The 1990s were a decade in which guitar-driven rock reached its commercial apex. In America, hard rock, pop punk and grunge acts satisfied the mainstream, while in the UK, Britpop was all the rage - led from the front by populist pint-swiggers, Oasis
But, there was one big British guitar band that offered more thought-provoking output, and pulled from a wider range of inspiration points than their peers. This ambitious band would ultimately completely abscond from the restrictive trappings of guitar-rock entirely - but that's another story.
By the late 1990s, In the eyes of the music press, Radiohead could do no wrong.
After debut 1992 single Creep won the Oxford band global acclaim, the first true revelation of the band’s musical dexterity came with 1995’s sublime second LP, The Bends.
However, it would be their much-anticipated third album, OK Computer, that would firmly cement the band - who’ve just finished a four-night residency at London’s O2 Arena - as one of the greatest of all time.
The first single from the album, Paranoid Android, was released on May 26th 1997. This multi-sectioned epic showcased an elevated complexity in both the band’s songwriting and production approaches.
Utilising several distinct movements, Paranoid Android led the listener on a journey from acoustic prog-folk ballad into a savage metal-adjacent riff, then left-turned into a gloomy choral bridge. The jaw-dropping inventiveness - and unpredictability - of the single was a real statement of intent.
It heralded the musically diverse and thematically prescient album that was to follow.
OK Computer's fourth single, however, was an outlier in just how straightforward and, dare we say it, sweet it sounded.
No Surprises was originally written by the band's lead vocalist and songwriter, Thom Yorke while on tour supporting R.E.M. Its melody had a childlike quality which juxtaposed a lyric that portrayed a dejected, defeated protagonist.
This character, the lyrics implied, intentionally numbed himself from the dissatisfying drudgery of an unfeeling work life, and an emotionally unsatisfying personal life.
A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
I'll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide
And no alarms and no surprises
But there was more than just the lyrics of this hypnotic lullaby that conveyed a sense of intentionally-induced apathy. The arrangement, too, was a masterwork of musical mood-setting.
One of the central arrangement components of No Surprises relies upon just two bars.
From the introduction, we hear a full six beats of F major, initially supplied by a picked guitar and joined by the bass.
There is a simplicity to the guitar part, which relies upon an F major triad in a 2nd inversion, beginning with the A on top. It is left to the bass to root the harmony with an F pedal.
During the last two beats of this two bar sequence, we hear a move to a chord of Bb minor, which is an unrelated chord to our home key of F major.
This promotes a slightly uncomfortable harmonic movement, which sits perfectly alongside the underlying unease of the lyric, and is arguably the most important chordal device in the song. It is often visited throughout its harmonic structure.
After the initial four bars of 4/4, the introduction continues with the addition of an acoustic guitar playing a chord of Fsus2. This is always heavy on the main beat of the bar, alongside a very basic drum pattern, until we reach the Bb minor chord again, and we hear a wonderful rhythmic syncopation.
Adding to the suggestion of a protagonist purposefully ‘dumbing-down’ their emotions, a glockenspiel plays a simplified - almost child-like - version of the guitar part, highlighting the notes A and F, but dropping to a Db, to highlight the minor 3rd of the Bb minor chord.
The verse and chorus sections of the song are relatively short; we effectively hear three verses, albeit in their shortened form, before we finally reach what we might call the chorus, with the lyric ‘No alarms and no surprises’ signifying its arrival.
The verse structure maintains a chord per two-bars arrangement, employing basic chords that are shored up with some interesting movement.
The first chord of F major is followed by Bb major 7, but with a D in the bass which makes it a 1st inversion. This also engineers an ungrounded feeling, before a resolution using II-V-I.
We hear G minor for two bars and C for two bars, before heading back to a shortened introduction section, once again using F and Bb minor.
The II-V-I concept is employed again, during the chorus section, but always in a prolonged state, using repetition. We hear three sets of II-V (Gm to C) before finally returning to a chord of F.
The instrumental bridge section relies on some very similar chord types, with the return of our favoured unrelated chord, Bb minor.
Pivoting from C to Bb minor 7, this repeats with the guitars and glockenspiel picking out the basic notes of the chord.
There’s also the use of the odd passing note in the melody, helping to bridge the notes of the chord.
The use of the C chord, being the dominant of our home key (F) creates a sense of build, before we move down to Gm and rise up in 3rds, as we head in to the final verse and chorus.
As if to provide a sense of symmetry, we finish with the introduction over 4 bars, but with a subtle musical pull-up in the tempo, landing on beat 1 and our return to a chord of F.
We also hear a sustained high C, played on a Solina String Synthesiser, which also puts in a very brief appearance, after the first chorus. It’s only ever used to highlight melodic moments, with no pads wading into the guitar’s territory.
Another reason the song radiates a feeling of opiated detatchment is down to the fact that the original recording was slowed down in the studio. As Thom Yorke revealed in an interview with the BBC's Matt Everitt.
“All I remember is, we argued about how fast it should be. We had this whole thing about how it had to sound like we’d all taken Mogadon. So we tried to play it as slow as we could but it was never slow enough because we weren’t on Mogadon," Yorke explained. "So what we did was, we took an earlier version and slowed it right down, we experimented, you wouldn’t know it’s slowed down unless I told you. But it is, because of what I’m singing you have to have something that’s not right about it.”
As its 1.2 billion streams on Spotify attest to, No Surprises continues to be an engaging, increasingly relevant song that speaks to a relatable feeling most of us have encountered at some stage in our lives.
Do we kick out and fight back against the forces that gradually conspire to make us unhappy? Or, do we just swallow it up, bottle those anxieties and opt for a passive, quiet life.
No Surprises is perhaps the most well-known song on a record that seemed to foresee much of the economic and cultural turbulence of the 21st century, and anticipated the looming computerisation of emotionless bureaucracy. It's the quintessentially human centrepiece of OK Computer, a nursery rhyme for late stage capitalism.
The song’s central theme is perhaps best visually articulated by its video, directed by Grant Gee, which features a diving helmet-clad Thom Yorke singing the song to camera whilst said helmet is filled slowly with water. It's a fitting visualisation of the idea of gradually drowning under the weight of incremental pressures.
But really, as our theory breakdown demonstrates, its that subtle tension, implied by the apt chord choices that sparks the most immediate connection with listeners. It's that minor chord IV, in the form of Bb minor (7) that really adds to the song’s unsettled nature.
Non-relative chords lie outside the diatonic key but can be an effective tool for creating tension. With No Surprises, Radiohead perfectly illustrate how chords and theory can be manipulated to underline and stress a deeper narrative.
Theory should always work to service of the intent of the song, and not the other way around.
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