For the last four years of the almost ten that it's been out for, I've listened to this album with an altered tracklisting ever since that 01/10 theory (also, Thom's bewildering HTTT tracklisting revision) got me trying out that sort of thing;
15 Step Weird Fishes/Arpeggi Bodysnatchers House of Cards Nude Faust Arp [crossfade ending] 4 Minute Warning Reckoner All I Need Bangers and Mash Jigsaw Falling Into Place Videotape
It's like a whole different thing to me now. I never got into In Rainbows and its songs the way other people did at all until I looked at it from a different perspective. Would include Go Slowly except it's this weird reprise of There There that would actually fit better on that album, in retrospect.
Changing HTTT is a common topic but it's not really discussed with the other albums, save for "The Tourist is the weakest track and shouldn't end OKC" or whatever. What changes would you/do you make (including the Kid A/mnesiac double LP playlist - still trying to find the most functional order for that)?
Why is this tracklist so much better? I don't have any problems with the official tracklist.
Brody Hughes
Anyone shitalking The Tourist needs to step up their game.
Jose Anderson
This thread is literally giving me cancer
Tyler Anderson
It's not 'better', I just like it more. Gives it a palindrome feel. Flow is subjective, obviously.
Somehow, it makes sense to Thom that There There should open HTTT and 2+2=5 and Sit Down Stand Up should be split apart. I don't get it, and it's part of that recurring pattern where they always organise one bit of a record weirdly or swap a-sides for b-sides (i.e. lit. half of Pablo Honey and Bones instead of Talk Show Host).
Plus, I wanted to add two tracks I've always felt deserved the cut. Had to move at least one track, which ended up being All I Need. Eventually yielded this order. All I Need bugged me in the same way Where I End and You Begin did with HTTT and threw off the rest of the album for me.
That said, I can listen to it in any order at this point. AMSP came in alphabetical order, which I still find hilarious.
Connor Nelson
>band that's encouraged fans to be creative with their stuff has fans that hate it when people are creative with their stuff
Jason Carter
whoops, that post below wasn't directed at you user the tourist is great gotta agree it's the weakest tho
Camden Rivera
Okay, the Faust Arp/4 Minute Warning thing is good. Really fucking good.
Other than that, close audacity. Disc 2 stays on disc 2, no other changes to this album.
John Murphy
I like it, but I can see how it feels like a second shot at a closer with Lucky preceeding it. I'd probably say Subterranean or Electioneering are worse, but strokes and folks and that
The In Rainbows/OK Computer playlist is shanty though, just doesn't work
Ayden Lopez
agreed, I like some of the attempts but when people say the two are so alike, I have no clue what they are on about I always felt by Radiohead's own logic of not wanting to exceed ~45 minutes, you just end okc with no surprises, album works with or without lucky/tourist
Charles Sanchez
I think if you were going to do that I'd get rid of No Surprises and close with Lucky, my interested in No Suprises has fallen quite a lot since I first heard it.
Landon Rodriguez
OK Computer is like the closest they got to totally cohesive and that's probably why most people feel it's their best. I mentioned The Tourist in the OP but I don't dislike it, I just know some of you do.
There's two things holding OK Computer back from being close to perfect and they're both decisions they made probably at the advice of producers.
The debatable one - Paranoid Android shouldn't have been trimmed. Doesn't help I can here directly where loops were cut. They should have had the full version, the 7-10 minute robust song they were playing live. No, I do not think it would have hurt the album at all.
The obvious one - Lucky before No Surprises.
They weren't ballsy enough yet, still just four years after PH. By the time Kid A had come and passed, the band didn't give a fuck about whether or not part of the album might be too "scary". Image unrelated.
Justin Howard
either/or works better than tourist, I just feel like no surprises has a very final sound to the end and lucky to me is like exit music, where it feels weird because they came before the album even existed and feel weaker to me if lucky was done and had closed the bends, I'd love it way more
if you get what I mean. like you said, strokes an folks user
Luis Robinson
Airbag Paranoid Android Subterranean Homesick Alien Talk Show Host* Let Down Karma Police Fitter Happier Electioneering No Surprises Climbing Up the Walls Lucky
*reproduced/stylised and finished version with the right sound for OKC and a better ending
Yeah, I went there.
Think about it though. Really conjure it up in your head. Never made any sense to me why they put such a song so bluntly written for a very specific movie on this album however good a track it is. Especially sandwiched between two guitar tracks.
