Radiohead | No Surprises
Radiohead’s “No Surprises” - how a first-take nursery rhyme became a haunting meditation on suburban malaise, with Thom Yorke nearly drowning for art in one of the 90s’ most devastating music videos.
Story Behind “No Surprises”
The Quiet Debut That Echoed Through an Album
There’s a peculiar irony buried in the story of “No Surprises.” Thom Yorke wrote “No Surprises” while Radiohead were on tour with R.E.M. in 1995, presenting it to both bands in a dressing room in Oslo as a sketch called “No Surprises Please.” The song emerged from a moment of creative restlessness during what should have been a celebratory tour for The Bends—but Radiohead were already thinking beyond their guitar-rock past.
What makes “No Surprises” remarkable is its birth within the OK Computer sessions. The song was the first song Radiohead recorded on the first day of recording sessions for OK Computer, and the version on the album is the first take recorded. Thom Yorke himself explained the surreal experience: “We did endless versions afterwards and they were all just covers of the first version. So we gave up and went back to it.” Sometimes, lightning does strike on the first attempt. But here’s the paradox: this effortless opening track would become the album’s most emotionally devastating moment, arriving after the experimental cacophony of “Climbing Up the Walls” to offer what Colin Greenwood called the band’s “stadium-friendly” song—a respite that was anything but comforting.
The Beach Boys Nursery Rhyme That Became a Lullaby for the Drowning
The song features glockenspiel and a “childlike” sound inspired by the 1966 Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, and Yorke described it as a “fucked-up nursery rhyme”, with a gentle mood and harsh lyrics conveying dissatisfaction with social or political order. Ed O’Brien told Melody Maker in 1997 that it was indeed “meant to be like a nursery rhyme,” adding the comparison to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”—a song about paradise delivered in a voice so gentle it disarms the listener completely.
The lyrical worldview, though, cuts the opposite direction. One of the key metaphors is the opening line, “a heart that’s full up like a landfill”. Yorke said the song “stems from my unhealthy obsession of what to do with plastic boxes and plastic bottles ... All this stuff is getting buried, the debris of our lives. It doesn’t rot, it just stays there. That’s how we deal, that’s how I deal with stuff, I bury it.” The contrast between the lullaby-like melody and the lyrics describing a suffocating domestic existence became the song’s essential tension.
“No Surprises” Recording and Production Details
The Faster-Than-Planned Take That Became Perfect
The recording of “No Surprises” happened at Canned Applause, a converted shed near Didcot, Oxfordshire, one of Radiohead’s earliest recording spaces for OK Computer. But there’s a production secret embedded in the track: Hoping to achieve a slower tempo than could be played well on their instruments, the producer, Nigel Godrich, had the band record the song at a faster tempo, then slowed the playback for Yorke to overdub his vocals onto, creating an “ethereal” effect.
Working at Canned Applause studio, producer Nigel Godrich had the boys play the instrumental portion of the song faster than was planned. That way, Godrich could slow it down when Yorke recorded his vocal, lending the final product a dreamlike, floating quality. This wasn’t a gimmick—it was a deliberate emotional choice. By speeding up the instrumental performance and then slowing playback during vocal overdubs, Godrich created a vocal that seems to float above the rhythm section, as if Yorke’s voice belongs to a different temporal plane than the band.
Instruments of Restraint: Glockenspiel and Conscience
The instrumentation reinforces this careful construction. Ed O’Brien’s guitar enters with gentle chiming, while Jonny Greenwood’s glockenspiel (a Premier 6801 orchestral model) drives the opening melody. Ed played the opening riff on his Rickenbacker 360 with a capo on the 15th fret, while Jonny doubled the line on a Premier 6801 orchestral glockenspiel. The effect is deliberately childlike, deliberately innocent—a contradiction that mirrors the song’s lyrical content.
What listeners often miss is how restrained the production actually is. This is a five-piece band playing with maximum simplicity. The strings were recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London in January 1997, but they’re barely present on the final mix—not overwhelming the track but adding atmosphere to moments where the burden of suburban existence feels particularly heavy.
