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33⅓ Main Series #15
OK Computer
Seemingly granted classic album status within days of its release in 1997, OK Computer transformed Radiohead from a highly promising rock act into The Most Important Band in the World a label the band has been burdened by (and has fooled around with) ever since. Through close musical analysis of each song, Dai Griffiths explores the themes and ideas that have made this album resonate so deeply with its audience, and argues that OK Computer is one of the most successfully realized CD albums so far created.
144 pages, Paperback
First published August 11, 2004
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July 14, 2008
What a crap book. The author spends nearly a third of the book talking about how LPs are different from CDs, without mentioning Radiohead AT ALL. This hardly seems relevant because while "OK Computer" was released on an LP, it's pretty rare and so most listeners only know the album on CD. And when he does fold Radiohead into the discussion of how "OK Computer" is a "CD album," the treatment is pretty minimal.
He also name-checks obsessively, but usually drops literary names, not names from music or rock music -- Philip Larkin, Matthew Arnold (laboriously comparing Thom Yorke's voice to "sweetness and light" -- ugh).
And then there's the tedious, pointless quantification -- he counts how many measures each song's various sections contain, the time signatures, the track lengths, whether the songs are "wordy" or not, whether the lines employ verbs or nouns, etc. But then he doesn't perform any actual analysis; he doesn't tell us what all this means, or why we should even bother counting all these details.
Most of his analysis amounts merely to describing the songs, as if we haven't heard them before, instead of providing any extra insight into the songs' structure, lyrics, or inspirations. For example, in discussing "Exit Music (for a Film)":
"'Sing' and 'song' balance each other, 'now' and 'one' recall each other. 'Wake-dreams' and 'pack-dressed' connect alliteratively. . . . 'Tears' rhymes with 'hears', and 'everlasting peace' finally breaks the pattern altogether. . . . 'Exit Music' thus seems like a carefully constructed song, perhaps more so than some of the more singable songs."
Really? You think that "Exit Music" by Radiohead is a "carefully constructed song"? Brilliant. This is freshman composition-class-caliber writing of the most banal kind.
He also name-checks obsessively, but usually drops literary names, not names from music or rock music -- Philip Larkin, Matthew Arnold (laboriously comparing Thom Yorke's voice to "sweetness and light" -- ugh).
And then there's the tedious, pointless quantification -- he counts how many measures each song's various sections contain, the time signatures, the track lengths, whether the songs are "wordy" or not, whether the lines employ verbs or nouns, etc. But then he doesn't perform any actual analysis; he doesn't tell us what all this means, or why we should even bother counting all these details.
Most of his analysis amounts merely to describing the songs, as if we haven't heard them before, instead of providing any extra insight into the songs' structure, lyrics, or inspirations. For example, in discussing "Exit Music (for a Film)":
"'Sing' and 'song' balance each other, 'now' and 'one' recall each other. 'Wake-dreams' and 'pack-dressed' connect alliteratively. . . . 'Tears' rhymes with 'hears', and 'everlasting peace' finally breaks the pattern altogether. . . . 'Exit Music' thus seems like a carefully constructed song, perhaps more so than some of the more singable songs."
Really? You think that "Exit Music" by Radiohead is a "carefully constructed song"? Brilliant. This is freshman composition-class-caliber writing of the most banal kind.
January 17, 2019
The second of three 33 1/3 books I've borrowed from a friend and am taking entirely too long to read. The previous one, on Donuts, I just might buy myself at some point. This one I am glad I did not.
Here are a collection of more or less specific things that I honestly believe to be true about criticism/aesthetics/critical writing/what have you:
- You don't have to love, or in fact feel any particular way, about the art you are tackling in order for the result to be good
- You can freely admit to the reader in your introduction that you picked your subject to some degree because you thought it would be popular rather than because you care about it or have anything specific to say about it, and the result could still be entertaining/edifying/insightful/'good'
- There is no one true, correct, righteous way to create criticism (or any other art); when it comes to writing about music, for example, there is excellent criticism that draws deeply on musicology, and excellent criticism that doesn't contain a single instance of information, knowledge, or insight drawn from that discipline. There is excellent criticism that discusses the writer's personal life at length and depth, and excellent criticism that just about faints at the idea of that. If you are good enough you can make just about anything 'work'.
- To be more specific, I think academic musicology can be a perfectly fine thing to center a lengthy critical work around; there's no particular reason that, done well, it has to be boring or stodgy or feel like the writer is refusing to engage with (for example) the fact that music might make the writer themself or other listeners actually feel things, sometimes even in ways that can't be reduced to describing what key its in, or how fast it moves, or what types of words are in the lyrics.
- To be even more, pointedly, bloodymindedly specific, I think it could very well work out to do something like taking "Fitter Happier" and listing it line-by-line, noting in each case whether there are parentheses in the written lyrics, whether the line includes verbs/is in the present tense or not, what the music is doing at the time, whether the line is 'negative' or not, etc. and even though in description this process seems like a numbingly pointless exercise, you could make it pay off, if you were a good enough writer and had some point to make through this kind of dissection. (It would help, however, if you didn't get so wrapped up in staring at the individual trees in the forest that you don't, say, only consider the closing "a pig/in a cage/on antibiotics" as three separate statements without even alluding to the possibility that it might be one descriptive passage elongated for effect. Emotional effect, even.)
- There is no set format for this kind of critical work, and furthermore there is no content or type of content that must be included (or, conversely, must not be included) in order for the work to be worthwhile and valid. Done with enough skill, a piece of criticism could conceivably get away with never mentioning the name of the artwork or creator; done with enough skill, almost any high-concept scheme could be applied to the work, or indeed the work could eschew any sort of formal flair whatsoever; done with enough skill, the critical work could well be fictional and still a success as a piece of criticism (see certain other volumes in this series or, say, glenn mcdonald's review on The War Against Silence of Life Without Buildings' sole album). But all different approaches do not come with the same degree of difficulty or potential depth of failure. So you could, to again use a pointed example, devote a solid 45 pages of your 123-page book to basically not talking about or engaging with your subject matter, and it could work, but you would either have to make it so interesting in and of itself that it doesn't matter to the reader that it's basically unconnected (and even then you'd probably need to at least make your pivot to your ostensible subject land), or you'd have to pay off that material in a significant way later in the book. And if neither of those things happen, you run the risk of the reader wondering why you spent so much time on it anyway.
Ok, it's pretty obvious that I'm mad at this book. The temptation to go almost page-by-page and point out all the missed opportunities, the weird biases that are treated axiomatically instead of argued for (maybe they're inside baseball in the world of musicology - to most readers, that won't matter), the things that aren't talked about, the sheer amount of work that is taken not to analyse anything about the album but just to depict it or categorize it in various ways that then sit inert on the page, our author seeming to think that just presenting the information is sufficient for criticism (and again, theoretically this could work, but in this case the information is neither interesting or enlightening enough on its face to be presented without more comment, nor is its arrangement or juxtaposition doing any of the necessary work), etc etc etc.
But the reason I took the tack above is because maybe what makes me the most angry about this book is that it lands on the wrong side of all of the above so strongly (in such a short time!) that it tempts one to reactionary positions; it would be so easy to castigate Griffiths using a lazy and incorrect argument like, well, they should have gotten someone who loves the album to write about it. Or, this is not the way anyone should write about music (i.e. don't bring musicology to the table at all, rather than specifically criticizing the way he uses musicology poorly). That's awful and corrosive and so I'm doing my best to push back against my desire to do so.
I'll end with one more general point I wish this work had been aware of, or kept in mind: beware of making claims that are easily falsifiable by your readers, because no matter how bog standard, obvious, inarguable or innocuous you may think they are, rest assured at least some of your readers will be able in fact to falsify them from their own experience. The almost inevitable result is that the claims you make with equal confidence that they can't already falsify are likely to feel hollow. Here's an example of both this and the biggest flaw in this book, its steadfast refusal to actually make arguments and pay off things it sets up:
Plenty of people who listen to Radiohead could tell you that the experience of listening to OK Computer without the vocal tracks versus the string quartet version of the album are sufficiently different (in ways that may or may not be musicologically significant but are certainly significant in other ways!) that referring to them both as being what this album sounds like as 'pure music' feels outright ridiculous, unless by 'pure music' you mean something beyond the definition given here, "music without words" (in which case you should have provided that definition!). There will not be any further discussion of this point, unless the "that" towards the end of the quotation means just the string quartet recording itself, which is mentioned in passing without following up this point in any meaningful way.
Basically you're left with a volume that says things like "why on earth would a piece of music without words repeat a verse section?" This is bad, not because the implicit position isn't potentially interesting or arguably true (I'd argue it, but I'm not already convinced I'm right), but because it both leaves the question unanswered from its own perspective (i.e. here's why you shouldn't do that) and genuinely can't seem to imagine what someone else's answer might be (i.e. here's why you might want to do that). It's enough to have you muttering "we hope your rules and wisdom choke you" under your breath.
Here are a collection of more or less specific things that I honestly believe to be true about criticism/aesthetics/critical writing/what have you:
- You don't have to love, or in fact feel any particular way, about the art you are tackling in order for the result to be good
- You can freely admit to the reader in your introduction that you picked your subject to some degree because you thought it would be popular rather than because you care about it or have anything specific to say about it, and the result could still be entertaining/edifying/insightful/'good'
- There is no one true, correct, righteous way to create criticism (or any other art); when it comes to writing about music, for example, there is excellent criticism that draws deeply on musicology, and excellent criticism that doesn't contain a single instance of information, knowledge, or insight drawn from that discipline. There is excellent criticism that discusses the writer's personal life at length and depth, and excellent criticism that just about faints at the idea of that. If you are good enough you can make just about anything 'work'.
- To be more specific, I think academic musicology can be a perfectly fine thing to center a lengthy critical work around; there's no particular reason that, done well, it has to be boring or stodgy or feel like the writer is refusing to engage with (for example) the fact that music might make the writer themself or other listeners actually feel things, sometimes even in ways that can't be reduced to describing what key its in, or how fast it moves, or what types of words are in the lyrics.