Robert Phillips
What up with the dislike for the Tourist? I feel like they tried to conclude the album twice given that Lucky and the Tourist are back to back, what if you had the final stretch be
Electioneering No Surprises Climbing Up The Walls The Tourist
I think it works to close out the album, theres some nice parallelism between car crashes and 'hey man, slow down' in my mind the bigger problem is Lucky into the Tourist than the Tourist itself
John Lewis
Amnesiac should have been: The Amazing Sounds of Orgy Pyramid Song Kinetic You and Whose Army? I Might Be Wrong Knives Out Fog Like Spinning Plates Life In A Glasshouse Cuttooth
And Fast Track could stand to be on Kid A in between The National Anthem and How to Disappear Completely.
Jackson Jackson
That's a straight up disaster of a tracklist
Hudson Cruz
It's just kind of there.
I mean the ding at the end is a really nice effect but for how memorable OK Computer is, The Tourist feels unnecessary. That's all. Don't dislike it, but don't know why it's there.
I do kind of agree with No Surprises before Climbing Up the Walls. Hell, I could tell you with a straight face that I think CUTW could actually close the album if executed slightly differently, but it'd alienate massive amounts of people who see OK Computer as some kind of Dark Side of the Moon of the 90's.
The album is fine as it is. If it feels like a second closer then it feels like a bonus track so it isn't a problem whether you like it or not.
Honestly, I would have preferred they kept and closed with the title track. Whether they would have renamed it or not. It fits more with the theme. That or Big Boots reworked to end similarly to how The Tourist ends.
I mean honestly, from a musical perspective, a reworked Blow Out could have ended OK Computer as far as I'm concerned. That song is too good to be stuck on Pablo Honey and The Tourist is just...there. Kind of how Bones is just there on The Bends.
TL;DR, it's anti-climactic in context, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
You have all these fantastic songs and then this ending that's too similar to the tracks that came before it. It's a bigger deal than it normally would be because both Pablo Honey and The Bends have better closing tracks (IMO), which defies logic a little bit.
Noah Myers
The tourist is actually the best song in OKC
Carter Williams
OK Computer should start with Palo Alto, and the song should have its original name (OK Computer). It should also include Polyethylene Parts 1 & 2 somewhere near the middle
Owen Baker
>thinking you're improving over the bands original creative output simply by playing cookie cutter with a couple tracks
shit thread stupid thread
Parker Torres
A Climbing Up The Walls closer would be pretty good, it's just quite an intense finale whereas Lucky/The Tourist feel more introspective. I think when it comes down to it I'd rather cut Lucky and keep the Tourist, so I really can't agree that the Tourist is just there. I think its only anticlimactic because it follows Lucky which could already close out the album (but in my opinion, less well).
Imagine it as an exercise in album planning and pacing rather than an exercise in 'improvement'
Jose Campbell
Only Part One, Part Two isn't that good
Caleb White
okay that's a little more acceptable then, I still say the only radiohead album that needs a edit is HTTT
Mason Martinez
I'm of the mind that there isn't even a part 1 & 2 distinction and that was made to troll people. I mean yeah there's the short "intro" (what, 30 seconds?) That's hardly a "part".
Jason Hughes
For me The Tourist is without a doubt one of the most emotionally intense songs in all of Ok Computer.
It's a grandiose and intense ending to a great album
Nathaniel Hall
I don't agree with his track list (it isn't a disaster by any means) but I've disagreed with everyone trying to make the double album work.
I agree Amazing Sounds should be an opener. I, myself, do not really like EIIRP. Can I replace it on Kid A? No, not really, because it's a fan favorite. It'd be like cutting Paranoid Android from OKC.
Closest version I came up with had Pyramid Song after The National Anthem. I shared it here and people thought it was alright. Here are the segues I uploaded, they're actually still on my dropbox: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38909028/09 Pyramid Song.mp3
Until Radiohead releases a shitload of outtakes and you don't have to remove tracks/move ones from one album over to the other, the proper way is just to listen to them back to back.
After all, Amnesiac is a reflection on Kid A and vice-versa, not a continuing story.
They had some huge, convoluted mess of thoughts so obviously from the hidden book to the old online posts that they wanted to tell and they did it through the course of three albums.
Their discog is comprised of trilogies. The first is a rock band going from beginners to masters. The other two have followed natural progressions as well.
Gavin Peterson
Yeah, because I'm about to go back in time and change the first wave of pressed CDs, right?
Seriously, the lot of you.
Jayden Jackson
I'm only being half serious, I just really like that little intro a bit more than the rest of the song
Yeah no arguments here, I'm in full support of The Tourist. Perhaps intense was the wrong word, stressful/spooktastic might be better.
