the start while showing House's suffering in a psychiatric hospital, which makes one of the most harrowing scenes in the series.

3. In the third episode of the third season of After Life, the character of Ricky Gervais rides in a car with his brother-in-law and criticizes his music taste pretty roughly. Then he gets to Radiohead, and his brother-in-law says "That's not mine" when Gervais says an incredible punchline, "I know, it's good". Then Let Down starts playing.

I don't know why I told you all that, I just saw a video where a guy talked about how Radiohead songs are used in cinema and decided to share some of my favorite examples.

Anyway, read my original review, it's pretty long, but that's what it takes to explain why this is the greatest album ever.

Original review:

Somehow, this album surpassed a very high bar that The Bends set. Almost every song on here is perfect. Despite the countless listens of this album I've had, it still manages to give me one of the best experiences that I've ever had. And, like many other RH albums, I didn't love it half as much on my first listen.

It starts with Airbag, which is probably my least favorite on the record (except maybe Fitter Happier), but it's still amazing and a very good way to open this album.

After Airbag, literally every song is perfect. Paranoid Android switches from hard to soft rock so easily and beautifully. Subterranean Homesick Alien creates a comfortable but in a way unsettling atmosphere. Exit Music builds so wonderfully to its breathtaking payoff. Let Down is such an excellent depiction of loneliness and all the depressive thoughts that appear because of it. All of those songs are 10/10. But Karma Police is a fucking 11.

I can talk about Karma Police for hours, this gorgeous instrumental duo of a piano and an acoustic guitar they give us. The lyrics, which are, though pretty specific at times, are still too abstract to understand, at least for me. And how karma got the main character when he used this police to punish others, and then someone used it against him in the 3rd verse. it also ends so grandly with the police sirens and the "A-ah" sighs. One of the best songs ever made.

Fitter Happier is an amazing interlude that adds a lot to the album. After that, the perfect streak continues with, the song that I would call Bones of OK Computer, one of the catchiest and easiest to understand, but still a genius song, Electioneering. When I wasn't in love with this album as much as I am now, Electioneering was one of the songs that made me come back to it. Climbing Up The Walls is also one of the best songs on this album for me. It adds to the album and feels like a part of it, but it's also a very grand experience on its own. No Surprises feels to me like a point where the album could've ended, but I'm glad that it didn't because it gave us 2 brilliant songs after it. Should I really talk about how magnificent No Surprises is? I feel like at that point, I shouldn't.

Lucky is a song that was the first one to be written for this record, and it feels like it was. Despite all the diversity of this album, I can find something from Lucky on every song. Regardless, another genius song. And we got to the last one, The Tourist. This song was one of the hardest for me to get, but now I think that it's also one of the best songs on the LP. While I wrote both of the reviews, I completely ran out of synonyms for amazing. So I'll just say that everything about The Tourist makes for a perfect closer. It's genius lines like, "It barks at no one else but me, like it's seen a ghost" or "Hey man, slow down." The second can actually mean so many things. It's also one of the best closers ever, an even better one than Street Spirit.

With all of that being said, I feel like that's my favorite album ever now. Not only that, I think it objectively could be called the best album ever. 4/10