- To be even more, pointedly, bloodymindedly specific, I think it could very well work out to do something like taking "Fitter Happier" and listing it line-by-line, noting in each case whether there are parentheses in the written lyrics, whether the line includes verbs/is in the present tense or not, what the music is doing at the time, whether the line is 'negative' or not, etc. and even though in description this process seems like a numbingly pointless exercise, you could make it pay off, if you were a good enough writer and had some point to make through this kind of dissection. (It would help, however, if you didn't get so wrapped up in staring at the individual trees in the forest that you don't, say, only consider the closing "a pig/in a cage/on antibiotics" as three separate statements without even alluding to the possibility that it might be one descriptive passage elongated for effect. Emotional effect, even.)
- There is no set format for this kind of critical work, and furthermore there is no content or type of content that must be included (or, conversely, must not be included) in order for the work to be worthwhile and valid. Done with enough skill, a piece of criticism could conceivably get away with never mentioning the name of the artwork or creator; done with enough skill, almost any high-concept scheme could be applied to the work, or indeed the work could eschew any sort of formal flair whatsoever; done with enough skill, the critical work could well be fictional and still a success as a piece of criticism (see certain other volumes in this series or, say, glenn mcdonald's review on The War Against Silence of Life Without Buildings' sole album). But all different approaches do not come with the same degree of difficulty or potential depth of failure. So you could, to again use a pointed example, devote a solid 45 pages of your 123-page book to basically not talking about or engaging with your subject matter, and it could work, but you would either have to make it so interesting in and of itself that it doesn't matter to the reader that it's basically unconnected (and even then you'd probably need to at least make your pivot to your ostensible subject land), or you'd have to pay off that material in a significant way later in the book. And if neither of those things happen, you run the risk of the reader wondering why you spent so much time on it anyway.
Ok, it's pretty obvious that I'm mad at this book. The temptation to go almost page-by-page and point out all the missed opportunities, the weird biases that are treated axiomatically instead of argued for (maybe they're inside baseball in the world of musicology - to most readers, that won't matter), the things that aren't talked about, the sheer amount of work that is taken not to analyse anything about the album but just to depict it or categorize it in various ways that then sit inert on the page, our author seeming to think that just presenting the information is sufficient for criticism (and again, theoretically this could work, but in this case the information is neither interesting or enlightening enough on its face to be presented without more comment, nor is its arrangement or juxtaposition doing any of the necessary work), etc etc etc.
But the reason I took the tack above is because maybe what makes me the most angry about this book is that it lands on the wrong side of all of the above so strongly (in such a short time!) that it tempts one to reactionary positions; it would be so easy to castigate Griffiths using a lazy and incorrect argument like, well, they should have gotten someone who loves the album to write about it. Or, this is not the way anyone should write about music (i.e. don't bring musicology to the table at all, rather than specifically criticizing the way he uses musicology poorly). That's awful and corrosive and so I'm doing my best to push back against my desire to do so.
I'll end with one more general point I wish this work had been aware of, or kept in mind: beware of making claims that are easily falsifiable by your readers, because no matter how bog standard, obvious, inarguable or innocuous you may think they are, rest assured at least some of your readers will be able in fact to falsify them from their own experience. The almost inevitable result is that the claims you make with equal confidence that they can't already falsify are likely to feel hollow. Here's an example of both this and the biggest flaw in this book, its steadfast refusal to actually make arguments and pay off things it sets up:
In fact, what this album sounds like as 'pure music', music without words, can be checked by listening to the recording of OK Computer in its entirety by a string quartet, and there'll be further discussion of that in the final chapter.
Plenty of people who listen to Radiohead could tell you that the experience of listening to OK Computer without the vocal tracks versus the string quartet version of the album are sufficiently different (in ways that may or may not be musicologically significant but are certainly significant in other ways!) that referring to them both as being what this album sounds like as 'pure music' feels outright ridiculous, unless by 'pure music' you mean something beyond the definition given here, "music without words" (in which case you should have provided that definition!). There will not be any further discussion of this point, unless the "that" towards the end of the quotation means just the string quartet recording itself, which is mentioned in passing without following up this point in any meaningful way.
Basically you're left with a volume that says things like "why on earth would a piece of music without words repeat a verse section?" This is bad, not because the implicit position isn't potentially interesting or arguably true (I'd argue it, but I'm not already convinced I'm right), but because it both leaves the question unanswered from its own perspective (i.e. here's why you shouldn't do that) and genuinely can't seem to imagine what someone else's answer might be (i.e. here's why you might want to do that). It's enough to have you muttering "we hope your rules and wisdom choke you" under your breath.
June 5, 2021
When you ask Radiohead fans what is the best book ever published about Radiohead, they all tell you the same thing: nothing good was ever published about Radiohead. I thought it was a display of the typical snobbery we tend associate this particular fanbase, but you can be snob and extremely right at the same time.
The cornerstone of good essay writing is a strong thesis. In layman's term: IT IS WHAT THE HELLL YOU ARE TRYING TO SAY, BRO. It's one thing to break apart a song and look for patterns in the music, but WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO FIND? It seems like Dai Griffith had no idea himself. The best way I can explain the thesis of this book goes as follows: OK Computer couldn't have been conceptualized on anything else but CD, because the songs are too long and therefore, they are a product of their era. OK, fine. But it literally describes most Radiohead albums. A Moon Shaped Pool (released in 2016) is 52:31. There's eleven songs and eight of them are between four and six minutes long. Therefore WHAT IS YOUR POINT AGAIN, BRO? BECAUSE I DON'T GET IT.
Also, this book kind of barely talks about OK Computer. It's mostly on how technology influences music composition. There's a profound lack of insight on what makes OK Computer an album worth listening to from an academic or a layman's perspective (and I've been both in my life). Dai Griffith ends with the very frustrating remark: "Individual tracks speak for themselves. To State the obvious, OK Computer is a diverse collection given greater unity by its context as an album". I kid you not. This is literally how the book ends. With insight that applies to literally every album ever recorded.
The lesson here is that not even college professors are above writing a pointless fiasco. Being poorly edited will do that to you. Here's another good one: "So the music is basically a succession of chords, and the chords in turn sit in one particular area of the spectrum of pitch: that played by guitar chords." What the hell are you trying to say here? That OK Computer is comprised of ROCK SONGS? Thank you, but I knew that before buying the freakin' book. Shame on you 33 1/3. This is bottom shelf music criticism.
The cornerstone of good essay writing is a strong thesis. In layman's term: IT IS WHAT THE HELLL YOU ARE TRYING TO SAY, BRO. It's one thing to break apart a song and look for patterns in the music, but WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO FIND? It seems like Dai Griffith had no idea himself. The best way I can explain the thesis of this book goes as follows: OK Computer couldn't have been conceptualized on anything else but CD, because the songs are too long and therefore, they are a product of their era. OK, fine. But it literally describes most Radiohead albums. A Moon Shaped Pool (released in 2016) is 52:31. There's eleven songs and eight of them are between four and six minutes long. Therefore WHAT IS YOUR POINT AGAIN, BRO? BECAUSE I DON'T GET IT.
Also, this book kind of barely talks about OK Computer. It's mostly on how technology influences music composition. There's a profound lack of insight on what makes OK Computer an album worth listening to from an academic or a layman's perspective (and I've been both in my life). Dai Griffith ends with the very frustrating remark: "Individual tracks speak for themselves. To State the obvious, OK Computer is a diverse collection given greater unity by its context as an album". I kid you not. This is literally how the book ends. With insight that applies to literally every album ever recorded.
The lesson here is that not even college professors are above writing a pointless fiasco. Being poorly edited will do that to you. Here's another good one: "So the music is basically a succession of chords, and the chords in turn sit in one particular area of the spectrum of pitch: that played by guitar chords." What the hell are you trying to say here? That OK Computer is comprised of ROCK SONGS? Thank you, but I knew that before buying the freakin' book. Shame on you 33 1/3. This is bottom shelf music criticism.
April 13, 2018
Is it possible to give a book negative stars? I'd give this Minus Five Stars.
You could toy with the idea of giving this a second star because Dai Griffiths brings forth a lot of really interesting music history, comparative criticism (often hopping to Philip Larkin or Bob Dylan, the second of which has been done to death, the former being a serious reach), and the way he weaves the idea of "CD and Cassette and Vinyl as Artifacts" together.
That's all valid and good, but the name of the fucking book is OK Computer. The book does not talk about OK Computer for almost fifty pages. Fifty. 50.
Dai Griffiths is a smart dude, to be sure. There are some very clinical breakdowns, getting deep into literary, musical, and even, to a point, scientific (with the passage of time) theory. For every bit of that, there's an equal amount of condescending, borderline-abrasive 'talk' toward the reader. Dai Griffiths seems to look at OK Computer and, by extension, the people who read this book, as enemies. If not enemies, just something else he needs to put under the scalpel. He spends the majority of the book trying to, seemingly, outsmart OK Computer.
Well -- great. Cool. Not every book, even a 33 1/3, needs to be a celebration. However: I barely listen to pop music on purpose (not because I'm above it, so help me god, I just never got the taste buds for it and some people have faulty taste buds) and you can tell how much this guy hates pop music. As an Elevated Intellectual In The Field Of Music Criticism, he sure wants to let you know, but in the most passive-aggressive way possible, because to say that pop music is uncool is to be a Bad Critic and a Bad Intellectual.
Then, here's some stuff to chew on:
Why do you spend so much real estate of the book and the reader's time by antagonizing? If OK Computer is the first album to take full advantage of the CD as a concept, why does Let Down, for your criticism of it, need to be there? Because we could have hit the Skip button? That's a third-grade logical fallacy, dude! You take away 1 from 6 and it doesn't equal 6 anymore, you dipshit!
How many times are you going to quote Bob Dylan talking about pop music in a positive light, and then drag it sideways? Aren't you just mashing your keyboard like everybody else by bringing Dylan into the picture in the first place? Why do you drift from talking about theorists like they're your next-door neighbors or teaching buddies, to some kind of half-assed reverence?
Do you even like this album?
Frankly, Dai: what the fuck are you talking about? Not inasmuch as the readers can't decipher your big talk, so much as why do you think you're better than every form you're taking the time to pour gas on and blow up.
As much as this thing would love to be a great book about music theory, it's not. It's a shitty book about a great album, that thinks it's an amazing book about that album that came out that one time.
That's all valid and good. But the name of the fucking book is OK Computer.
