OK COMPUTER

I'm one of those reviewers who bought this album just because of the status it has in pop history. If I got it right this is in many occasions proclaimed as the best album ever in pophistory (at least in the UK and in the Netherlands), POP and not PROG to be very clear about this. Still it's intriguing if you don't know a band or an album and it seems to be the best ever, I think it's normal curiosity to want to check it out. And it's also on progarchives so now I can even give my personal opinion about it.

When I bought it, some 5 years ago I really gave it every chance to grow on me and I played it lots of times. And I have to say, this is something special. And it's always hard to designate criterions to measure quality of albums. In this case I believe the criterions are speciality, originality and meaningful lyrics. I cannot imagine the criterion was beautiful or melodic music because that's nowhere to be found on this album. In some of the songs you get the impression the challenge was to make it as ugly as possible. A good example is Paranoid Android, believe it or not one of my favourite tracks of the album and of course one of the most famous ones. I have to say I was more or less blown away in the beginning and I still love it in a way. It's one of the most original and special songs I ever heard but it's far from beautiful or melodic.

But I think the real class of this album is the diversity, all songs are very different and I think that deserves a lot of praise. Funny enough one of my other favourites is Fitter happier (more productive), one of the few songs in musical history I appreciate simply because of the lyrics. This says everything about modern society in which being fit, happy and (therefore) more productive is very significant. The song on itself has hardly any musical value, it's a 100% lyrical track.

Other favourite tracks to me are Airbag, Electioneering and No surprises, all very different musically and good examples of what this album has to offer. I think it's a very interesting album but I have to stay true to my personal criterions and can go no further than 3 stars (3,3). Although in this case the description: Good, but non-essential makes no sense at all because it's good and very essential !