Notes About “No Surprises” by Radiohead
Release Date: January 12, 1998 (single), May 21, 1997 (album)
Duration: 3:47 (album version)
Genre: Alternative Rock / Art Rock / Post-Britpop
Album: OK Computer (3rd studio album, track 11)
Chart Performance: Peaked at #4 on UK Singles Chart; 1+ billion Spotify streams (second-most streamed Radiohead song after “Creep”)
Producers: Nigel Godrich, Radiohead
Label: Parlophone (EMI)
Notable Context: Fourth and final single from OK Computer; featured in House M.D. Season 6 opening episode
Radiohead “No Surprises” Era Band Details
Album Details
Album: OK Computer
Release Date: May 21, 1997 (UK), July 1, 1997 (US)
Label: Parlophone / EMI
Producer: Nigel Godrich (co-producer), Radiohead
Recording Locations: Canned Applause (Oxfordshire), St. Catherine’s Court (Bath), Abbey Road Studios (London), The Church (Crouch End, London)
Recording Period: Early 1996 to March 1997
Album Concept: Post-Britpop exploration of technological anxiety, social alienation, and modern existential dread
Chart Performance: #1 UK Album Chart; 4.5 million copies sold worldwide; included in countless “greatest albums” lists
Band Members/Personnel
Thom Yorke - Lead vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards
Jonny Greenwood - Lead guitar, keyboards, glockenspiel
Ed O’Brien - Rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Colin Greenwood - Bass guitar
Phil Selway - Drums, percussion
Nigel Godrich - Co-producer, engineer, mixing
Chris Blair - Mastering engineer (Abbey Road)
Jon Bailey - Additional engineering
Production Notes
First album where Radiohead took significant production control alongside Godrich
Recording began at Canned Applause (converted shed with no toilets or dining facilities); later moved to St. Catherine’s Court
Song was first recorded on first day of OK Computer sessions; first take used on final album
Instrumental recorded at faster tempo, then slowed for vocal overdubs
Represents band’s shift away from guitar-pop of The Bends toward experimental production and electronic elements
OK Computer spent 76 weeks on UK album chart; became 8th best-selling album of 1997 in UK
Interesting Facts About “No Surprises”
The Video That Nearly Drowned Thom Yorke
The accompanying music video became as iconic as the song itself, but its creation story is harrowing. The music video was directed by Grant Gee and was shot on 28 November 1997. Gee had recently finished filming the Radiohead documentary Meeting People Is Easy when he conceived the concept—inspired by both Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and childhood memories of underwater escape acts.
Gee listened to the song while studying a still image of the astronaut character David Bowman in the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and wondered if he could make a music video comprising a close-up of a man in a helmet. He was also inspired by childhood memories of underwater escape acts and alien characters in the television series UFO with helmets full of liquid. He fixated on the lyric “a job that slowly kills you”, and conceived a real-time video that would convey the feeling of “murderous seconds”.
The music video consists of a single close-up shot of Yorke inside a helmet. The lyrics slowly scroll upwards, reflected in the helmet. After the first verse, the helmet begins to fill with water. Yorke continues singing as he attempts to lift his head above the rising water. Once the helmet completely fills, Yorke is motionless for over a minute, after which the water is released and he resumes singing.
The safety measures were essential. The crew hired a special effects company to create a perspex helmet, into which water could be slowly pumped and would allow Yorke to release the water in an emergency. But the reality of filming was traumatic. Although Yorke had demonstrated that he could hold his breath for a minute underwater in normal conditions, when shooting he found it difficult to hold his breath for more than ten seconds before the water had to be drained. According to Gee, “The day turned into a horror show ... [It was] repeated torture.”
To reduce the time for which Yorke had to hold his breath, the crew sped up part of the song, doubled the camera speed from 25 to 50 frames per second to match, and then decelerated both the song and frame rate after the water drained, keeping Yorke’s vocals in synchronisation. The footage of the shoot appears in Meeting People Is Easy, showing Yorke visibly frustrated and distressed with each failed take.
The Song That Lives Between Worlds
As of 2025, “No Surprises” was Radiohead’s most streamed song after their debut single, “Creep”, with more than 1 billion streams. The irony is profound: a song about the suffocating mediocrity of suburban life and modern existence has become ubiquitous, played everywhere from doctors’ offices to supermarkets to emotional movie scenes. It’s become a lullaby for a civilization drowning in its own convenience.
What keeps “No Surprises” alive nearly three decades after release is its fundamental ambiguity. In 2020, the Guardian named it the 29th-greatest Radiohead song, writing: “Can a radical conscience coexist with suburban comforts, ‘No Surprises’ asks? For all that it soothes, this one is pessimistic.” The song asks whether it’s possible to maintain political and moral clarity while living a comfortable life. It doesn’t answer.
Common Questions
Q: Why was “No Surprises” the first song recorded for OK Computer? A: In early 1996, Radiohead recorded demos at Chipping Norton Recording Studios, Oxfordshire. In July, they began rehearsing and recording in their Canned Applause studio, a converted shed, where “No Surprises” was among the first tracks they tackled. The band has mentioned that recording it first set an unexpected tone—it became a template for their more experimental approach to the album.
Q: What does “No Surprises” really mean? A: Yorke identified the subject of the song as “someone who’s trying hard to keep it together but can’t”. The lyrics seem to portray a suicide or an unfulfilling life, and dissatisfaction with contemporary social and political order. The metaphor of a “heart that’s full up like a landfill” describes emotional numbness and accumulated trauma that society buries rather than addresses.
Q: How did Thom Yorke survive filming the music video? A: Safety was paramount despite the intense filming conditions. For Yorke’s safety, the video was filmed at high speed and played back in slow motion. Yorke could release the water manually if needed, and the crew was prepared with emergency protocols. The footage in Meeting People Is Easy shows the genuine difficulty of the shoot.
Q: Why does the song sound so ethereal and floating? A: Producer Nigel Godrich used a specific technique: The producer had the band record the song at a faster tempo, then slowed the playback for Yorke to overdub his vocals onto, creating an “ethereal” effect. This meant Yorke’s vocals were literally recorded at a different speed than the instrumental, creating a dreamlike quality.
Q: How important was “No Surprises” to OK Computer’s success? A: “No Surprises” was released as the fourth single from OK Computer in 1998 and reached number four on the UK singles chart. It became the album’s most commercially successful single and helped introduce OK Computer to mainstream audiences, though it also represented the band’s more accessible, pop-influenced side compared to the experimental tracks surrounding it.