There aren’t many Radiohead songs you can busk. High And Dry is one, Fake Plastic Trees another. But after The Bends, Karma Police is one of few other contenders. As the second single to be released from 1997’s epochal OK Computer, Karma Police was part of a rare run of four Radiohead singles to reach the UK Top 10 (No 8). It even reached the giddy heights of No 50 in Holland.
Still, Radiohead were never exactly chart-toppers in the traditional sense. OK Computer might be on every smart guitarist’s ‘must-hear’ list, but it remains a baffling, if brilliant, album. After the critical and commercial success of The Bends, Radiohead in ’96 had the weight of expectation on their shoulders. They first decamped to rural Oxfordshire, then to Somerset to record OK Computer. “The only concept that we had for this album was that we wanted to record it away from the city and that we wanted to record it ourselves,” bassist Colin Greenwood commented.
