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Or, this piece is about Radiohead not TV on the Radio

So OK Computer turned 25 years old this week. And gosh does that make me feel old.

So of course, a certain section of the interwebs are awash with takes of varying degrees of heat on Radiohead’s seminal 1997 release.

Here’s one now: 'OK Computer' at 25 (gawker.com)

Radiohead’s 3rd album was one of the first albums that I absorbed on a molecular level. Sure, I’d heard albums before, I’d even bought them. But much of my music consumption up to that point (with a few exceptions) was of individual tracks. I’d heard Bohemian Rhapsody more times than I could count but it would be some years before I knew that it was off an album called A Night at the Opera. I suspect that it how it is for many of us where for some reason, one day we realise that albums are a thing after years of listening to songs on the radio.

Of course, now I am able to place OK Computer within the context of the rest of their output and what was happening in music at the time. But back then it was just a collection of songs that really did something to me that I liked. That chasing the dragon sensation that happens with some songs and you’re brain wants that flood of neurochemistry again and again and again.

And I can see how if you were someone who had listened to, and liked, The Bends that this would have seemed like quite a shift but I didn’t know that at the time, just that I liked it.

Of course, a few years later, I would get to have that experience of a band I loved pushing themselves in an unexpected direction.

I remember when Kid A first dropped that it felt like something so aggressively unexpected as a follow up to OK Computer. The thing is, though, that Kid A is actually quite an easy listen. It’s not hard to get on its wavelength, and it kind of makes sense that it went gangbusters.

Look, I love Radiohead. I think the run from Ok Computer to In Rainbows is pretty much unparalleled by most other bands (that’s a run of 5 albums by the by, and if you wanted to argue that the run should start at The Bends I’d be willing to listen to you).

Enough about me. The reason I mention all of this is that amongst the noise of ‘Oh my gawd you guys, OK Computers is 25’ SFGate ran this piece: