OK Computer: Analogue Death, Digital Rebirth, and Radiohead’s Electronic Turn

“This machine will not communicate”: The Decentralization of Authority in Radiohead’s Music and Digital Media

“…With these developments in mind, it can be argued that Radiohead exposed three major themes in their work on their third, and most heralded, album, OK Computer : an interest in progressive musical structures and instrumentation; in subversions of mainstream culture and politics; and, most importantly for this article, in anti-consumerist practices, later epitomized by the “pay-what-you-want” model employed for their 2007 album In Rainbows (Clément, 2019). In a track-by-track analysis of OK Computer , Tembo writes about “denouement,” stating, “The broader implication here is that human beings in global late capitalist society not only have their experience of modern life mediated but also accelerated by its various technological constituents” (Tembo, 2019). We argue that OK Computer was thoroughly designed and packaged to decentralize their authority over the music’s order, words, and meaning, subverting the power of these technological constituents.…”