Although Radiohead’s ‘Lucky’ is a track that will come to mind whenever you think of the band’s 1997 album OK Computer – seeing as it’s one of the songs on that record – it’s a song that was written and recorded when the group were on tour in 1995, promoting their second album The Bends. The high pitched squealing that can be heard at the beginning and throughout was created at a soundcheck by guitarist Ed O’Brien, and the band decided to develop the song around it. The song was recorded in five hours on 4th September 1995 and released on a charity compilation in the same week. The band thought it was the best song they had ever done to that point; Thom Yorke later stated that it set the direction for what the band were to do on their next record.

You could argue it’s a bit of a cop out to include a track that had already been out for two years on your new album, but somehow ‘Lucky’ manages to fit perfectly in its place on OK Computer. It’s a very cliché thing to say – though when it came to this song when listening to the album for the first time when I was 14 or 15, it was certainly unlike any song I had heard prior to it. It was a track that had a definite emotional weight to it. I thought ‘yeah, this is some sophisticated music’. It was definitely different to what was usually on MTV2. The song’s lyrics are unusually optimistic for a Radiohead song, but then they’re countered by the minor key, sad-sounding chords that make things sound like something terrible is about to happen. It’s very conflicting but it works tremendously and is a change from the usual sad/bad lyrics with happy music dynamic.

A list of elements that I thoroughly enjoy about this one: Thom Yorke’s vocal (a GLOOOO-rious daaaay), the ghostly choir-like keyboards that come in during the second verse, every crash cymbal hit during the choruses pack a punch, the descending chord progression of the bridge and its climactic transition into the instrumental end… You’ve got to hear it for yourself, it would be a good use of 4 minutes and 20 seconds.