The plane takes off as we start the music. It transports us to a place in the sky where thin notes expand in all their gaseous buoyancy. Our minds become foggy as we look out the misty windows, at a world built on circuits and skyscrapers. The harmony of the opening track Airbag elevates us above the clouds, into a nightscape blanketed by dangling chords that hang from each of the stars. In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe. This is the music that foreshadowed the golden age of information, that led us out of the murky forest of grunge and into the civilization of electronica. We've cleared the woods and soared with clarity into this tranquil world. We've spun the disc that plays for us an album that, next to Nirvana's Nevermind, defined a generation.
It tells a story that's as much a tragedy as a political lament. It's set sometime in the future, following the life an irritable "superhero" that can't bear to watch what's become of his world. He "Lives in a town where you can't smell a thing. You watch your feet for cracks in the pavement" (Subterranean Homesick Alien). Then he comments on the state of his society, suggesting that extra-terrestrials are making a note of it: "High above, aliens hover, making home movies for their friends back home, of all these weird creatures who lock up their spirits." The singer can see as clearly as these aliens that all we've become are spiritless consumers. Just empty masses of neurotic beasts afraid of our own shadows. Either that or he's completely paranoid and the aliens don't exist. In the previous song, Paranoid Android, he even acknowledges that he's paranoid.
The world of this future is dominated by materialism and electrical systems. It has created a dreadful life of monotony for the storyteller. In Let Down he sings, "Transport, motorways and tramlines, starting up and stopping, taking off and landing, the emptiest of feelings". Then he sarcastically laments, "Don't get sentimental, it always ends up in drivel", before sharing a daydream with us: "One day I am going to grow wings, a chemical reaction, hysterical and useless." He wishes to change himself so he can escape these sterilized surroundings, this planet that puts more value on social status than emotional well-being. This is especially indicated in the sarcastic dialogue of Fitter Happier: "Still cries at a good film, still kisses with saliva, no longer empty and frantic, like a cat tied to a stick, that's driven into frozen winter shit. The ability to laugh at weakness. Calm, fitter, healthier and more productive; a pig in a cage on antibiotics."
To make matters worse, the world he's living in is at war, and his country is similar to that of Nazi Germany. Only this time it's been infected by the coldness of robots. We can see this in songs like Karma Police, when he pleads for a metaphysical force to "Arrest this [random] man, he talks in maths", and "Arrest this [random] girl, her Hitler hair-do is making me feel ill." Shades of a Hitleresque dictator reign over the album, especially in songs like Paranoid Android and Electioneering. "Riot shields, voodoo economics. It's just business, cattle prods and the IMF. I trust I can rely on your vote." It's likely that this war was started by revolutionary forces acting against the tyranny of this Head of State, which our hero undoubtedly takes part in. "Why don't you remember my name? Off with his head man” (Paranoid Android) is just one example of the kind of violence against the state that's occurring. "Bring down the government, they don't speak for us" (No Surprises) is a more blatant example, and clearly indicates to me what the concept of this album is.
The hero also seems to be in a codependent relationship with someone named Sarah (as heard on Lucky). People who adhere to the dictator's doctrines are doing everything they can to ruin the lives of romantics like themselves. In Exit Music, their struggle against this is especially strong, as he sings, "Pack and get dressed before your father hears us, before all Hell breaks loose." Sarah's father is likely a member of the dictator's party and has forbidden a relationship with anyone outside it. "You can laugh a spineless laugh. We hope your rules and wisdom choke you." Here "wisdom" is used figuratively. The father probably feels that his politically motivated words are wise, but to them they are nonsense. He also holds the belief that he's his lover's superhero and that he can save her. "Wake from your sleep, the drying of the edge, today we escape... we escape." Yet later in the song he tells her to, "Keep breathing, I can't do this alone."
This suffocating atmosphere makes him and Sarah long for escape. In Lucky he sings, "The Head of State has called for me by name, but I don't have time for him. It's gonna be a glorious day. I feel my luck could change." They get on a plane, trying to escape their enemies. Here he imagines that the airplane's wings are his own, and that they are taking him to a better world. When the plane is shot down by a fighter jet, he becomes disillusioned and exclaims, "Pull me out of the air crash... We are standing on the edge." In a sense, his wings are clipped, and he falls from grace, only to be captured by his enemies. From Paranoid Android: "Rain down, rain down come on rain down on me, from a great height [shards from the plane are falling on him] ... That's it sir, you're leaving [said by the one who captured him] ... God loves his children, yeah [sarcasm].
The wings he eventually grows in Let Down are related to being "born again" in Airbag. In Airbag we hear, "In a fast German car I'm amazed that I survived, an airbag saved my life." Unfortunately, the fact that it's a German car (at least to me) means that he's been captured by Nazi sympathists, and is headed for a place that brainwashes citizens in order to make them feel "born again". This is much like the scenario in 1984 when Winston is brainwashed in the Ministry of Love. Lyricist Thom Yorke is reportedly a fan of the book, which doesn't surprise me. George Orwell's dystopia is like OK Computer in many ways, the least of which is a sad ending.
In the final song Tourist, he is being interrogated by a government official. "They ask me where the Hell I'm going at a thousand feet per second. Hey man, slow down." "Slow down" is meant to be taken in both a literal sense and a metaphorical one. It's a reference to how fast the airplane was going before they shot it down, and about how the government wants to slow down his mind, so that he'll stop spreading hate against them. Then comes the brainwashing, which thankfully doesn't place in any of the songs. I like to think that it never happens, and they escape the institution, but it doesn't happen in 1984 and nothing on the album indicates that they did.
Perhaps these are all loose connections and the band hadn't intended to tell a story at all. Rather, it may just be a statement about the loss of feeling due to the increase of technology in our modern world. The band itself has stated that it isn't a concept album, but I can't help but wonder how much of it is inspired by a storyline. There are so many parallels to 1984 and Nazi Germany that it's difficult to ignore. I can also see how it might be an emotional release for whatever personal things Thom Yorke was going through at the time. In the final song, it could have just been him making a personal choice to slow down in a world of godless consumerism. Wouldn't that be enough to call it feel-good story? I don't know about you, but it certainly makes my ears feel good.
OK Computer came out at the perfect time. The world was buzzing with the Internet revolution, which took the focus away from the arts and into business. It was during this time that our culture grew gradually stagnant, when cyberspace defeated real space and innovation became less important; when cost cutting hauled everyone out of their studios and into offices. This was a time when the world became built on cubicles instead of canvases. Remakes and trilogies assured people financial success in the art world, so the need for originality was lost. Movies and music became so generic that the greatest artists never even came close to making it big. Books became less challenging to read, as writers were forced to meet the demands of the digital world. Poets and painters had long since deceased, having been dismantled by low-cost efficiency and demand for their work. It was the perfect time for an album to come out that blended the symbiosis of the digital revolution with the artistic nostalgia of the past. Musically, it even sounds that way. Dreary guitars mingle with strange electrical noises: a familiar, yet otherworldly combination. This album's place in history will forever be regarded as a product of its time, yet it still achieves the rare honor of being timeless in tandem.
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