That quest for artistic fulfillment comes across in “Paranoid Android,” the album’s debut single.
They were looking for timelessness rather than easy financial success. Now, though, it’s clear to see what Radiohead were doing: they were looking to create the sort of statement that isn’t grounded in a specific time and place. At the time, these seemed like unnecessary career risks from a band that hadn’t quite broken through to the mainstream. They handed a song off to Baz Luhrmann for use in his adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, only to ask him not to include the song on the film’s soundtrack. They turned down the opportunity to work alongside proven alt-rock hitmakers like Scott Litt, opting instead to work with a then-unknown Nigel Godrich. In creating OK Computer, Radiohead went down paths that one wouldn’t have expected a band of their stature to head down. And even for all the success that The Bends had, they seemed to realize that continuing down that traditionalist, introspective path wouldn’t lead them anywhere new. At their start, they felt retroactively embarrassed by an album that seemed too slavishly devoted to the heroes of their youth. Historically, Radiohead is defined by creative dissatisfaction. Whereas Radiohead had previously made an album that could be considered great in comparison to peers attempting the same accomplishments, OK Computer was – and still is – peerless. OK Computer is, itself, a great rock album, but not in the way that The Bends was. But even this wasn’t enough for Thom and the boys they had made a great rock album, sure, but that’s all that The Bends really is when you get down to it. This was clear right from the start, when they abandoned the po-faced angst and grunge-lite sound of Pablo Honey for The Bends, a rock album that owed more to Britpop and stadium rock than to anything happening in Seattle in the early ‘90s. Throughout their career, they have seemed reluctant to stick with one style or set of aesthetic trappings for very long, often shedding them entirely once the tour for the latest album is finished.