7. RadioheadOK Computer
I guess this is a common or obvious choice, but it’s a brilliant album, and they’re another thinking man’s group. What can I say? They don’t do the obvious all of the time. They try to think a bit deeper about what they do; they welcome in the avant-garde, and they welcome in the experimental.
Do I think songs like ‘Paranoid Android’ are still a strange type of pop music? Absolutely. The structure of that is so weird, and you get all kind of odd things, yet you somehow you don’t really notice that. It’s still very tuneful: you can sing along to it, and you know all the melodies. It’s a very clever record. I’ve liked what they’ve done since then, although the new one is a bit strange. I’m not that clear on that one, but there are three good tracks there. I don’t think they’ve matched the heights of OK Computer since, but that’s a tall act to make follow. They’ve done well to make good, interesting albums that haven’t tried too hard just to recreate it. They’re confident enough to know that the longer they apply their intelligence and logic to the way they think about music, they’ll come up with something interesting each time. It might not be like what they came up with before, but that’s OK with them. And you get the feeling there’ll be that confidence with whatever they decide to release next.