You could toy with the idea of giving this a second star because Dai Griffiths brings forth a lot of really interesting music history, comparative criticism (often hopping to Philip Larkin or Bob Dylan, the second of which has been done to death, the former being a serious reach), and the way he weaves the idea of "CD and Cassette and Vinyl as Artifacts" together.
That's all valid and good, but the name of the fucking book is OK Computer. The book does not talk about OK Computer for almost fifty pages. Fifty. 50.
Dai Griffiths is a smart dude, to be sure. There are some very clinical breakdowns, getting deep into literary, musical, and even, to a point, scientific (with the passage of time) theory. For every bit of that, there's an equal amount of condescending, borderline-abrasive 'talk' toward the reader. Dai Griffiths seems to look at OK Computer and, by extension, the people who read this book, as enemies. If not enemies, just something else he needs to put under the scalpel. He spends the majority of the book trying to, seemingly, outsmart OK Computer.
Well -- great. Cool. Not every book, even a 33 1/3, needs to be a celebration. However: I barely listen to pop music on purpose (not because I'm above it, so help me god, I just never got the taste buds for it and some people have faulty taste buds) and you can tell how much this guy hates pop music. As an Elevated Intellectual In The Field Of Music Criticism, he sure wants to let you know, but in the most passive-aggressive way possible, because to say that pop music is uncool is to be a Bad Critic and a Bad Intellectual.
Then, here's some stuff to chew on:
Why do you spend so much real estate of the book and the reader's time by antagonizing? If OK Computer is the first album to take full advantage of the CD as a concept, why does Let Down, for your criticism of it, need to be there? Because we could have hit the Skip button? That's a third-grade logical fallacy, dude! You take away 1 from 6 and it doesn't equal 6 anymore, you dipshit!
How many times are you going to quote Bob Dylan talking about pop music in a positive light, and then drag it sideways? Aren't you just mashing your keyboard like everybody else by bringing Dylan into the picture in the first place? Why do you drift from talking about theorists like they're your next-door neighbors or teaching buddies, to some kind of half-assed reverence?
Do you even like this album?
Frankly, Dai: what the fuck are you talking about? Not inasmuch as the readers can't decipher your big talk, so much as why do you think you're better than every form you're taking the time to pour gas on and blow up.
As much as this thing would love to be a great book about music theory, it's not. It's a shitty book about a great album, that thinks it's an amazing book about that album that came out that one time.
That's all valid and good. But the name of the fucking book is OK Computer.
August 19, 2009
Griffiths's little book was interesting, though less enlightening about OK Computer than it was about other things. The beginning stuff about the differences between vinyl and CD formats was interesting, though his explanation of how OK Computer fit into that discussion was rather underwhelming. Course, the whole book was a bit underwhelming; lots of promising looking avenues that we lingered near, but ultimately didn't drive down.
Griffiths spent more time talking around the album than he did talking about it, which for such a short book as this seems kinda silly to me. I'm fine with him not referring to interviews and external stuff like that, except when he then doesn't get down to gleaning much from the album itself. He lays out the formal elements quite well, but follows it up with little to no opinion or interpretation. Track times, key signatures, number of measures, etc.: all very nice, except when that's all you have. I like a little interpretation/explanation with my charts. It seems like he was just throwing it out there and expected us to shape our own interpretation based on the provided information, which, when writing a book, doesn't seem like the best move - isn't the point of writing a book like this to contribute something to the already existing discussion?
I'm not a musicologist, so maybe I'm missing something. There were flutterings of coolness there, but I never felt like any of it blossomed into a tangible, identifiable point. As far as I can tell, this book talks a lot, but says little.
Griffiths spent more time talking around the album than he did talking about it, which for such a short book as this seems kinda silly to me. I'm fine with him not referring to interviews and external stuff like that, except when he then doesn't get down to gleaning much from the album itself. He lays out the formal elements quite well, but follows it up with little to no opinion or interpretation. Track times, key signatures, number of measures, etc.: all very nice, except when that's all you have. I like a little interpretation/explanation with my charts. It seems like he was just throwing it out there and expected us to shape our own interpretation based on the provided information, which, when writing a book, doesn't seem like the best move - isn't the point of writing a book like this to contribute something to the already existing discussion?
I'm not a musicologist, so maybe I'm missing something. There were flutterings of coolness there, but I never felt like any of it blossomed into a tangible, identifiable point. As far as I can tell, this book talks a lot, but says little.
November 21, 2019
Subtitle: An Academic Tries to See the Forest for the (Fake Plastic) Trees
One-and-a-half stars. Using lists (tempos, song lengths, keys, words used) and an overabundance of quotes, this author showcases his knowledge of things other than the album, including an extensive history of vinyl vs. CD. All of this seems to be a misguided attempt to get to the essence of what combination of factors results in a "classic" album. This book was so impersonal, it could have easily been a study of ANY album.
One-and-a-half stars. Using lists (tempos, song lengths, keys, words used) and an overabundance of quotes, this author showcases his knowledge of things other than the album, including an extensive history of vinyl vs. CD. All of this seems to be a misguided attempt to get to the essence of what combination of factors results in a "classic" album. This book was so impersonal, it could have easily been a study of ANY album.
November 24, 2023
I Read Dai Griffiths’ ‘Radiohead’s OK Computer (33⅓)’.
You can probably tell I can be a bit verbose. Single tracks of music became enormous landscapes. Don’t know the band? No problem. I can spin a yarn a mile long about how I came upon the song, where I was when I found it and where I am while I’m listening to it, who it reminds me of, what colors it feels like, what old memories come to the surface when I hear a part at a minute and a half in. You’ll still be reading a paragraph about a song long after it’s stopped spinning. And whether or not that’s the way I’m supposed to use language to spread my love of music, it’s just the way that I’ve come to express it. I wonder, often, about what it feels like to be on the other side of that conversation; what does it read like when I’m writing long-form about a three and a half minute pop song that sounds like the last three I had on the mix. Does it come across like haughty masturbation? Does it feel like someone who’s lost their sense of fun when it comes to the simple joy of checking out bands? Does it feel pompous, instructive, like I’m telling you how to listen to it without letting you take it at your own ease? Does it suck?
The 33⅓ series has long interested me because from the outside, it seems like they have taken some of the great records of our time and turned them into thinkpieces, given someone a typewriter and let them loose to unburden their mind with all of the kaleidoscopic concepts they’ve had while listening to those records obsessively. At some point many years ago (was I still in NY?) I purchased three of them:
Sigur Ros’ ( )
Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew
Radiohead’s OK Computer
These are three records that I was obsessed with at the time (and happily still am) and wanted to get my fingers deep into the muck of another brain surrounding those albums. What were other people seeing? What were they feeling? What were they dreamjournaling as they circumnavigated the crystalline lakes of Svigaplatan? What thoughts were shaking loose as they allowed their mind to careen through the electric improvs in Studio B? Who was the dystopia erasing as nameless governments blackbagged depressive posh Londoners? I was fascinated to know that someone [else] could write a small book around 100 pages long about a single record. Not only did I want to be able to do that, but I couldn’t wait to experience that.
In fact, in a tweet this April while considering trying to do a deep dive on a record, I named Fairweather’s If They Move… Kill Them, Deftones’ Saturday Night Wrist, and Paulson’s All At Once as albums I would have loved to do the work on, though I dropped the bag and never wrote more than a brief outline for 2 and didn’t start the 3rd. – I’m working on my follow through.
–
Finally embarking upon this book I was a little beside myself, a little excited to take a walk through someone else’s mind on a subject I was deeply passionate about. OK Computer has slowly raised to a top 3-5 record of all time for me, and it’s been a slow process, but it really has shaped the way that I not only listen to music, but also how I understand that opinions on bands and music aren’t static. Opinions will change and grow and alter, especially as you let small runs in a song fester in your brain, especially as you dissect the little parts you hate so much that you end up loving them. Sometimes you just aren’t ready to love it.
I promised I wouldn’t make this about Radiohead and I wouldn’t make it about OK Computer. I knew I would make it about myself. But I promise, I’m bringing it back around to the book itself.
I will say that what I expected from this book and what I got from it is very, very different. It has [temporarily] changed what I expect from the 33⅓ series (so much so that I’m nervous to read others?). This book is written in several parts. Of the 114 pages, 47 of them (roughly 41%) is written about the difference between CDs and LPs. This is fairly interesting work, as much of it illustrates the thought process between putting a collection of songs together on one ‘release’, and how the physical engagement of flipping a record can change how an album is digested. It speaks on about the length of tracks getting a bit more liberated because there was more temporal space on the medium, which also possibly led to songs being bloated beyond capacity. I found much of this fairly interesting, especially considering this is the type of thing I would have voluntarily chosen to read about… except this was a book about a specific album. At least that’s what the cover and the title and the premise led me to believe? It wasn’t until towards the end of the chapter (page 31, 65% through this chapter) that Griffiths begins to draw the band into the discussion, 8 pages of those 31 (rougly 25%) are just pages of lists, one of the lists (2 of 8 pages, another 25%) being just bands and albums that Radiohead was into at the time of their creating the record. So a piece of a slice of a sliver of a fraction of this first chapter was a pretty cool piece of what I expected from the book. I figured, HEY, I’m not a critic, I’m not a musician, I’m just a media-obsessed person looking for some creative joy… maybe this chapter is not for me. Couldn’t wait to dig in to the chapter that promised breakdowns of the songs.
This chapter was probably the one wherein I felt the most out of my depth since reading text books back in school. This made me look at a record I deeply love, a record that I believe I know in such a strange and alien light (not in a good way) that I almost felt guilty for liking it the way I have. That I almost felt like I was playing with something ALL WRONG. I have a feeling that if me and the author sat on a stage and were posed the question, “Why do you like OK Computer?”, as I talked about my answer, he would think that I was a small, small child with a 1920s train conductor hat sitting in a toy locomotive that spun around in a tiny circle and I would be hooting CHOOO CHOOOO again and again. His writing made me feel small. And worst of all, the biggest crime of the thing… I never got a sense of love, endearment, joy, enjoyment, respect or appreciation of what the band created.
