Did "OK Computer" really change music?

[TheBig3]

Every once in awhile I'll come across someone saying that OK Computer shifted the musical landscape towards something new. In 1997, that was probably a good thing - I was tapped out on post-grunge bands at that point, even pop had Cobain imitators all over it - but unlike other albums that "changed everything" I was there, buying music in 1997 and I don't remember anything of the sort. I like Radiohead just fine, and I own OK Computer, but where is the massive shift in output from the music industry because of that album?

If any of you have good answers, or a link to a good explanation I'd appreciate it.

[Janszoon]

It didn't. Not only do I think it's a very hit-or-miss, highly overrated album, but I think, objectively, it's hard to see any kind of change in music that happened as a result of it.

[Lexi Darling]

Yeah, from the perspective of someone who was admittedly a bit young to know or care about music in a wider critical sense in the late 90s and can only really look back with the benefit of hindsight, I do struggle to see how it was that massively influential outside of a few specific cases.

Like, I remember when The Strokes first came out. Now that album was influential as hell, it seemed like a horde of back-to-basics garage rock-inspired "The Plural Nouns" bands got huge virtually overnight in 2002-2003. But I'm not aware of the same happening to a significant number of bands that sounded like Radiohead.

[TheBig3]

It's really just Coldplay and uh...I dont know who else.

As for indie rock I feel like Strokes:White Stripes::Nirvana:Pearl Jam.

The Strokes broke the sound, but the White Stripes built the movement.

[Guybrush]

I don't think my own opinions necessarily carry much weight, but to me, OK Computer seems more like signaling the end of an era. Bands were recording very elaborately produced music by the late 80s and into the 90s. Raoul and the Kings of Spain by Tears for Fears and Ordinary World by Duran Duran are a couple of example hits.

Towards the end of the 90s, it seems to me like that was falling out of favor - and rock in general was losing to RnB, hip hop, Eurodance and everything else. Then rock music had a little resurgence, but when it came back it was more stripped down and basic, like The Strokes and White Stripes. We got Queens of the Stone Age. I think people missed rocking out.

So to me, I think of OK Computer as one of the later albums from that time when rock bands had a very produced sound and actually think very highly of it. It's beautifully produced. Kula Shaker's Peasants Pigs & Astronauts is another very produced sounding album from 1999 and that seems to me like some of the latest that would generate mainstream interest, although I guess that one hardly did.

There's always exceptions to whatever I just wrote, but at least it seems to me more fun, ballsy, stripped down rock became popular after that - nothing that reminded me much of OK Computer.

It makes sense that the album would be influential still, but perhaps outside pop/mainstream more? One thing about Ok is it feels very introspective. Maybe they were an influence on bands like Tool