Ed O'Brien on NPR

Colin Greenwood and Ed O'Brien take NPR's All Things Considered through OK Computer, for listeners who know Radiohead as the band with “Creep”. Much of it was recorded in the 15th to 18th century rooms of a country house belonging to the actress Jane Seymour, Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman to the host. The rooms do get onto the tape, Colin argues, because a player responds differently to a room with a fireplace than to one full of big bouncy toys and Barney the dinosaur.

“Paranoid Android” was three and a half songs condensed into six and a half minutes, a trilogy in the 1970s manner, and the band simply call its last part the Gucci piggies part. Pressed on what “Let Down”, so delicate and with such heavy words, is about, Colin says it is just a good tune and that he keeps his head down behind the guitars and drums. “Electioneering” comes from Thom Yorke's interest in politics, and the likeness he sees between the handshakes and meet-and-greets of a tour and a politician on the soapbox. Asked why the record has so little electronic music, one of them owns up. “We wanted to, but then we found we didn't know how to plug the things in once we bought them.” The American music industry, one of them adds, spends much of its time second-guessing what the public want, and hasn't a clue.