I give this album a perfect score—but it had to fight for it.
I kinda hated Radiohead at first. Just couldn’t get past Creep.... I would later find that I didn’t like that entire album. But a friend of mine (whose taste I actually respected) told me to give OK Computer a shot. It was right around Valentine’s Day in 1998, and my girlfriend at the time asked what I wanted as a gift. I told her to get me the album, and she did.
For the next two months straight, if I wasn’t working, I was listening to OK Computer. People kept telling me it was life-changing, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I had it on when I slept, when I drove, when I sat on the couch. I was starting to like it, but it wasn’t clicking the way it did for everyone else.
Then, one morning after a graveyard shift, I was driving home through open farmland just as the sun was coming up behind the mountains. Subterranean Homesick Alien came on. The guitar started right as the sunrise hit, and suddenly—it all clicked. It was weird, and cool, and beautiful, and I’ll never forget that moment.
It’s a perfect album. show more
