Let It Be OK

I admire the haphazard charm of Let It Be, and recognize a number of iconic tracks (like the title track, “Across the Universe,” “Get Back,” and the grating, yet popular, “The Long and Winding Road”). And I giggled more than a few times listening to this album, but I wasn’t always giggling with The Beatles (as I was on “Maggie Mae”). Sometimes I was giggling at them. Examples:

• the cloying but oddly fascinating “I Me Mine”
• the disposable “Dig It” (Did the Beatles help popularize the novelty/skit track? I do not thank them for this.)

Lest I sound sacrilegious, I realize the charm of this album may just be dated or lost on me.

You know what doesn’t sound dated or uneven though? OK Computer. And it’s not just because it came out twelve years ago instead of forty. Nor is it just because

1. I love a good concept album, even (especially?) if that concept is entropic (the imminent demise of everything nice like love and bunnies, the coming doom of corporate and technological takeover, the only saving grace: alien abduction).
2. I love songs that mention my name that are not “Sara Smile” by Hall & Oates or “Sara” by Jefferson Starship. I have a gold star for the random stranger who will someday serenade me with a line from “Lucky” instead.

Nope. It’s because there still seems to be more to catch sonically, lyrically, and conceptually on this album, even after hundreds of listens. Maybe it helps that Yorke’s not winning any awards for chief enunciator.

It feels eerie listening to the album here in 2010, as if we’ve somehow reached the culmination of Yorke’s nightmare. I’m a recent convert to the likes of Orwell and Vonnegut, and conspiracy theories are brain candy for me. However, I am far too burdened with a sense of responsibility to do something truly wacky and creative with my paranoia. When the rare brave person does take such risks, and with such results, I’m dumbstruck.

Finally, in case I have overcomplimented this album for its pessimism, it’s fascinating that the fears that fuel OK Computer are also what make its genius possible (globalization and information technology, for example).