Retrospective appraisal OK Computer has frequently appeared in professional lists of
the greatest albums of all time. A number of publications, including
NME,
Melody Maker,
Alternative Press,
Spin,
Pitchfork,
Time,
Metro Weekly and
Slant Magazine placed
OK Computer prominently in lists of best albums of the 1990s or of all time. It was voted number 4 in
Colin Larkin's
All Time Top 1000 Albums 3rd Edition (2000).
Rolling Stone ranked it 42 on its list of
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020. It was previously ranked at 162 in 2003 and 2012. In 2019,
Classic Rock named it the 47th-best rock album, writing: "Combining prog with alternative influences, they came up with a style that was supple, subtle and sensuous. This wasn't Pink Floyd for the end of the millennium, it was original, visionary and brilliant [...] An epochal album that called time on the narrow colloquial nostalgia of Britpop, sold millions and turned Radiohead into global angst-rock superstars,
OK Computer is not quite the flawless masterpiece of fond folklore, but it holds up extremely well." In 2026,
OK Computer was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame. Retrospective reviews from
BBC Music,
The A.V. Club and
Slant were favourable.
Rolling Stone gave the album five out of five in the 2004 edition of
The Rolling Stone Album Guide, with
Rob Sheffield writing: "Radiohead was claiming the high ground abandoned by
Nirvana,
Pearl Jam,
U2,
R.E.M., everybody; and fans around the world loved them for trying too hard at a time when nobody else was even bothering." Christgau said later that "most would rate
OK Computer the apogee of
pomo texture". In 2014, the United States
National Recording Preservation Board selected the album for preservation in the
National Recording Registry of the
Library of Congress, which designates it as a sound recording that has had significant cultural, historical or aesthetic impact in American life. In
The New Yorker,
Kevin Dettmar of described it as the record that made modern world possible for alternative rock music.
OK Computer has been cited by some as undeserving of its acclaim. In a poll surveying thousands conducted by
BBC Radio 6 Music,
OK Computer was named the sixth-most overrated album. David H. Green of
The Daily Telegraph called the album "self-indulgent whingeing" and maintains that the positive critical consensus towards
OK Computer is an indication of "a 20th-century delusion that rock is the bastion of serious commentary on popular music" to the detriment of
electronic and
dance music. The album was selected as an entry in "Sacred Cows", an
NME column questioning the critical status of "revered albums", in which Henry Yates said "there's no defiance, gallows humour or chink of light beneath the curtain, just a sense of meek, resigned despondency" and criticised the record as "the moment when Radiohead stopped being 'good' [compared to
The Bends] and started being 'important. In a
Spin article on the "myth" that "Radiohead Can Do No Wrong", Chris Norris argues that the acclaim for
OK Computer inflated expectations for subsequent Radiohead releases. Christgau felt "the reason the readers of the British magazine
Q absurdly voted
OK Computer the greatest album of the 20th century is that it integrated what was briefly called electronica into rock". Having deemed it "self-regarding" and overrated, he later warmed to the record and found it indicative of Radiohead's cerebral sensibility and "rife with discrete pleasures and surprises".
Commentary, interpretation and analysis (
pictured in 1998) and his
New Labour government – echoing the album's pervasive theme of political disillusionment.
OK Computer was recorded in the lead up to the
1997 general election and released a month after the victory of
Tony Blair's
New Labour government. The album was perceived by critics as an expression of dissent and scepticism toward the new government and a reaction against the national mood of optimism. wrote, "On May 1, 1997, Labour supporters toasted their landslide victory to the sound of '
Things Can Only Get Better.' A few weeks later,
OK Computer appeared like
Banquo's ghost to warn:
No, things can only get worse." According to Amy Britton, the album "showed not everyone was ready to join the party, instead tapping into another feeling felt throughout the UK—pre-millennial angst. ... huge corporations were impossible to fight against—this was the world
OK Computer soundtracked, not the wave of British optimism." In an interview, Yorke doubted that Blair's policies would differ from the preceding two decades of
Conservative government. He said the public reaction to the
death of
Princess Diana was more significant, as a moment when the British public realised "the
royals had had us by the balls for the last hundred years, as had the media and the state." Alex Ross said the album "pictured the onslaught of the
Information Age and a young person's panicky embrace of it" and made the band into "the
poster boys for a certain kind of knowing alienation—as
Talking Heads and R.E.M. had been before."
Jon Pareles of
The New York Times found precedents in the work of Pink Floyd and
Madness for Radiohead's concerns "about a culture of numbness, building docile workers and enforced by
self-help regimes and
anti-depressants". or
futuristic, In
1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die,
Tom Moon described
OK Computer as a "prescient ...
dystopian essay on the darker implications of technology ... oozing [with] a vague sense of dread, and a touch of
Big Brother foreboding that bears strong resemblance to the constant disquiet of life on
Security Level Orange,
post-9/11."
Chris Martin of
Coldplay remarked that, "It would be interesting to see how the world would be different if
Dick Cheney really listened to Radiohead's
OK Computer. I think the world would probably improve. That album is fucking brilliant. It changed my life, so why wouldn't it change his?" The album inspired a
radio play, also titled
OK Computer, which was first broadcast on
BBC Radio 4 in 2007. The play, written by
Joel Horwood, Chris Perkins,
Al Smith and Chris Thorpe, interprets the album into a story about a man who awakens in a Berlin hospital with memory loss and returns to England with doubts that the life he's returned to is his own.
Alexis Petridis of
The Guardian called the album "the defining sound of rock's post-Britpop shift". Many newer British acts adopted similarly complex, atmospheric arrangements; for example, the post-Britpop band
Travis worked with Godrich to create the languid pop texture of
The Man Who, which became the fourth best-selling album of 1999 in the UK. Some in the British press accused Travis of appropriating Radiohead's sound. Steven Hyden of
AV Club said that by 1999, starting with
The Man Who, "what Radiohead had created in
OK Computer had already grown much bigger than the band," and that the album went on to influence "a wave of British-rock balladeers that reached its zenith in the '00s". and musicians in a variety of genres have praised it.
Bloc Party and
TV on the Radio listened to or were influenced by
OK Computer; TV on the Radio's debut album was titled
OK Calculator as a lighthearted tribute. Radiohead described the pervasiveness of bands that "sound like us" as one reason to break with the style of
OK Computer for their next album,
Kid A. Although
OK Computers influence on rock is widely acknowledged, several critics believe that its experimental inclination was not authentically embraced on a wide scale. Footman said the "Radiohead Lite" bands that followed were "missing [
OK Computer] sonic inventiveness, not to mention the lyrical substance".
David Cavanagh said that most of
OK Computers purported mainstream influence more likely stemmed from the ballads on
The Bends. According to Cavanagh, "The populist albums of the post-
OK Computer era—the
Verve's
Urban Hymns, Travis's
Good Feeling,
Stereophonics'
Word Gets Around,
Robbie Williams'
Life thru a Lens—effectively closed the door that
OK Computers boffin-esque inventiveness had opened."
OK Computer triggered a minor revival of progressive rock and ambitious concept albums, with a new wave of prog-influenced bands crediting
OK Computer for enabling their scene to thrive.
Brandon Curtis of
Secret Machines said, "Songs like 'Paranoid Android' made it OK to write music differently, to be more experimental ...
OK Computer was important because it reintroduced unconventional writing and song structures."
Steven Wilson of
Porcupine Tree said, "I don't think ambition is a dirty word any more. Radiohead were the Trojan Horse in that respect. Here's a band that came from the indie rock tradition that snuck in under the radar when the journalists weren't looking and started making these absurdly ambitious and pretentious—and all the better for it—records." In 2005,
Q named
OK Computer the tenth-best progressive rock album, and in 2014 it was voted the 87th-greatest by readers of
Prog. In 2006, the American reggae band the
Easy Star All-Stars released
Radiodread, a reggae interpretation of
OK Computer. In 2007, the music blog
Stereogum released
OKX: A Tribute to OK Computer, with covers by artists including
Vampire Weekend. ==Later releases==