The lyrics depict a dystopian world fraught with rampant consumerism, capitalism, social alienation, and political malaise, with themes such as transport, technology, insanity, death, modern British life, globalisation and anti-capitalism.

Despite lowered sales estimates by EMI, who deemed it uncommercial and difficult to market, OK Computer reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and debuted at number 21 on the Billboard 200, Radiohead's highest album entry on the US charts at the time, and was certified five times platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in the UK and double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the US.

[46][47] According to Andy Greene in Rolling Stone, Radiohead "were collectively hostile to seventies progressive rock ... but that didn't stop them from reinventing prog from scratch on OK Computer, particularly on the six-and-a-half-minute 'Paranoid Android'.

Critic Alex Ross said the lyrics "seemed a mixture of overheard conversations, techno-speak, and fragments of a harsh diary" with "images of riot police at political rallies, anguished lives in tidy suburbs, yuppies freaking out, sympathetic aliens gliding overhead.

"[52] Yorke also drew inspiration from books, including Noam Chomsky's political writing,[53] Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton's The State We're In, Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up!

[62] Music journalist Tim Footman noted that the song's technical innovations and lyrical concerns demonstrated the "key paradox" of the album: "The musicians and producer are delighting in the sonic possibilities of modern technology; the singer, meanwhile, is railing against its social, moral, and psychological impact ...

[67] The lyrics were inspired by an assignment from Yorke's time at Abingdon School to write a piece of "Martian poetry", a British literary movement that humorously recontextualises mundane aspects of human life from an alien perspective.

[23] The climactic portion of the song is an attempt to emulate the sound of trip hop group Portishead, but in a style that the bassist, Colin Greenwood, called more "stilted and leaden and mechanical".

'"[65] "Fitter Happier" is a short musique concrète track that consists of sampled musical and background sound and spoken-word lyrics recited by "Fred",[17] a synthesised voice from the Macintosh SimpleText application.

[76] Among the loosely connected imagery of the lyrics, Footman identified the song's subject as "the materially comfortable, morally empty embodiment of modern, Western humanity, half-salaryman, half-Stepford Wife, destined for the metaphorical farrowing crate, propped up on Prozac, Viagra and anything else his insurance plan can cover.

"[80] Sam Steele called the lyrics "a stream of received imagery: scraps of media information, interspersed with lifestyle ad slogans and private prayers for a healthier existence.

"[55] Select described Yorke's distraught vocals and the atonal strings as "Thom's voice dissolving into a fearful, blood-clotted scream as Jonny whips the sound of a million dying elephants into a crescendo".

Sam Taylor said it was "the one track on [The Help Album] to capture the sombre terror of the conflict", and that its serious subject matter and dark tone made the band "too 'real' to be allowed on the Britpop gravy train".

[78][87] Colin Greenwood said the song was "hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit shifter [radio stations] can have been expecting", but that Capitol supported the choice.

"[136] In 2003, Colin Greenwood said the tour was the lowest point in Radiohead's career: "There is nothing worse than having to play in front of 20,000 people when someone—when Thom—absolutely does not want to be there, and you can see that hundred-yard stare in his eyes.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had so many major critics agreed immediately, not only on an album's merits, but on its long-term significance, and its ability to encapsulate a particular point in history.

[94] Nick Kent wrote in Mojo that "Others may end up selling more, but in 20 years' time I'm betting OK Computer will be seen as the key record of 1997, the one to take rock forward instead of artfully revamping images and song-structures from an earlier era.

"[78] John Harris wrote in Select: "Every word sounds achingly sincere, every note spewed from the heart, and yet it roots itself firmly in a world of steel, glass, random-access memory and prickly-skinned paranoia.

Robert Christgau from The Village Voice said Radiohead immersed Yorke's vocals in "enough electronic marginal distinction to feed a coal town for a month" to compensate for the "soulless" songs, resulting in "arid" art rock.

[167] In an otherwise positive review, Andy Gill wrote for The Independent: "For all its ambition and determination to break new ground, OK Computer is not, finally, as impressive as The Bends, which covered much the same sort of emotional knots, but with better tunes.

This wasn't Pink Floyd for the end of the millennium, it was original, visionary and brilliant [...] An epochal album that called time on the narrow colloquial nostalgia of Britpop, sold millions and turned Radiohead into global angst-rock superstars, OK Computer is not quite the flawless masterpiece of fond folklore, but it holds up extremely well.

[202] Christgau felt "the reason the readers of the British magazine Q absurdly voted OK Computer the greatest album of the 20th century is that it integrated what was briefly called electronica into rock".

[207] Alex Ross said the album "pictured the onslaught of the Information Age and a young person's panicky embrace of it" and made the band into "the poster boys for a certain kind of knowing alienation—as Talking Heads and R.E.M.

"[49] Jon Pareles of The New York Times found precedents in the work of Pink Floyd and Madness for Radiohead's concerns "about a culture of numbness, building docile workers and enforced by self-help regimes and anti-depressants".

Club writer Steven Hyden in the feature "Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation", "Radiohead appeared to be ahead of the curve, forecasting the paranoia, media-driven insanity, and omnipresent sense of impending doom that's subsequently come to characterise everyday life in the 21st century.

"[211] In 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, Tom Moon described OK Computer as a "prescient ... dystopian essay on the darker implications of technology ... oozing [with] a vague sense of dread, and a touch of Big Brother foreboding that bears strong resemblance to the constant disquiet of life on Security Level Orange, post-9/11.

[217] Many newer British acts adopted similarly complex, atmospheric arrangements; for example, the post-Britpop band Travis worked with Godrich to create the languid pop texture of The Man Who, which became the fourth best-selling album of 1999 in the UK.

[219] Steven Hyden of AV Club said that by 1999, starting with The Man Who, "what Radiohead had created in OK Computer had already grown much bigger than the band," and that the album went on to influence "a wave of British-rock balladeers that reached its zenith in the '00s".

[225] While Harris concludes that British rock ultimately developed an "altogether more conservative tendency", he said that with OK Computer and their subsequent material, Radiohead provided a "clarion call" to fill the void left by Britpop.

On 11 June, Radiohead made the archive available to stream or purchase from the music sharing site Bandcamp for 18 days, with proceeds going to the environmental advocacy group Extinction Rebellion.