This book talks about the music on the record the way that engineers talk about jet engines. Everything that the author expressed felt to me like he was breaking down each song into its constituent parts, stripping the humanity from every note and every choice with a chemical thinner, mansplaining what it means to Like a track. What’s more, his journey through the record is a calculated and scientific one finding no bridge into emotion. He makes the band sound like brutalist architects making decisions that are suited for capacity, for function. There is no devotion to form. There is no inclination towards creativity or personhood. I would go so far as to say this book is written by the very Karma Police that Thom Yorke is warning about. Behind these words is a man so frightened by the glow of emotion that he carries around an extinguisher and a bullhorn to both soak the flames and scream at those who tried to huddle around it.
I’d heard of insufferable Radiohead fans for as long as I’ve heard about insufferable Tool fans.
This is worse than I expected.
I give you a quote which sent me into such a mental tempest that I had to put the book down for a good half hour:
There’s still every need to learn how to read music:
not being able to do so is another indication of the
lazy, slobby aspect of computer- and tv-centered life,
which also plays straight into the hands of scummy,
dumbing-down capitalists.
Fucking. Wild.
–
I will definitely be reading the other two 33⅓ books that I have but if it gets to the point where I find the writer uninteresting or borderline offensive, I’ll definitely put down the book and lock away my admiration for those who can write this way about something that I love so deeply. I can’t imagine that a piece of art which changed my perception about the world so completely, that has the ability to slowly guide me through a deep, dark place, that feels so intuitive and beautiful and emotional and creative… I can’t believe that the piece which I experience is the same thing that Dai Griffiths experiences. And I can’t believe that he has a book out in the world, that he has 114 pages of bleak, mathematical, lifeless words on a subject which I find to be a modern marvel.
Love what you love to the finest of its parts. Open each shell, run your finger across every pore, get your fingers deep into the soil.
I don’t recommend this book to anyone.
You can probably tell I can be a bit verbose. Single tracks of music became enormous landscapes. Don’t know the band? No problem. I can spin a yarn a mile long about how I came upon the song, where I was when I found it and where I am while I’m listening to it, who it reminds me of, what colors it feels like, what old memories come to the surface when I hear a part at a minute and a half in. You’ll still be reading a paragraph about a song long after it’s stopped spinning. And whether or not that’s the way I’m supposed to use language to spread my love of music, it’s just the way that I’ve come to express it. I wonder, often, about what it feels like to be on the other side of that conversation; what does it read like when I’m writing long-form about a three and a half minute pop song that sounds like the last three I had on the mix. Does it come across like haughty masturbation? Does it feel like someone who’s lost their sense of fun when it comes to the simple joy of checking out bands? Does it feel pompous, instructive, like I’m telling you how to listen to it without letting you take it at your own ease? Does it suck?
The 33⅓ series has long interested me because from the outside, it seems like they have taken some of the great records of our time and turned them into thinkpieces, given someone a typewriter and let them loose to unburden their mind with all of the kaleidoscopic concepts they’ve had while listening to those records obsessively. At some point many years ago (was I still in NY?) I purchased three of them:
Sigur Ros’ ( )
Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew
Radiohead’s OK Computer
These are three records that I was obsessed with at the time (and happily still am) and wanted to get my fingers deep into the muck of another brain surrounding those albums. What were other people seeing? What were they feeling? What were they dreamjournaling as they circumnavigated the crystalline lakes of Svigaplatan? What thoughts were shaking loose as they allowed their mind to careen through the electric improvs in Studio B? Who was the dystopia erasing as nameless governments blackbagged depressive posh Londoners? I was fascinated to know that someone [else] could write a small book around 100 pages long about a single record. Not only did I want to be able to do that, but I couldn’t wait to experience that.
In fact, in a tweet this April while considering trying to do a deep dive on a record, I named Fairweather’s If They Move… Kill Them, Deftones’ Saturday Night Wrist, and Paulson’s All At Once as albums I would have loved to do the work on, though I dropped the bag and never wrote more than a brief outline for 2 and didn’t start the 3rd. – I’m working on my follow through.
–
Finally embarking upon this book I was a little beside myself, a little excited to take a walk through someone else’s mind on a subject I was deeply passionate about. OK Computer has slowly raised to a top 3-5 record of all time for me, and it’s been a slow process, but it really has shaped the way that I not only listen to music, but also how I understand that opinions on bands and music aren’t static. Opinions will change and grow and alter, especially as you let small runs in a song fester in your brain, especially as you dissect the little parts you hate so much that you end up loving them. Sometimes you just aren’t ready to love it.
I promised I wouldn’t make this about Radiohead and I wouldn’t make it about OK Computer. I knew I would make it about myself. But I promise, I’m bringing it back around to the book itself.
I will say that what I expected from this book and what I got from it is very, very different. It has [temporarily] changed what I expect from the 33⅓ series (so much so that I’m nervous to read others?). This book is written in several parts. Of the 114 pages, 47 of them (roughly 41%) is written about the difference between CDs and LPs. This is fairly interesting work, as much of it illustrates the thought process between putting a collection of songs together on one ‘release’, and how the physical engagement of flipping a record can change how an album is digested. It speaks on about the length of tracks getting a bit more liberated because there was more temporal space on the medium, which also possibly led to songs being bloated beyond capacity. I found much of this fairly interesting, especially considering this is the type of thing I would have voluntarily chosen to read about… except this was a book about a specific album. At least that’s what the cover and the title and the premise led me to believe? It wasn’t until towards the end of the chapter (page 31, 65% through this chapter) that Griffiths begins to draw the band into the discussion, 8 pages of those 31 (rougly 25%) are just pages of lists, one of the lists (2 of 8 pages, another 25%) being just bands and albums that Radiohead was into at the time of their creating the record. So a piece of a slice of a sliver of a fraction of this first chapter was a pretty cool piece of what I expected from the book. I figured, HEY, I’m not a critic, I’m not a musician, I’m just a media-obsessed person looking for some creative joy… maybe this chapter is not for me. Couldn’t wait to dig in to the chapter that promised breakdowns of the songs.
This chapter was probably the one wherein I felt the most out of my depth since reading text books back in school. This made me look at a record I deeply love, a record that I believe I know in such a strange and alien light (not in a good way) that I almost felt guilty for liking it the way I have. That I almost felt like I was playing with something ALL WRONG. I have a feeling that if me and the author sat on a stage and were posed the question, “Why do you like OK Computer?”, as I talked about my answer, he would think that I was a small, small child with a 1920s train conductor hat sitting in a toy locomotive that spun around in a tiny circle and I would be hooting CHOOO CHOOOO again and again. His writing made me feel small. And worst of all, the biggest crime of the thing… I never got a sense of love, endearment, joy, enjoyment, respect or appreciation of what the band created.
This book talks about the music on the record the way that engineers talk about jet engines. Everything that the author expressed felt to me like he was breaking down each song into its constituent parts, stripping the humanity from every note and every choice with a chemical thinner, mansplaining what it means to Like a track. What’s more, his journey through the record is a calculated and scientific one finding no bridge into emotion. He makes the band sound like brutalist architects making decisions that are suited for capacity, for function. There is no devotion to form. There is no inclination towards creativity or personhood. I would go so far as to say this book is written by the very Karma Police that Thom Yorke is warning about. Behind these words is a man so frightened by the glow of emotion that he carries around an extinguisher and a bullhorn to both soak the flames and scream at those who tried to huddle around it.
I’d heard of insufferable Radiohead fans for as long as I’ve heard about insufferable Tool fans.
This is worse than I expected.
I give you a quote which sent me into such a mental tempest that I had to put the book down for a good half hour:
There’s still every need to learn how to read music:
not being able to do so is another indication of the
lazy, slobby aspect of computer- and tv-centered life,
which also plays straight into the hands of scummy,
dumbing-down capitalists.
Fucking. Wild.
–
I will definitely be reading the other two 33⅓ books that I have but if it gets to the point where I find the writer uninteresting or borderline offensive, I’ll definitely put down the book and lock away my admiration for those who can write this way about something that I love so deeply. I can’t imagine that a piece of art which changed my perception about the world so completely, that has the ability to slowly guide me through a deep, dark place, that feels so intuitive and beautiful and emotional and creative… I can’t believe that the piece which I experience is the same thing that Dai Griffiths experiences. And I can’t believe that he has a book out in the world, that he has 114 pages of bleak, mathematical, lifeless words on a subject which I find to be a modern marvel.
Love what you love to the finest of its parts. Open each shell, run your finger across every pore, get your fingers deep into the soil.
I don’t recommend this book to anyone.
July 9, 2021
Good history book on the creation of an album that used to be a favourite but that I've not listened to in ages.
June 7, 2021
This book is the Rick Roll of books. I've never read a book that felt so much like a purposeful troll of its readers.
This book barely talked about Radiohead at all and when it did it was just a list of song lengths and lyrics.
If you want to read an actual good analysis of OK Computer check this book out instead.
https://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0
This book barely talked about Radiohead at all and when it did it was just a list of song lengths and lyrics.
If you want to read an actual good analysis of OK Computer check this book out instead.
https://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0
May 8, 2012
Sometimes the success of certain artists or artworks makes me feel as if I've been transported to the Twilight Zone. Critics, friends, people from all walks of life will be raving about something and all I can think is 'What the f**k is going on here?!!' The phenomenal critical and commercial success of Radiohead is a case in point. Many a time during the inexorable swelling of their fame have I heard that unmistakable fingernails-on-a-blackboard whine that is Thom Yorke's vocal style and thought to myself, 'How can this be happening?' As to the music, oftentimes it sounds like some cobbled-together-in-the-studio we-mixed-all-the-colours-together-and-got-brown addicted-to-Protools shit, a style that all us home-recordists (not to mention most rich bands with unlimited studio time) have stumbled upon at some time or other but, maybe cos so few of us have major label deals, Rolling Stone and NME still think is cutting-edge. OK Computer is at the epicentre of the reality disturbance. 'Paranoid Android', the obligatory rock epic - am I the only one who finds that riffage end-section totally uninspired? I'd swear they just jammed over a click-track then cut-and-pasted the sections together. 'Karma Police' - British backpacker singalong par-excellence: soft, fey, soporific, everything that's bad about The Smiths with none of the humour or the rockabilly. ('For a minute there I lost myself' repeated ad nauseum - oh the irony!) 'Exit Music For a Film', despite the dreadful title, is OK I guess. And 'No Surprises' is almost tuneful, if only it wasn't Yorkey singing, but hardly world-changing. An interesting/infuriating aspect of the Twilight Zone phenomenon is the way fans will defend these works. Call OK Computer cold or artificial, for eg, and they'll say, 'But it's meant to be that way.' Apparently it's the 'concept', man. Well I'm a big believer that if a record (or book, film, play, painting) needs a concept to justify itself then maybe it just ain't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, conceptualise away, but it's no defence of soullessness, even if the concept is the death of the soul.
