There are albums that soundtrack your life, and then there are albums that explain it to you in ways you wish they wouldn’t. Radiohead’s OK Computer belongs to the second category. OK Computer is the kind of album that has never, and will never, gently hold your hand through an existential crisis. Yes, it can be oddly comforting, but only if you’re in the worst era of your life. It’s like Thom Yorke sits across from you at 2 AM like, “yeah man, this is as good as it gets, hope you weren’t expecting closure.” SCREAMING
Listening to this album in 2025 feels like reading the autopsy report of the world we currently live in. It’s eerie, honestly. Like opening a diary you don’t remember writing. Like hearing your own anxiety echoed back at you.
What makes OK Computer terrifying isn’t that it’s dystopian. It’s that it’s accurate. It’s the emotional equivalent of living in a world too fast for the human nervous system. It’s the quiet panic of being plugged into 10 devices, talking to a 1000 people, but being “connected” to nothing. It’s the loneliness that exists even when your phone keeps buzzing. It’s that split-second dissociation you feel in the grocery store for no reason. It’s the mental static. The sensory overload. The mechanised exhaustion of trying to remain human in a society designed for machines.
There’s a reason Thom Yorke said the album makes him feel physically ill… because OK Computer isn’t an artistic exaggeration. It’s a confession. It’s the sound of someone realising that the world is becoming too loud, too bright, too automated, too monitored, too demanding, too numbing, too… endless. It’s the soundtrack of overstimulation before the word “overstimulation” was even mainstream.
It takes you to a place, makes you feel ill” is the most accurate description of what listening to Radiohead’s like. Radiohead is for people who forgave the world before they forgave themselves. [sic]
@ayygee_11 in embedded Reel’s comments.
does he know he exists? [sic]
@rockland.jackson in embedded Reel’s comments.
I get it, tbh, there were years when I listened to nothing but Radiohead. Then, my mental health improved and I started feeling okay, I kinda stopped listening to them repeatedly. I even remember feeling scared to go back to their music when I missed it, because I was afraid all the sadness and memories and associations with the music and the times i was listening to it would come rushing back [sic]
@mariam_khrikuli in embedded Reel’s comments.
Makes sense, if you look at a artist, their albums are always like a screenshot of were they were at the time in they’re life, and all that emotion was poured Into the music it’s literally listening to your past self talk to you, and does bring him back to a dark place [sic]
@hypno_ka in embedded Reel’s comments.
The average Radiohead experience.
At its core, OK Computer is an album about the emotional decay of the present. The disorientation. The spiritual dehydration. The gradual erosion of your sense of self in a world pushing you to become faster, sharper, cleaner, emptier. It’s the horror of realising that progress doesn’t always feel like progress. That comfort doesn’t always feel comforting. That survival doesn’t always feel like living.
And that’s why this album still hits like a brick wrapped in velvet.
It doesn’t dramatise the modern condition.
It describes it.
Too clearly.
Too beautifully.
Too accurately for comfort.
OK Computer doesn’t show you a dystopia.
It quietly whispers:
“You’re already in one.”
Now let’s break apart this emotional machinery track by track.
1. AIRBAG
“Airbag” is the sound of breathing after you should’ve stopped. The sound of surviving something that rearranges your mitochrondria. Thom Yorke sings this like a person who survived a tragedy, but left parts of himself in it. It’s triumphant in the most hollow, uncanny-valley way. Sure, the guitars sound victorious, but the victory feels… wrong. Like waking up after almost dying and realising the world is exactly the same but you’re not. And you never will be. “Airbag” opens the album as if it’s warning you — the next 53 minutes of your life will change who you are, especially how you process emotions.
There’s something so spiritually unsettling about the upbeat tone. As someone who heard the top hits before the full album, I felt so lost. Like my skin was crawling with the beat, that loops like a machine malfunctioning. The guitars spiral like adrenaline spikes. Thom’s voice floats above it like a detached spirit narrating its own near-death experience.
“Airbag” feels like OK Computer’s thesis’ abstract: technology might save your life, but in no way will it make you feel alive. You can be protected, preserved, and still feel like a ghost in your own life instead of being the main character. Survival will never be same as living. Sometimes losing yourself feels easier than being thrown back into existence.
“Airbag” is not a resurrection. It’s the aftertaste of mortality.
2. PARANOID ANDROID
You’re delusional if you think “Paranoid Android” is one song. It gives three emotional breakdowns held together by your soul’s duct tape. This track feels like being pushed through the stages of grief, all the way to acceptance, with no chance to breathe. Like there’s no choice in the matter. You just don’t get to decide who you are anymore.
Thom’s voice goes from numb narration to manic pleading, like the entire emotional bandwidth of a collapsing human. This song made me feel SICK, sick.
Everything about the production feels wrong on purpose. The guitars stab, the harmonies glow, the tempo jerks. It’s a malfunctioning symphony. A polite apocalypse. The sound of someone trying to remain human while the world becomes increasingly hostile to our softness.
