OK Computer

Opens with a chopped hip-hop drum loop lifted from a DJ Shadow record. Announces immediately that this will not sound like The Bends. Thom wrote the lyrics after surviving a car crash — grateful to be alive, aware that the machine that saved him could easily have killed him.

Three movements welded together: a quiet 6/8 verse, a menacing Pixies-esque riff section, and a prog-baroque coda. Jonny’s mid-section solo was kept on the first take. Title from Marvin in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The video was banned by MTV for cartoon nudity.

Jazz-inflected meditation on alienation. Thom imagined aliens observing humans going about their banal routines and feeling pity. Chord voicings inspired by Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. One of the few tracks with a conventional verse-chorus structure on the record.

Written for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet end credits. Begins solo acoustic and builds to a crushing wall of synth bass and multitracked vocals. Thom: “The idea was that you’d walk out of the cinema into the night air and this song would carry you out.”

Tracked in a single evening at St. Catherine’s Court. Jonny plays arpeggiated guitar over a 3/4 waltz. Fan favourite; rarely played live. “Transport, motorways and tramlines / starting and then stopping.”

The most radio-friendly track. Piano loop, acoustic guitar, chord progression borrowed from “Sexy Sadie” by the Beatles. The fadeout — “For a minute there / I lost myself” — became one of Radiohead’s most recognisable moments.

Not really a song. A manifesto of bullet-pointed modern aspirations — “Fitter, happier, more productive / comfortable, not drinking too much” — read by a Mac OS text-to-speech synthesiser (Fred) over a solo piano. Deeply unsettling. The most accurate piece of social criticism on the record.

The most aggressive track. Guitar-driven rocker written about a political campaign Thom witnessed on tour. Often cited as the album’s weakest link. It knows this.

Jonny scored the strings using 16 instruments playing a quarter-tone apart to create sustained dissonance. Thom wrote it from the perspective of a serial killer hiding in your house. The low end sounds like a building collapsing in slow motion.

A lullaby about longing for death as escape from mundanity. Glockenspiel, clean guitar, Thom’s most delicate performance on the record. The video has him submerged in a fishbowl helmet, nearly drowning on each take. He did it 16 times.

Originally recorded for the Help! War Child benefit album in 1995, two years before OK Computer. Re-recorded for the album. Jonny’s guitar solo at the close is consistently ranked among the finest rock moments of the 1990s.

Ed O’Brien’s song — the only time a non-Thom composition led an album until The King of Limbs. A slow waltz, a plea to slow down. The bell that ends the album required 30+ takes to get right. Worth it.