And the book? Possibly the worst in the series - certainly in the bottom five. Is it coincidence that this pretentious half-baked album is celebrated by an even more pretentious and half-baked book?
And the book? Possibly the worst in the series - certainly in the bottom five. Is it coincidence that this pretentious half-baked album is celebrated by an even more pretentious and half-baked book?
April 10, 2021
Kind of bafflingly bad. Griffiths starts off the book by letting us know that he doesn’t cater to an audience, that he doesn’t care about Radiohead’s members as people, and that he basically just chose to write about this album due to its popularity, in the hope that some of that popularity would “rub off onto [him]”. That’s an encouraging introduction!
We’re then treated to 40+ pages (over a third of the length of the book!) of discussion of the history of CDs and vinyl LPs and their differences, etc etc, with absolutely no mention of Radiohead to be found — I think he tried to justify this horribly boring waste of space but I really can’t recall what the reasoning was. Finally, we get to a discussion of the music, which, given his admitted lack of passion for the band, its members, and the album itself, is predictably, pointedly academic. He showers the reader with list after list of song lengths (?), grouped lyrics (and also, for some reason, copies the entire lyrics to “Fitter Happier”, as seen in the album booklet?), and extremely dense music theory; again, passionless and boring writing.
We end with a protracted discussion of the album’s legacy, and quickly achieved status of “classic” (the book was released in 2004, only a few years after the album). His verdict? It shouldn’t be considered a full-fledged classic yet. Groundbreaking stuff.
Dai Griffiths takes advantage of a book deal to incessantly name drop, quote literary figures, and discuss albums he loves much more than Radiohead’s OK Computer, all while writing very little illuminating material about the album at hand. Again, it’s really mind-boggling that the author, his editor(s), and the publisher all thought that this was valuable, or interesting, material. The other two 33 1/3 books that I’ve read up to now haven’t been outstanding, but they at the very least were written by people with actual interest in/passion for the artists, included numerous interviews with related subjects, and provided extensive background on the artists as people. None of that to be found here.
We’re then treated to 40+ pages (over a third of the length of the book!) of discussion of the history of CDs and vinyl LPs and their differences, etc etc, with absolutely no mention of Radiohead to be found — I think he tried to justify this horribly boring waste of space but I really can’t recall what the reasoning was. Finally, we get to a discussion of the music, which, given his admitted lack of passion for the band, its members, and the album itself, is predictably, pointedly academic. He showers the reader with list after list of song lengths (?), grouped lyrics (and also, for some reason, copies the entire lyrics to “Fitter Happier”, as seen in the album booklet?), and extremely dense music theory; again, passionless and boring writing.
We end with a protracted discussion of the album’s legacy, and quickly achieved status of “classic” (the book was released in 2004, only a few years after the album). His verdict? It shouldn’t be considered a full-fledged classic yet. Groundbreaking stuff.
Dai Griffiths takes advantage of a book deal to incessantly name drop, quote literary figures, and discuss albums he loves much more than Radiohead’s OK Computer, all while writing very little illuminating material about the album at hand. Again, it’s really mind-boggling that the author, his editor(s), and the publisher all thought that this was valuable, or interesting, material. The other two 33 1/3 books that I’ve read up to now haven’t been outstanding, but they at the very least were written by people with actual interest in/passion for the artists, included numerous interviews with related subjects, and provided extensive background on the artists as people. None of that to be found here.
December 27, 2020
I liked this inasmuch as I like "OK Computer." The author has some insights about the album, more so about the larger context of albums in general (which is not what most readers are likely coming to this book for, but whatever). Griffiths has a rather jaded, blase tone about his writing (whether he always intends that tone or not), though, that often makes it sound like, when he appreciates something about Radiohead or "OK Computer," he's doing so begrudgingly. I still find the sequence of "Exit Music," "Let Down," and "Karma Police" rather astonishingly beautiful, and I still enjoy the way the themes move forward through "Fitter Happier" into the enthralling, though less operatic, latter songs. Griffiths seems to kind of buzz over those three songs as OK (so to speak) things with some nice moments in them, but what he REALLY wants to do is spend several pages on counting up the parts of speech used in "Fitter Happier." Fucking "Fitter Happier"! I've just convinced myself, to take this rating down to a 2, sorry, Dai. Not everyone has to like the same things you do, obviously, but maybe someone who likes "OK Computer" could have written the book about it.
December 22, 2009
This book was so frustratingly shitty I nearly threw it across the room.
Griffiths's "analysis" of the album is so transparently weighted in favour of his nonsensical thesis that it's almost laughable, with facts, figures, and anecdotes cherry-picked, slanted, and outright misrepresented to prop up whatever the hell it is he's trying to say. An inept and charmless writer, he subjects us to pages of irrelevant arithmetic in support of no coherent argument and drags us through the entire history of recorded music without making a single point, all the while flouting a pretense of being a Very Serious Music Writer.
An embarrassment to the 33⅓ imprint and my bookshelf alike.
Griffiths's "analysis" of the album is so transparently weighted in favour of his nonsensical thesis that it's almost laughable, with facts, figures, and anecdotes cherry-picked, slanted, and outright misrepresented to prop up whatever the hell it is he's trying to say. An inept and charmless writer, he subjects us to pages of irrelevant arithmetic in support of no coherent argument and drags us through the entire history of recorded music without making a single point, all the while flouting a pretense of being a Very Serious Music Writer.
An embarrassment to the 33⅓ imprint and my bookshelf alike.
September 22, 2021
Just terrible, it's like reading a shitty grad school student's thesis. No interesting stories or tidbits on the making of the album, its influences or effect on culture, popular or otherwise. Just a random academic rambling on for 110 truncated pages or so with no real purpose or structure. The first third of the book is basically dedicated to a half-assed history of recording media that doesn't really have anything to do with the album. There's some music theory stuff in there too that I suppose could be interesting, but it was over my head. I'd heard good things about the 33 1/3 series and this is the first one I've read, I hope it's not representative of the other books in the series.
July 12, 2020
so tedious
July 1, 2020
Simply awful. I managed to bear the brunt of tantalisingly vague "analysis", churlish dismissals (Let Down is a brilliant track, not the least bit Christmas-single-esque), shudder-inducing nudges (can't you label an imperfect cadence without making some down with the kids joke?!), but nearly ripped the spindly little folio in half once he made the (admittedly increasingly common) "this begs the question" blunder. It's near impossible to see what use this book might be to anyone. It's slightly too technical to be accessible but infuriatingly vague, brief, and besides the point about all matters genuinely musical. Perhaps the biggest sin is the reliance on quotes, and horrendously chosen ones at that - Noel Gallagher and swearing seem to be focal nexi. This is a bell-tolling warning against picking up books before reading reviews or at least screening the author. Spontaneity dies, yes, but at least you will never again have to endure poorly formatted and uninformative analytical graphs, nonsense distillation of Schenker, the derogatory use of "rock music" in a book purportedly on a rock band, pre-GCSE calibre literary analysis, or any of these or other unrelenting evils that will be flinging through the soot-veined nightmares of tonight's besmirched dreams.
May 13, 2019
This book was a fun, quick read. A little less than 120 pages devoted to Radiohead’s third studio album “OK Computer.” Griffiths did a wonderful job at giving helpful background concerning the history of terms such as “album” and “record,” and the effects that history’s transition from “vinyl”—33 1/3’s and 45’s—to “CD” had on the creation of music in popular culture music.
Personally, I would have preferred more of an emphasis placed on the lyrical content, thematic elements, and cultural world surrounding the album “OK Computer,” for I think much can be said about these topics, and I simply find it more interesting than the history of music and music theory.
Griffiths is a clever, funny, and quick-witted writer. It is evident from this work that he is knowledgeable not only about depressing 90’s progressive rock music, but music throughout the centuries, as well as the vast array of voices speaking about these things.
My rating of only 2 stars out of a 5-star ranking system does not reflect the quality of the book in and of itself, but rather my assessment of it based on how much I enjoyed reading through Griffith’s work. He has done a good service to Yorke and Radiohead!
Personally, I would have preferred more of an emphasis placed on the lyrical content, thematic elements, and cultural world surrounding the album “OK Computer,” for I think much can be said about these topics, and I simply find it more interesting than the history of music and music theory.
Griffiths is a clever, funny, and quick-witted writer. It is evident from this work that he is knowledgeable not only about depressing 90’s progressive rock music, but music throughout the centuries, as well as the vast array of voices speaking about these things.
My rating of only 2 stars out of a 5-star ranking system does not reflect the quality of the book in and of itself, but rather my assessment of it based on how much I enjoyed reading through Griffith’s work. He has done a good service to Yorke and Radiohead!
September 10, 2022
My disposition is simply to agree with those who've calles this undergraduate seminar "shit" and worse. I found some redemption in the last chapter, on how a song or album (don't get me started on the myriad ways of parsing "album") earns greatness on the road to be coming someone or others GOAT in the music department. Professor Dai Griffiths wants you to know he's the smartest guy in the seminar hall, and you know this by his wearing of (often wildly placed) erudition like sandwich boards hanging from his shoulders. I threw the book across the room several times at various points. Yes, I'm in the tank for Radiohead, but I have an open and disputatious mind and am willing to be convinced by sound argument. But this book is so discursive and so straining for intellectual effect that I literally hated it...until the author stopped hopping around like a flea and made some sequential sense in Chapter 3.
And that's really all the time I want to spend on this really very short but puzzling and annoying book, which is still in print and part of a series, 33 1/3, that dissects albums deemed popular...although 33 1/3 has come, went away, and returned in expensive force and my wall of CDs seem a result of laughably primitive technology.