“Ambition makes you look pretty ugly” is such a depressingly honest line — Radiohead predicted hustle culture before hustle culture existed. The whole song is a war between wanting to feel something and wanting to disappear. Between wanting connection and wanting anonymity. Between human chaos and machine precision.
The final section, with Thom pleading “rain down” like a broken prayer, feels like a baptism for someone who no longer believes in salvation.
This isn’t a song. It’s an existential seizure.
3. SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK ALIEN
I think this song is about wanting escape so badly, that you romanticise the idea of aliens taking you away just to feel seen. Thom definitely isn’t singing about extraterrestrials, but about isolation so deep that even abduction feels comforting. The production is dreamy, woozy, soft around the edges — a lullaby for dissociation.
The guitars shimmer like a hallucination. The synths glow like a fever dream. There’s something beautifully sad about wanting to be the interesting human the aliens observe. “Take me on board their beautiful ship” is not sci-fi — it’s yearning. Pure, exhausted yearning for someone to notice you and lift you into their world.
“Subterranean Homesick Alien” is one of the saddest songs on the album as its fantasy is so childlike. It’s the kind of wish you make when you’re too drained to articulate the real ache: “I want to leave because staying hurts.”
This track is escape as self-preservation.
4. EXIT MUSIC (FOR A FILM)
This song feels like hugging someone; like holding them tight to protect them while living through an apocalypse. You love them, but they’re slipping away. It’s intimate and cinematic, in the same breath. Thom Yorke whispers like he’s afraid of waking the universe, afraid of bringing attention to it, as if someone will take his love away. This song is Romeo and Juliet after the romance — the version where love is a hiding place, not a celebration.
The guitar is dry, hollow, brittle. Thom’s voice is trembling restraint. And then the song erupts — not loud, but emotionally volcanic. The distorted bass, the choir-like swells, the absolute desperation in the final minute. It’s not triumph. It’s survival through sheer emotional force.
“Breathe, keep breathing” is one of the simplest, most painful lines Radiohead ever wrote. It’s not instruction. It’s prayer. It’s someone begging themselves to stay alive long enough to escape the violence pressing in.
“Exit Music” is intimacy under siege.
Love as defiance.
Breathing as rebellion.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is where the emotions started catching up with me, making me feel ill myself. The nausea, the dissociation, the average Radiohead experience. So, tread gently as you read on. And forgive me if my thoughts on the next few tracks feel a bit brisk; I am hanging on by a thread.
5. LET DOWN
“Let Down” is the most beautifully devastating song Radiohead has ever made. It’s heartbreak in slow-mo. It’s cinematic, but it’s also mundane. The kind where you realise you’re not special, not chosen, not protected from disappointment. It’s the ache of unmet expectations wrapped in glittering guitars.
Thom Yorke sings like he’s holding back tears without knowing why. The melody is delicate, almost joyful, but the lyrics are disembowelled. “Transport, motorways and tramlines” — he’s describing the machinery of life that continues whether you emotionally survive it or not. OK Computer is full of technological dread, but “Let Down” is organic despair. Human disappointment. The lonely hum of being alive inside a body that doesn’t feel like home.
The production is layered like a heartbeat gaining speed. The arpeggios sound like lightbulbs flickering. The harmonies swell like emotional static. And Thom’s voice cracks right where it hurts most. “One day, I am gonna grow wings” is not hope — it’s delusion as coping mechanism. The fantasy of escape because reality is too dull, too predictable, too emotionally claustrophobic.
The saddest part of “Let Down” is the resignation. The quiet acceptance that being human means being let down endlessly — by people, by systems, by yourself. But instead of screaming, the song sighs. Instead of collapsing, it sparkles. This is Radiohead at their cruelest: pairing existential despair with the most beautiful melody imaginable so you can’t even cry properly.
It’s the song you listen to on public transport while staring out the window like you’re grieving something that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s soft apocalypse.
It’s numbness blooming.
“Let Down” is the moment you realise your life isn’t tragic — it’s just painfully normal.
6. KARMA POLICE
“Karma Police” is a lullaby for people who want fairness in an unfair world. It’s anger wrapped in exhaustion. Thom Yorke sings like someone who’s too tired to riot but too awake to accept injustice. The song has this corporate-lobby melancholy. Like it’s the sound of sitting in an office that feels like a punishment for being alive.
The piano is cold. The drums are stiff, almost mechanical. The guitars sigh more than they strum. “Arrest this man” is not a threat — it’s sarcasm. It’s the desire to hold someone accountable in a society where accountability is a myth. Karma Police isn’t about revenge; it’s about yearning for cosmic fairness.
The breakdown is one of the most chilling moments on the album. Thom whispering “this is what you’ll get” over swelling distortion feels like a prophecy delivered by someone who no longer believes in prophecies. It’s eerie. It’s hushed. It’s a warning sung to no one and everyone.
“Karma Police” is authority as theatre. Punishment as fantasy. Justice as fiction. It’s the sound of realising the universe does not care about your moral spreadsheets — people do bad things and get away with it all the time. And yet the song still sings the mantra like a lullaby: this is what you’ll get. This is what you’ll get.