John Butler
Yup. Don't even care about the title.
That's why the official alt tracklist for HTTT made no sense. 2+2=5 and Sit Down Stand Up are inseparable in my mind (semi-related: move Ful Stop to come immediately after Burn the Witch and remove he silence - trust me). Same goes for a lot of tracks.
Exactly. Most people would see it as too angry and depressing an ending though, so I get why they did what they did.
A - Pablo. It's not like they didn't have vastly better songs at the time. They chose to literally put shit like How Do You on that instead of a handful of On a Friday demos that are so much better. If any album really needs an edit, it's that one.
They're all finished and fine anyways. Just food for thought.
B - The idea that HTTT was somehow inherently flawed is what got me into this. HTTT to me actually just needs a better track order. I've found you can improve it a lot just by swapping Scatterbrain (which is the only track I still kind of feel doesn't fit) and Sail to the Moon's positions. Ideally move Backdrifts before it, etc. whatever.
Brandon Gutierrez
I think I've found the right words...
It's a good. Yes.
But it doesn't really go anywhere the album already hadn't been.
I like the quality of it being a particularly long elevator ride up to the future but my brain tells me it shouldn't close.
Actually...you could put The Tourist before Fitter Happier instead of Karma Police and end with Lucky. The ending would transition perfectly, but the song would still feel a little out of place.
Bentley Moore
>the bigger problem is Lucky into the Tourist than the Tourist itself
If I may point to a similar situation, almost all copies of Music Has the Right to Children end with Happy Cycling these days. It functionally concludes the album again while providing a bridge, a credits sequence of sort. That's what the Tourist does. The ding. The doors open. Queue Everything in its Right Place.
Perhaps there is no problem and The Tourist is both a bonus track and an elementary one. That's more or less what it's been for every single person I know except for those who sit through whole albums out of principle, in much the same way people will routinely skip Airbag and start with Paranoid Android.
Easton Rogers
2+2=5 SDSU Scatterbrain Go To Sleep WIEAYB The Gloaming (this version: clyp.it/0hhpjex4) There There I Will (LA version) Sail to the Moon Myxomatosis AWATD
Jacob Torres
I don't agree with you. I think The Tourist serves a very similar role as this closer from another famous album:
It's a surreal, weirdly peaceful moment after a roller-coaster of emotional turbulence. the tourist does that l1ike no other song in Ok Computer does.
Isaac Price
That's a way to view it yeah, I think the song is great, but the tracklist makes it almost a redundancy as it follows from Lucky.
That's what No Surprises/Lucky do though. (Although I am with you, I'd rather cut one of those two than the tourist)
Grayson Miller
The statement that an album is """cohesive"""" is completely meaningless and will mean different things to different people. Please abandon this meme already.
Isaac Campbell
I'm aware you don't agree.
That's fine. I'm glad it does that for you.
But I'd be lying if I said The Tourist was for OKC half of what that is for Endtroducing. That's a much better song in general.
That's just me and a good amount of others, apparently.
It's probably how they did the song. How it's rendered makes a world of difference with them, from Nude to Reckoner to True Love Waits to Motion Picture Soundtrack and countless others. It's the reason I don't like it when people say TKOL and PH are inherently bad on a whole, because I know for a fact having seen them play live that it goes beyond the recorded studio version of the song. But if they'd done The Tourist in a way I really liked it, it would probably then not be what you like, so go figure.
Hudson Robinson
It's not a 'meme' and it's a forgone conclusion that it's subjective/meaningless. This whole conversation is inherently meaningless.
Thanks for remind us of what we all already know.
Luis Bennett
The relevance of "emotional roller-coaster turbulence" disappears after you know that album very well. At that point, you tend to lean towards the best cuts. I like the tourist, but I get every side here and the only reason to really have it is if you think it's a good song. Just my two cents.
Jack Jenkins
I think the relevance of an emotional roller coaster never disappears.
Ian Green
Superior HTTT tracklist coming through
2+2=5 Sit Down Stand Up Sail To The Moon Go To Sleep Where I End And You begin We Suck Young Blood There There I Will Punchup Myxomatosis Scatterbrain Wold at the doors
John Johnson
Honestly most of the problems with HTTT can be solved by skipping just one track from the first half - either Backdrifts or We Suck Young Blood. They are the biggest flow breakers.
I also sometimes start straight from The Gloaming and listen to it like a darker TKOL, but it kind of bums me that I miss 2+2=5 that way.
Nicholas Wright
>Getting rid of The Gloaming Why would you want to do that, it's one of the best songs they've ever made