And that's really all the time I want to spend on this really very short but puzzling and annoying book, which is still in print and part of a series, 33 1/3, that dissects albums deemed popular...although 33 1/3 has come, went away, and returned in expensive force and my wall of CDs seem a result of laughably primitive technology.
February 22, 2025
absolutely fucking abysmal. the first third is spent on a long, uninteresting discussion of the author's typology of albums (little to no reference to the album we're here for) before he spends the rest of the book discussing the mechanical construction of the songs. no analysis of the themes, lyrics, meaning, music, just endless minute technical discussion. garbage. why do i read these fucking books?
April 10, 2023
I finished this! It’s done and read! Never to be picked up again. Took way too long to get to the point, spoke almost entirely in unintelligible musical jargon without prior explanation, and wasted so much time talking about other things that just feel irrelevant. If you’re going to dedicate a book to an album, at least make the album the focal point. Otherwise, it just feels like a waste.
March 8, 2024
might be among the dullest things i’ve ever read. supremely self-serving work that served little to no purpose
December 10, 2020
My first conscious confrontation with Radiohead as a band was in the ninth grade when I messaged a friend asking why they are cool and ventured to suggest that maybe it is because they are creative- to my immediate regret ofc as my friend indignantly responded with ' omg u did *not* just call Radiohead creative.'
Later I listened to more Radiohead and got the vibe that they play around with different time signatures and have some cinematic sounds, orchestral maybe (what I would now call 'proggy' as in deriving from prog rock). I did a hasty listen of OK Computer, reading somewhere that it was the starting point for their oeuvre of experimental genius. Most of the songs did not leave a lasting impression on me except one, 'Paranoid Android,' which I saved.
Now here I am revisiting the band and I am left with the feeling that my intuition is really just fine and I do not need cool friends or learned critics to show me what to value in music.
All the same, while revisiting this album, I tried not to let the pull of my intuition get in the way of trying to see what was so brilliant about it in the first place. Reading this book certainly did not help very much; Mister Griffiths does not put forth a compelling case for why it is great, neither on emotional nor analytical grounds. I appreciate that he is a music professor and there are places where he mentions musicology, but I feel that his academic background has led to a lot of data (literally listing out the number of bars for the intro, verse, chorus, coda, every single section, of each song, or writing out the key of each song but concluding that no larger pattern or continuity can be derived from it) without adequate communication of what that data represents. So many of the ideas in this book were essentially half-formed ideas that bring to mind my high school English teachers who would always write 'more analysis' on my essays. The author just brings forth not just different ideas but different approaches to analysis, such as analyzing the songs through the band's music videos, which is very sporadic and weak; the common observation is that the music video's pace matches the pace of the song which I feel like is baseline analysis. Even analysis of the album artwork was very sad and uninspired, summary level description at its most unashamed.
Along with lack of analysis, this book lacks a thesis. I was excited with the introduction of this school of music criticism called 'New Criticism' (aka 'Music Analysis'), which basically states that both authorial intent and the audience reached by a piece of art are based on fallacies. The writer then proposes to analyze OK Computer solely by examining the album itself. Well. For a book that decries looking outward, it sure uses a lot of outward references to other works & very little analysis of the actual work. And not just full references, but random sprinkling ins that are not expanded upon (e.g. the reference to Miles Davis's layered drums or stating that Yorke's voice is up there with Morissey and Joni Mitchell or saying that a song's play of minor and major chords is a lot like Baroque music).
It is truly a bummer, because I do see potential for good, composite, whole ideas in here; it's clear the writer knows a lot, he just does not do a good job of synthesizing the information. Some good nuggets include in the introduction where he describes that Radiohead gave him what Philip Roth once called a 'feel for the complexity of things,' and relates it to Pete Townshend's line that 'the simple things you see are all complicated' and then mentions Christian Metz, 'music is difficult to explain because it's easy to understand.'
Or his comparison of literature and classical music with Radiohead (comparing lengthy forms of music: the sonata-form which was expanded upon by Brahms vs the stream-of-consciousness of Wagnerian opera– his literary equivalent James Joyce, p.27). But additional allusions, say, to classical music function more as name drops.
I love the 33 1/3 series for the original form each author brings, and I was initially very excited at the unique prospect of 3 big chapters; one for the impact of the CD album, one for actual album analysis, and the last chapter a question of the album's longevity. I had a good primer on vinyl history from the first chapter, which I did appreciate. However, Chapter 2, what should be the meat of this book, was a quick brush through of the songs, and even quicker scan of the words, music theory, and the instrumental aspects of the songs. Chapter 3 was the most erratic section that jumped around ideas of the musician as critic, why music theory is important, whether the songs or the album will survive, whether OKC is a classic album, why the idea of a classic idea is tied to the length of the album/why that is problematic, and a random comparison of Randy Newman's album which to OKC, to show that a good album doesn't have to be unified in theme which seems self-defeating since the writer has kind of shown that OKC has a unified theme? All this with random quotes that complement these ideas but do not really bolster them any further. Urgh
It is ironic that I did not learn too much more about Radiohead or their music after reading this book. It makes me wonder if the book would have read better if the writer went against his own claim to not talk about the band member nor their audience. At least then there would have been better context to their work rather than passing observations of their songs and comparisons to the band's songs from *other* albums.
I have an issue with the writing style too; it is difficult. Not difficult in the sense that it is laboring to build an extended metaphor or witty but cloudy and vague. The author seems to lack claim sentences and write simple ideas in a long-winded way. I was also spoiled by the wit and vivid writing style found in the Talking Heads review from the same series.
This book wasn't all bad though. Here are some of the interesting things I learned to save you from reading the book yourself:
-Radiohead's sound is gothic ('lugubrious'), and more a sum of the sound effects than the song itself (such as in 'Climbing up the Walls'). These songs hold allusions to Portishead in their seedy, atmospheric dark sound.
-Yorke juxtaposes ordinary lyrics with sublime concepts (what Paul Simon refers to as the dichotomy of ordinary and enriched language common to pop music)
-Yorke's lyrics are also 'anti-prose', which means that singularity of words are valued over fitting into the lyricism or mellifluous quality of the song as a whole (eg. random phrases are thrown in such as 'bring down the government' which reveal the narrator's state of mind). Writer refers to Ian MacDonald's view of this individuality of the songwriter, who says that pop music has a freer sense of subject matter and ambition of expression which leads to a greater idiosyncrasy and obscurity (83). Writer argues that Yorke's use of abrupt phrases adds to the overall message of the album (I think? Very unclear what he thinks).
-Distinct theme of OK Computer (mentioned literally at the end): EXISTENTIAL REALISM: a world of small details that are overlaid with 'highly emotional temperature' (87). Motifs of domesticity, transport, and human freedom.
-Unlike classical music, which builds up to a conflict, popular music explores the clash of multiple disparate themes.
-Musical unity can be explored through one of two ways: motivic elements (repeated melodic/rhythmic fragments) OR through key (here, he refers to Heinrich Schenker's system of analysis which he alludes to so poorly I can't tell what it actually is.)
–Anyway, Radiohead's musical unity consists of: guitar led songwriter (succession of chords, often vertical modulation...cf with piano which emphasizes a voice over a succession of chords and modulates more freely), guitars which add sound effects and do not necessarily affect pitch, and drums and bass which reinforce motifs.
-Central musical language includes: minor key, flexible mode where 7th is often flattened (common to rock music), major 4 that can appear in minor context, stable major key chords for the voice, the ringing sound of an added second at the end of the first and last tracks which serve as 'bookends', tritone relation in 'Subterranean'
-Radiohead's future works transitioned from their homeground of stadium rock towards a visual performance context (film/gallery) (though I'd say their newest work begs to differ)
Wish he would've expanded on:
-From chapter 1, the writer seems to insinuate that it is difficult to write a genuinely long song, not just a normal song that is slowed down to fit album length capacity. Yet this idea of a long song is not really expanded upon later on, even though he mentions that OKC is a relatively long album with long-averaging songs.
-Very interesting idea that could have been developed into an actual thesis but only mildly played with is the idea that a CD album is valuable for being a unified whole vs. a compilation of singles. Later in the end he says that the value of a 'classic' unified album is basically a white boy opinion, as many prominent black or female artists who have released singles were not esteemed until they released debut albums. Again, this idea is only sort of mentioned.
-Creators as critics
-Why we should learn to read music and why artists should release scores
The real question is, ~is~ Radiohead cool? Apparently creative is too low a word for them but honestly, in the collective face of the music I've heard so far in my life, I can't say that they're even that. At least for this album, which consists of very simple chords, largely remains in the minor key, overuse of the minor 7 chord which just makes it sound vanilla (and sleepy and Coldplay), and unable to decide between anthemic + grunge rock and experimental electronica, and less than convincing integration of the two. The most experimental was their song 'Fitter Happier' which I can appreciate as a concept but does not seem revolutionary to me now in the age where non-music interludes such as voicemail recordings are prolific. I was listening to their later albums, Kid A and even more recent, Rainbows, and I find those albums a lot more interesting and a lot more sonically fresh and inspired.
This book makes me realize what bad music criticism looks like. Information < (organized) message = meaning. Part of me wonders if I would enjoy this book more if I was more acquainted with Radiohead's discography, as well as music theory terms, as well as all these allusions. Maybe I should revisit it in a couple years' time. Probably won't though :P
Later I listened to more Radiohead and got the vibe that they play around with different time signatures and have some cinematic sounds, orchestral maybe (what I would now call 'proggy' as in deriving from prog rock). I did a hasty listen of OK Computer, reading somewhere that it was the starting point for their oeuvre of experimental genius. Most of the songs did not leave a lasting impression on me except one, 'Paranoid Android,' which I saved.
Now here I am revisiting the band and I am left with the feeling that my intuition is really just fine and I do not need cool friends or learned critics to show me what to value in music.
All the same, while revisiting this album, I tried not to let the pull of my intuition get in the way of trying to see what was so brilliant about it in the first place. Reading this book certainly did not help very much; Mister Griffiths does not put forth a compelling case for why it is great, neither on emotional nor analytical grounds. I appreciate that he is a music professor and there are places where he mentions musicology, but I feel that his academic background has led to a lot of data (literally listing out the number of bars for the intro, verse, chorus, coda, every single section, of each song, or writing out the key of each song but concluding that no larger pattern or continuity can be derived from it) without adequate communication of what that data represents. So many of the ideas in this book were essentially half-formed ideas that bring to mind my high school English teachers who would always write 'more analysis' on my essays. The author just brings forth not just different ideas but different approaches to analysis, such as analyzing the songs through the band's music videos, which is very sporadic and weak; the common observation is that the music video's pace matches the pace of the song which I feel like is baseline analysis. Even analysis of the album artwork was very sad and uninspired, summary level description at its most unashamed.
Along with lack of analysis, this book lacks a thesis. I was excited with the introduction of this school of music criticism called 'New Criticism' (aka 'Music Analysis'), which basically states that both authorial intent and the audience reached by a piece of art are based on fallacies. The writer then proposes to analyze OK Computer solely by examining the album itself. Well. For a book that decries looking outward, it sure uses a lot of outward references to other works & very little analysis of the actual work. And not just full references, but random sprinkling ins that are not expanded upon (e.g. the reference to Miles Davis's layered drums or stating that Yorke's voice is up there with Morissey and Joni Mitchell or saying that a song's play of minor and major chords is a lot like Baroque music).
It is truly a bummer, because I do see potential for good, composite, whole ideas in here; it's clear the writer knows a lot, he just does not do a good job of synthesizing the information. Some good nuggets include in the introduction where he describes that Radiohead gave him what Philip Roth once called a 'feel for the complexity of things,' and relates it to Pete Townshend's line that 'the simple things you see are all complicated' and then mentions Christian Metz, 'music is difficult to explain because it's easy to understand.'
Or his comparison of literature and classical music with Radiohead (comparing lengthy forms of music: the sonata-form which was expanded upon by Brahms vs the stream-of-consciousness of Wagnerian opera– his literary equivalent James Joyce, p.27). But additional allusions, say, to classical music function more as name drops.
I love the 33 1/3 series for the original form each author brings, and I was initially very excited at the unique prospect of 3 big chapters; one for the impact of the CD album, one for actual album analysis, and the last chapter a question of the album's longevity. I had a good primer on vinyl history from the first chapter, which I did appreciate. However, Chapter 2, what should be the meat of this book, was a quick brush through of the songs, and even quicker scan of the words, music theory, and the instrumental aspects of the songs. Chapter 3 was the most erratic section that jumped around ideas of the musician as critic, why music theory is important, whether the songs or the album will survive, whether OKC is a classic album, why the idea of a classic idea is tied to the length of the album/why that is problematic, and a random comparison of Randy Newman's album which to OKC, to show that a good album doesn't have to be unified in theme which seems self-defeating since the writer has kind of shown that OKC has a unified theme? All this with random quotes that complement these ideas but do not really bolster them any further. Urgh
It is ironic that I did not learn too much more about Radiohead or their music after reading this book. It makes me wonder if the book would have read better if the writer went against his own claim to not talk about the band member nor their audience. At least then there would have been better context to their work rather than passing observations of their songs and comparisons to the band's songs from *other* albums.
I have an issue with the writing style too; it is difficult. Not difficult in the sense that it is laboring to build an extended metaphor or witty but cloudy and vague. The author seems to lack claim sentences and write simple ideas in a long-winded way. I was also spoiled by the wit and vivid writing style found in the Talking Heads review from the same series.
This book wasn't all bad though. Here are some of the interesting things I learned to save you from reading the book yourself:
-Radiohead's sound is gothic ('lugubrious'), and more a sum of the sound effects than the song itself (such as in 'Climbing up the Walls'). These songs hold allusions to Portishead in their seedy, atmospheric dark sound.
-Yorke juxtaposes ordinary lyrics with sublime concepts (what Paul Simon refers to as the dichotomy of ordinary and enriched language common to pop music)
-Yorke's lyrics are also 'anti-prose', which means that singularity of words are valued over fitting into the lyricism or mellifluous quality of the song as a whole (eg. random phrases are thrown in such as 'bring down the government' which reveal the narrator's state of mind). Writer refers to Ian MacDonald's view of this individuality of the songwriter, who says that pop music has a freer sense of subject matter and ambition of expression which leads to a greater idiosyncrasy and obscurity (83). Writer argues that Yorke's use of abrupt phrases adds to the overall message of the album (I think? Very unclear what he thinks).
-Distinct theme of OK Computer (mentioned literally at the end): EXISTENTIAL REALISM: a world of small details that are overlaid with 'highly emotional temperature' (87). Motifs of domesticity, transport, and human freedom.
-Unlike classical music, which builds up to a conflict, popular music explores the clash of multiple disparate themes.
-Musical unity can be explored through one of two ways: motivic elements (repeated melodic/rhythmic fragments) OR through key (here, he refers to Heinrich Schenker's system of analysis which he alludes to so poorly I can't tell what it actually is.)
–Anyway, Radiohead's musical unity consists of: guitar led songwriter (succession of chords, often vertical modulation...cf with piano which emphasizes a voice over a succession of chords and modulates more freely), guitars which add sound effects and do not necessarily affect pitch, and drums and bass which reinforce motifs.
-Central musical language includes: minor key, flexible mode where 7th is often flattened (common to rock music), major 4 that can appear in minor context, stable major key chords for the voice, the ringing sound of an added second at the end of the first and last tracks which serve as 'bookends', tritone relation in 'Subterranean'
-Radiohead's future works transitioned from their homeground of stadium rock towards a visual performance context (film/gallery) (though I'd say their newest work begs to differ)
Wish he would've expanded on:
-From chapter 1, the writer seems to insinuate that it is difficult to write a genuinely long song, not just a normal song that is slowed down to fit album length capacity. Yet this idea of a long song is not really expanded upon later on, even though he mentions that OKC is a relatively long album with long-averaging songs.
-Very interesting idea that could have been developed into an actual thesis but only mildly played with is the idea that a CD album is valuable for being a unified whole vs. a compilation of singles. Later in the end he says that the value of a 'classic' unified album is basically a white boy opinion, as many prominent black or female artists who have released singles were not esteemed until they released debut albums. Again, this idea is only sort of mentioned.
-Creators as critics
-Why we should learn to read music and why artists should release scores
The real question is, ~is~ Radiohead cool? Apparently creative is too low a word for them but honestly, in the collective face of the music I've heard so far in my life, I can't say that they're even that. At least for this album, which consists of very simple chords, largely remains in the minor key, overuse of the minor 7 chord which just makes it sound vanilla (and sleepy and Coldplay), and unable to decide between anthemic + grunge rock and experimental electronica, and less than convincing integration of the two. The most experimental was their song 'Fitter Happier' which I can appreciate as a concept but does not seem revolutionary to me now in the age where non-music interludes such as voicemail recordings are prolific. I was listening to their later albums, Kid A and even more recent, Rainbows, and I find those albums a lot more interesting and a lot more sonically fresh and inspired.
This book makes me realize what bad music criticism looks like. Information < (organized) message = meaning. Part of me wonders if I would enjoy this book more if I was more acquainted with Radiohead's discography, as well as music theory terms, as well as all these allusions. Maybe I should revisit it in a couple years' time. Probably won't though :P
October 25, 2013
I should probably start this review by saying that my favorite Radiohead album is Pablo Honey. There, I said it, and I’ve listened to them all. I’m no musicologist, and unlike many Radiohead fans (including one particularly obnoxious ex-girlfriend) I don’t pretend to be one. I also liked The Bends, and to an extent I also like OK Computer, though I see it as a marked shift for the band from making music that I enjoy, to making music that I appreciate (and, to be fair, periodically enjoy). The primary draw for me has always been their ability to rock out convincingly with that three-guitar attack, and I think Thom Yorke’s voice is at its best when he stops whispering and starts shouting. (Sorry, had to throw that in.)
I also read these 33 1/3/s ravenously, and I honestly thought that, despite the reviews, this volume might be elucidating. I wanted Dai Griffiths, a musicologist, to show me why this is a Very Important Album. Alas, he doesn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. The analysis of the album, when he finally – on page 47 of 116 – gets to it, is mind-numbingly soulless, filled with artspeak and vague, unsubstantiated allusions and connections that place Radiohead alongside classical composers like Beethoven and Brahms, folkies like Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins, and writers like Philip Larkin and Matthew Arnold. The stuff he writes on Radiohead ends up reading like a cacophony of everything I’ve been putting up with from my Radiohead-savant friends for the last fifteen years, with summations like this: “The way the music works out means that the song ends on a questioning dominant chord, an ‘imperfect cadence’ as the theory exams used to put it.” Griffiths seems to have a knee-jerk aversion to anything emotionally engaging (he dismisses “Let Down,” perhaps the most overtly emotive song in the collection), and also has a tendency toward bean-counting, coming up with a lot of tables, formulas, and equations that he rarely substantiates with overt analysis; this kind of stuff I tended to skim over, and I’m not a skimmer.
But about pages 1-47, the stuff that’s not specifically about Radiohead. I’ve seen quite a few reviewers complain that he takes too long in getting to the album itself, and I can understand that frustration. But I personally think that first 47-page chapter, about the development of the album as a form, from the time it was an actual “album” of 78s, to its battle with the 45 single, to the notion of the two-sided album, and finally to the notion of the CD (read: continuous play) album of which he posits OK Computer as a shining example, is not only the most important part of the book, but it actually is a wonderful opus for the entire 33 1/3 series of books celebrating the record album. Also, the final 20 pages, in which he uses the pretext of figuring the future of OK Computer in the new media landscape as an excuse to decry the separation of musician and music critic, are also pretty engaging, though he gets a bit over-the-top in his advocacy of sheet music and notation, stating, “There’s still every need to learn how to read music: not being able to do so is another indication of the lazy, slobby aspect of computer- and tv- centered life, which also plays straight into the hands of scummy, dumbing-down capitalists,” less than a page after freely admitting that Thom Yorke doesn’t know how to read music. His anti-corporate argument (which I’m always open to), in which he aligns the very idea of a “classic album” with an industry that’s systematically devalued black and female singers, is a powerful coda. In other words, this book about Radiohead is at its best, and by that I mean most bearable, when its author isn’t writing about Radiohead.
