What is the name of the album that many musical critics, journalists, and scholars consider to be a concept album?
The album's lyrics, written by Yorke, are more abstract compared to his personal, emotional lyrics for The Bends. Critic Alex Ross said the lyrics "seemed a mixture of overheard conversations, techno-speak, and fragments of a harsh diary" with "images of riot police at political rallies, anguished lives in tidy suburbs, yuppies freaking out, sympathetic aliens gliding overhead." Recurring themes include transport, technology, insanity, death, modern British life, globalisation and anti-capitalism. Yorke said: "On this album, the outside world became all there was ... I'm just taking Polaroids of things around me moving too fast." He told Q: "It was like there's a secret camera in a room and it's watching the character who walks in—a different character for each song. The camera's not quite me. It's neutral, emotionless. But not emotionless at all. In fact, the very opposite." Yorke also drew inspiration from books, including Noam Chomsky's political writing, Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton's The State We're In, Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! and Philip K. Dick's VALIS.The songs of OK Computer do not have a coherent narrative, and the album's lyrics are generally considered abstract or oblique. Nonetheless, many musical critics, journalists, and scholars consider the album to be a concept album or song cycle, or have analyzed it as a concept album, noting its strong thematic cohesion, aesthetic unity, and the structural logic of the song sequencing. Although the songs share common themes, Radiohead have said they do not consider OK Computer a concept album and did not intend to link the songs through a narrative or unifying concept while it was being written. Jonny Greenwood said: "I think one album title and one computer voice do not make a concept album. That's a bit of a red herring." However, the band intended the album to be heard as a whole, and spent two weeks ordering the track list. O'Brien said: "The context of each song is really important ... It's not a concept album but there is a continuity there."
OK Computer