Radiohead – OK Computer

It's exceedingly rare to enjoy the 1-2-punch of creating an album that is instantaneously both a critical and commercial success, but in 1997 Radiohead accomplished such a feat with OK Computer. To create something so different, so .... "odd" yet so beautiful -- especially in the midst of such chart-topping offerings as the Spice Girls, LeAnn Rimes and Mariah Carey -- speaks to what a pivot OK Computer truly was. The album has remained a critical favorite -- and even one that seemed to predict a future of humans beholden to technology while drifting away from one another. The songs are weird; the videos were weirder, but it all worked -- and still does today. Wrote one reviewer after having a couple decades of reflection: "Each decade has its own 'Sgt. Pepper'; a record that comes along and breaks with tradition to change the trajectory of music entirely and OK Computer was it for the 90s."