Rolling Stone's critics name Radiohead best band of 1997

Rolling Stone's critics have voted Radiohead best band of 1997, ahead of Sleater-Kinney, in the year-end polls in issue 778. The same critics put OK Computer second in their top ten albums, behind Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind and ahead of Pavement's Brighten the Corners, and Radiohead third as artist of the year after Puff Daddy and Dylan.

The magazine's readers make Oasis's Be Here Now their album of the year, with OK Computer second, and Sublime both artist of the year and best band, with Radiohead third in each. They do vote the “Paranoid Android” clip best video, ahead of Fiona Apple's “Criminal” and Blur's “Song 2”, and put Thom Yorke second only to Beck as best male performer.

Q's readers have gone further still, according to the fan site Green Plastic, voting it the best album ever made six months after it came out, with The Bends sixth.

In Matt Diehl's write-up of the best-band win, Yorke goes back to how the record began. It was going to be a real up album, using all samples.¹ The samplers turned out too slow, and what Yorke calls the real start of the record came with “Paranoid Android”. The others made the backing overnight while he stayed in his room, and he sang it in one take the next morning.

Among the musicians' top-five lists printed with the polls, Jewel and Mick Fleetwood both put OK Computer first, and Sarah McLachlan has it second. Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam, listing his favourite things, has a complaint on the band's behalf. I can't believe they're not on classic-rock radio! I mean, they're like Pink Floyd.¹

Year-end polls for OK Computer, winter 1997-98