I also read these 33 1/3/s ravenously, and I honestly thought that, despite the reviews, this volume might be elucidating. I wanted Dai Griffiths, a musicologist, to show me why this is a Very Important Album. Alas, he doesn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. The analysis of the album, when he finally – on page 47 of 116 – gets to it, is mind-numbingly soulless, filled with artspeak and vague, unsubstantiated allusions and connections that place Radiohead alongside classical composers like Beethoven and Brahms, folkies like Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins, and writers like Philip Larkin and Matthew Arnold. The stuff he writes on Radiohead ends up reading like a cacophony of everything I’ve been putting up with from my Radiohead-savant friends for the last fifteen years, with summations like this: “The way the music works out means that the song ends on a questioning dominant chord, an ‘imperfect cadence’ as the theory exams used to put it.” Griffiths seems to have a knee-jerk aversion to anything emotionally engaging (he dismisses “Let Down,” perhaps the most overtly emotive song in the collection), and also has a tendency toward bean-counting, coming up with a lot of tables, formulas, and equations that he rarely substantiates with overt analysis; this kind of stuff I tended to skim over, and I’m not a skimmer.
But about pages 1-47, the stuff that’s not specifically about Radiohead. I’ve seen quite a few reviewers complain that he takes too long in getting to the album itself, and I can understand that frustration. But I personally think that first 47-page chapter, about the development of the album as a form, from the time it was an actual “album” of 78s, to its battle with the 45 single, to the notion of the two-sided album, and finally to the notion of the CD (read: continuous play) album of which he posits OK Computer as a shining example, is not only the most important part of the book, but it actually is a wonderful opus for the entire 33 1/3 series of books celebrating the record album. Also, the final 20 pages, in which he uses the pretext of figuring the future of OK Computer in the new media landscape as an excuse to decry the separation of musician and music critic, are also pretty engaging, though he gets a bit over-the-top in his advocacy of sheet music and notation, stating, “There’s still every need to learn how to read music: not being able to do so is another indication of the lazy, slobby aspect of computer- and tv- centered life, which also plays straight into the hands of scummy, dumbing-down capitalists,” less than a page after freely admitting that Thom Yorke doesn’t know how to read music. His anti-corporate argument (which I’m always open to), in which he aligns the very idea of a “classic album” with an industry that’s systematically devalued black and female singers, is a powerful coda. In other words, this book about Radiohead is at its best, and by that I mean most bearable, when its author isn’t writing about Radiohead.
September 11, 2024
Whew! What a slog of a book. Of thirteen books I've now read in this wonderful series from Bloomsbury, this is the most disappointing by far. Eleven, in fact, have been wonderful, receiving four and five stars from me, while the one on Arcade Fire's The Suburbs was less than stellar, it's still a book I have kept but this one, managing to make a wonderfully exciting album feel cold and generally lackluster will be given away.
Griffiths is Head of the Department of Music at Oxford Brookes University, a guy who knows music, but does a poor job of conveying the life of it -- at least in this case. While all the other books in this series I've read do not require any knowledge of music theory, Griffiths seems to have written not for the general public, but for other musicologists! He's also quite enamored of numbers. In one tedious section he lists the tracks of the album like this:
Time Speed Speed Type
1. Airbag 4.44 284 x=86 M
and a few pages later uses this data to expand into pages and pages of this:
Airbag (Information from first chart: 4.44/284/x=86
Intro: 9 (preceded by one-note upbeat)
Verse: 12 (6+6) -- "In the next world war..."
'Chorus': 6 -- "In an interstellar..."
Verse 2: 12 (6+6) 'In a deep deep sleep'
Chorus: 6 -- as before
Break: 2 (6+6)
Chorus: 6+6 -- as before
Break: 14 (4+10)
Coda: 10, followed by one bar of single beats
wordy: 48, wordless: 51
WTF???
Not only that, but he spends an inordinate amount of pages talking about singles, and other versions of the songs and the songs that are on those singles which I would guess only obsessives would give a crap about. He draws linkages that are often tenuous at best.
In one telling passage he writes: "That too is part of the problem of the way pop music is written about, overly contextual, overly sociological, and increasingly, tied to the demands of marketing and photography: there are in truth few ordinary pieces of writing that make you want to listen to the records again." Griffiths doesn't seem at all "tied to the demands of marketing" but he certainly overburdens his text with contextualization, falls into some sociology and photography (a whole section on the cover and the artwork accompanying the cd).
To be frank. If I didn't already like this album, this is a piece of writing that would never make me want to listen to it.
Griffiths is Head of the Department of Music at Oxford Brookes University, a guy who knows music, but does a poor job of conveying the life of it -- at least in this case. While all the other books in this series I've read do not require any knowledge of music theory, Griffiths seems to have written not for the general public, but for other musicologists! He's also quite enamored of numbers. In one tedious section he lists the tracks of the album like this:
Time Speed Speed Type
1. Airbag 4.44 284 x=86 M
and a few pages later uses this data to expand into pages and pages of this:
Airbag (Information from first chart: 4.44/284/x=86
Intro: 9 (preceded by one-note upbeat)
Verse: 12 (6+6) -- "In the next world war..."
'Chorus': 6 -- "In an interstellar..."
Verse 2: 12 (6+6) 'In a deep deep sleep'
Chorus: 6 -- as before
Break: 2 (6+6)
Chorus: 6+6 -- as before
Break: 14 (4+10)
Coda: 10, followed by one bar of single beats
wordy: 48, wordless: 51
WTF???
Not only that, but he spends an inordinate amount of pages talking about singles, and other versions of the songs and the songs that are on those singles which I would guess only obsessives would give a crap about. He draws linkages that are often tenuous at best.
In one telling passage he writes: "That too is part of the problem of the way pop music is written about, overly contextual, overly sociological, and increasingly, tied to the demands of marketing and photography: there are in truth few ordinary pieces of writing that make you want to listen to the records again." Griffiths doesn't seem at all "tied to the demands of marketing" but he certainly overburdens his text with contextualization, falls into some sociology and photography (a whole section on the cover and the artwork accompanying the cd).
To be frank. If I didn't already like this album, this is a piece of writing that would never make me want to listen to it.
December 22, 2023
At the time of writing this review, I have read seventeen books in the 33 1/3 Series. A series of books as large as 33 1/3, all featuring unique authors (one-hundred and seventy-nine right now, with more on the way!) is naturally going to have highs and lows. Despite the fact that I love Radiohead (or maybe BECAUSE I love Radiohead), I am of the opinion that Dai Griffiths’ book on Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer is by far the worst I have read in the series.
This is due to a variety of reasons that fellow Goodreads users have shared already, so I won’t superfluously add on to the pre-existing (and very accurate) mountain of complaints, except to say how frustrating it was to read a book supposedly about the Radiohead album OK Computer, in which the author writes shockingly little about OK Computer. Or Radiohead for that matter! Also, on page 60 (which is right around the point when Griffiths bothers to write about the music on the album), Griffiths writes that “‘Let Down’ seems to me living up to its name”. Does Griffiths even like Radiohead? It doesn’t seem so, which makes this book even more of a conundrum. If you don’t appreciate a song like “Let Down”, one of Radiohead’s very best tracks, you have no business writing a book about them.
If you ARE a fan of Radiohead, I’d suggest staying away from this book. This is my first time writing a review on Goodreads - I felt compelled to do so because of how bad I found it to be. There are plenty of good, great, and even fantastic books in the 33 1/3 Series, but this is unfortunately not one of them.
This is due to a variety of reasons that fellow Goodreads users have shared already, so I won’t superfluously add on to the pre-existing (and very accurate) mountain of complaints, except to say how frustrating it was to read a book supposedly about the Radiohead album OK Computer, in which the author writes shockingly little about OK Computer. Or Radiohead for that matter! Also, on page 60 (which is right around the point when Griffiths bothers to write about the music on the album), Griffiths writes that “‘Let Down’ seems to me living up to its name”. Does Griffiths even like Radiohead? It doesn’t seem so, which makes this book even more of a conundrum. If you don’t appreciate a song like “Let Down”, one of Radiohead’s very best tracks, you have no business writing a book about them.
If you ARE a fan of Radiohead, I’d suggest staying away from this book. This is my first time writing a review on Goodreads - I felt compelled to do so because of how bad I found it to be. There are plenty of good, great, and even fantastic books in the 33 1/3 Series, but this is unfortunately not one of them.
May 8, 2020
I didn't think it was possible to write about music in a way that strips it of joy, beauty, and interest. I don't even necessarily have a problem with the goal of the book (gather some insights about what it means to be an album intended to be consumed on CD by listening to OK Computer extremely objectively), but the way its written is just bafflingly off-putting. The author loves to refer to other artists work thats strictly from the 70s and 80s in this casual way as if you MUST know these seminal albums, which is a great way to make your work sound dated and arrogant at the same time! And thats only an example: really, this book is so hard to get through. It's a good thing this album is as good as it is so this book, terrible as it is, can't ruin it. Avoid at all costs.
May 24, 2021
You know a book is pretentious when it calls the lead guitarist "Jonathan Greenwood". There's not much about the songs here or about their most interesting aspects, the anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist politics, so radical that this book does not dare touch them. There is a load of pointless mathematics and a treatise on the nature of an album in general, stuff that made me picture Thom Yorke throwing this book across the room. I also can't forgive the description of "Pearly" as a "songy song".
May 24, 2020
Sadly, I got nothing out of this book. I wanted an analysis of the album by a passionate fan. I got a mechanical, soulless breakdown by an author who seemed just as “haughty” as he ventured to describe himself.
Page one warned me of what I was about to read, so I guess my disappointment is my fault for continuing.
Also, the author believes Paranoid Android is “a track that will date rapidly” - I started laughing and nearly tossed the book across the room into a corner on the floor.
Page one warned me of what I was about to read, so I guess my disappointment is my fault for continuing.
Also, the author believes Paranoid Android is “a track that will date rapidly” - I started laughing and nearly tossed the book across the room into a corner on the floor.
June 12, 2016
There are countless opinions out there about Radiohead and their music, but Dai's decision to look at OK Computer as a New Critic gave more insight on the "album" than I've ever seen. His academic approach to the "classic" album took a piece of music I already love to even greater height.
May 15, 2013
My sense is that 33 1/3 eventually moved away from this sort of "doctoral thesis passed off as pop culture book" model. Hidden in here are some interesting ideas someone could one day write a book about.
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