Radiohead’s OK Computer is like a book: it was written to be experienced from start to finish, and it may be among the last great rock albums heard as a whole piece of work. “I wonder how many people get an album and listen to it straight through anymore because I don’t even do that anymore—except with Radiohead,” admitted my friend, former Gang of Four bassist Dave Allen recently. Except with Radiohead—they are the exception in many conversations about music and the future of music. “Radiohead, that’s a band people will be interested in twenty to thirty years from now,” said Michael Goldberg, a former editor of mine. “But I don’t see many artists lasting that long, not anymore.”
Radiohead is the most current (and perhaps last) band to demonstrate such endurance, to hold such a legacy and to impact so many people all over the world (there have been other recent enormous acts, to be sure, but few have lasted seventeen successful years). In 2006, Spin Magazine named OK Computer the No. 1 album of the last twenty years, and readers of the influential British weekly NME voted it the fourth-best album of all time. Clearly, OK Computer is an album people listen to from beginning to end. There are no hits—it is loved as a complete piece, it is loved as a masterpiece.
It’s easy to fear that Radiohead albums, such as The Bends (1995), OK Computer and Kid A (2000), are among the last to be experienced as full-length recordings. And it’s difficult to find a current band, out of the thousands in existence today, that shows signs of achieving the sort of longevity Radiohead maintained, or warranting the sort of attention albums like OK Computer require. But I blame neither the musicians nor the listeners; today’s technology-enhanced environment has rearranged our experience with music entirely, leaving many of us to feel we have too many options and too little time.
It’s hard to imagine today’s generation giving uninterrupted attention to an album (maybe they don’t need to). And as the album experience disappears, younger music fans lose the opportunity to know what they’re missing (if anything). But can you blame them? The digital life urges them to keep up, not slow down—to serve individuality and instant gratification, not a slow, soulful absorption of art. The new reality does not involve listening to a sequence of songs carefully put together by a musician or band. Rather, it is about hastily creating your own sequence of songs (or playlists)—or letting the computer automatically make playlists for you—listening to them like radio stations, listening to them half-attentively, forgetting them easily, and later erasing them from the hard drive to make room for new MP3 discoveries. “It makes me sad because I feel like it is fleeting and come and go,” said 18-year-old Annie Soga on finding and listening to music via the web.
The digital experience emphasizes the fleeting, remiss act of consumption over the meaningful intention for connection. And while Internet technology and social media purport to heighten independence—what you want, when you want, where you want—they, in fact, harness more control over their users with every step forward. New advances, such as iTunes “Genius” button and Pandora’s Music Genome Project—which captures the “genes” of songs to help study listening habits and make music suggestions accordingly—take away from the serendipitous, mysterious experiences of real life. When music is selected for you, is it not easier to ignore? When you don’t invest human energy in receiving music, is it not easy to forget?
P.S. I later write about how many, many albums are not worth our times and attention, but are overpriced filler between singles--many musicians are incapable of a great full-length. I don't have room to add all those thoughts here but wanted to note this so this post doesn't seem inadequate or unbalanced.
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