It’s a wish disguised as a threat.
It’s a prayer disguised as a curse.
It’s Radiohead at their most hauntingly resigned.
7. FITTER HAPPIER
This track is terrifying precisely because nothing happens. A robotic voice lists “self-improvements” like a corporate wellness nightmare. “Fitter, happier, more productive” — it’s the capitalist catechism. A grocery list for becoming a more efficient machine disguised as a human.
The background noise is unsettling: medical beeps, mechanical hums, dripping water. It sounds like being in a hospital for the soul. The monotone delivery is the point: this is what happens when you optimise yourself into numbness. When every part of your life becomes a productivity metric.
It’s not dystopian.
It’s Tuesday.
Fitter Happier is a mirror we wish we could smash.
8. ELECTIONEERING
This song is noise, sweat, grit. It’s political theatre dressed as a pub fight. The guitars swagger aggressively. Thom spits lines like someone sick of propaganda, sick of manipulation, sick of the professional liars who call themselves leaders.
“Buzzards and vultures” is political poetry. The whole track feels like a riot that never lands — because the system absorbs rebellion like a sponge. It’s frantic, uneven, deliberately messy.
Electioneering is the nausea you feel when you realise every institution is a performance and every performance is a scam.
9. CLIMBING UP THE WALLS
This is the most terrifying Radiohead song ever recorded. It feels like listening to someone’s internal panic amplified. The strings scrape. The percussion pulses like a racing heartbeat. Thom’s voice is distorted as if you’re hearing him from inside your own ribcage.
This track is about mental illness with no metaphorical sugarcoating. It’s anxiety as a physical space. It’s depression as a shadow creature. It’s the voice in your head that whispers worst-case scenarios until you feel unsafe inside your own mind.
“Climbing Up the Walls” feels like being trapped in your skull.
It’s horror without special effects.
TRIGGER WARNING!!!
MENTIONS OF SUICIDE: If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You can also reach out to the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 or the Trevor Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386, or to your local suicide crisis center.
10. NO SURPRISES
“No Surprises” is a suicide note disguised as a lullaby. The music is unbearably gentle… glockenspiel twinkling like a nursery mobile, Thom’s voice feather-light, everything soft enough to convince you the lyrics aren’t as devastating as they are.
This contrast is violent. The sweetness makes the despair hit harder. The desire for “a quiet life” isn’t peaceful, it’s desperate. It’s the plea of someone who is done being overwhelmed by the world, done masking, done performing sanity for the comfort of others. The song’s beauty becomes a weapon — it makes the pain sound manageable.
“A handshake of carbon monoxide” is one of the most chilling lines in alternative music. It’s clean. It’s elegant. It’s horrifying. It’s the resignation of someone who has stopped fighting. “No alarms and no surprises” is not boredom — it’s the yearning to stop feeling overwhelmed. To stop being ambushed by life.
The production traps you in a glass bubble. Everything is soft. Everything is tidy. Everything is suffocating in the gentlest possible way. Thom sounds like he’s singing from underwater, already halfway gone. This song is not melodramatic. It’s tired. Bone-tired. Spirit-tired. Human-tired.
“No Surprises” is Radiohead’s quietest scream.
11. LUCKY
“Lucky” feels like surviving something you weren’t meant to. It’s a sister-song to “Airbag,” but heavier, more bruised. The production is weightless and heavy at the same time: shimmering guitars over a dragging, exhausted rhythm. Thom’s voice sits between gratitude and dread.
The song is triumph with a broken spine. “Pull me out of the air crash” hits harder when you realise it’s not a metaphor, it’s a request to be saved emotionally, spiritually, physically. But survival comes with guilt. Relief comes with emptiness. You don’t know who you are after the disaster ends.
“Lucky” is the hope that feels like a burden.
12. THE TOURIST
The closing track is a warning whispered like a lullaby. “Hey man, slow down.” It’s a plea to yourself. To the world. To everyone sprinting toward burnout. This song is exhaustion at cosmic scale. Thom sounds like someone watching humanity speed toward collapse and begging it to breathe.
The guitars sway. The tempo drags its feet. Everything feels slowed, stretched, weary. The tourist is someone rushing through life without ever being present. Someone collecting moments instead of living them. Someone accelerating toward meaninglessness.
Ending the album with this track is cruel in the gentlest way possible. It’s not hopeful. It’s not hopeless. It’s resigned. Thoughtful. Tired.
“The Tourist” is OK Computer’s final diagnosis:
You’re alive.
It’s overwhelming.
Please slow down.
OK Computer ends, but the dread doesn’t. That’s the point. The album isn’t a fictional dystopia; it’s a portrait of the emotional cost of being alive in an accelerating world. It’s the soundtrack to a generation taught to stay productive instead of present, efficient instead of alive, calm instead of honest.
Radiohead didn’t create a dystopia.
They documented one.
And we’ve been living inside it ever since.
If you made it this far, this is Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ, apologising. For articles to bring your spirits back up, run to Her Campus at MUJ — we document the Gen-Z delulu, and occasionally Radiohead-core dystopia.