OK Computer, squashed like a bug

Consider this the stretching exercise for the end of the year lists which will occupy entirely too much of my time. I'm completely stealing an idea from Coke Machine Glow about the top 12 songs on OK Computer. Feel free to revert back to their list and create your own, for mine differs enough to warrant a complete blog entry. But then I think that while yeah, Karma Police and Paranoid Andriod would mount almost everyone's list, where does Lucky end up? Austin swears his undying love for Climbing Up Walls, but you'll find that about the bottom of my list. Does this tell us something about our personalities, that we can figure out the makeup of someone by the songs on a great album they like the most? It's a touchstone for sure, for all of us who care. And it's a lovely exercise with free time at work.

12. Fitter Happier
Almost disqualified. I've probably listened to this song more than half of the other songs on the album because of its relative position to Karma Police, but I can safely say I've never intentionally directed my CD player towards this song except to freak out people in my car. It works.
11. Climbing Up Walls
I admire that this song so completely delves into the pain of existence and all. And the drums are eerie and pounding. But this ranks as my least listened to song on the album. And for that reason alone, it's placed at the bottom of actual songs next to to the talking computer Fred.
10. Electioneering
This song gets loads of crap for rocking out in an album that likes to drift. But those who chastise it as some sort of remanents of their Bend's past probably don't have ears. Though the guitars are loud, they are hardly the distorted monsters of Just, and the angular feel of the song showed Johnny had wrangled the song around his head and spit it out just the way he wanted. I've always been quite partial to "When I go forward, you go backwards" for the way the music mirrored the lyrics. To my 14 year old mind this was genius. But this ranks as the second least listened to song, for it comes after Fitter Happier and before Climbing Up Walls. And if anyone needs to know my least favorite part of the album only connect the dots.
9. Lucky
Lucky is as menacing as Climbing up the walls, but it doesn't hide its terror behind the wall of electronics. I'll forever tie this song to opening of Radiohead's tour video/breakdown Meeting People is Easy, that immediately introduces the haunting atmosphere that would encapsulate the band before and during the making of Kid A.
8. Tourist
In my younger days, feeling like a lonely disaffected teenager and all, I'd put the last three songs and try in some vain attempt to feel genuinely sad. Whether that was shedding a small tear or just feeling quite awful, the last three songs on OK Computer could always pull the world taut. And while Lucky surely helped the feeling, it was always the climax of this song that would end me and send me into a world a little more sublime then my own. It probably doesn't place higher because of the general inactivity of the song until the swelling chorus. And it's probably up a place for the one note ending that left us stranded at the end of the world and gave us nothing to hold on to.
7. Subterranean Homesick Alien
The inevitable comedown after the heights of Airbag and Paranoid Andriod was punted to this one, that if positioned anywhere else might be ranked higher. The lyrics remain the strongest point, and the simple tale of alienation (gee how that rings with the title) gains epic weight because of the saucers that fly over head. I agree with pitchfork, that OK Computer is the last album and should be heard as thus. I also believe that the best albums are those with the best filler, and this is some of the best around.
6. Exit Music for a Film
A part of the harrowing trifecta of Climbing up the Walls and Lucky, is the most dramatic. It's wide-screen lense and deep fuzzed bass make it the most interesting of the three, but in the end the great songwriting is what propels it. It's Romeo and Juliet in a post-modern world, and there is no swelling of music to accompany them. Just crashing of drums and distortion laced in bitterness. Like the moment at the end of the Graduate when Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross stare at each other on the bus like they had been caught in a daze and finally realized that their whole world was over because they don't even have any idea where the bus ends.
5. Airbag
The guitar riff is wonderful, the ending sublime, but I still think this is the best recording of drums ever made. Whether it's the actual part that Selway came up with, or that it was just completely appropriate to the other sounds of the song. This song would crumble without the brittle ticks and bangs of the drums. All the rest of the adornments wouldn't hang as handsomely as they do.
4. No Surprises
One of the most telling parts of Metting People is Easy is the part where a lady on a talk show calls No Surprises "music to cut your wrists to". That No Surprises is preceeded by the most depressing song of all time and followed by two songs that used to make me cry on demand, never seemed to have crossed her mind. To Radiohead devotees No Surprises is the rare light beaming through a world of metal, it provided the last respite before the onslaught truly began. Sure the words are disaffected, but this is the perfect example of what a xylophone and double harmonies can do to your outlook on life.
3. Paranoid Android
To many in the under 24 crowd, this is the first Radiohead song they ever remember hearing, as we were just too young to get the Bends. I remember seeing that video and knowing immediately that I loved this song and that I had to have the album. I bought that album at a little record shop in Louisville as my family was on its way to see my dying great aunt. I bought Sgt. Pepper at the same time. For the first month or so this was the only song I listened to, because it was really four different songs, and I could see then how intelligently the song was constructed, and how it fit so perfectly together. There is no doubt that this remains the quintessential Radiohead song, the one hipsters and jocks can agree on, because it has something for us all. It weeps when it needs to, and rocks in the middle and at the end. It even manages to throw in a perfect riff, which I don't think has been topped since its inception. So how is this magical song not topping the list? It has something to do with being overplayed, though it took a good couple hundred times to do it. But I think that I let go of Paranoid Android the moment I started listening to the rest of the album. The album became more important and I became obsessed by the quirks and the small moments that I found within.
2. Let Down
I could repeat adnausem the merits of this song, how it was once one of my least favorite songs and is now my most listened to track. How it sounds transcendent in a subway. How I believe Thom and company were touched by angels when they made this song, but I think coke machine glow got it best when they called it the most perfect song Radiohead wrote. Not the best. But the most perfect.
1. Karma Police
Paranoid Android was well introduced, but I found Karma Police hidden halfway in the album before its artsy video appeared on MTV. And I've never been able to forget it. When a mammoth album like OK Computer comes and you're able to delve into it and find something like Karma Police, something changes in you. It sounds good on headphones, in cars, at parties with drunken friends. It sounds great on demos, and live records, especially the David Letterman version, or on the last night at college when Austin and I sang it for a group of friends. Let Down maybe perfect, but Karma Police is the best song Radiohead has ever made. And this all might sound rather ridiculous, especially from someone who thinks Kid A is better, but I've never been able to shake this song. It's been eight years since it became apart of my life, and is still here.