10 Songs That Ruined Otherwise Perfect Albums

10. OK Computer - "Fitter Happier"

Radiohead’s 1997 magnum opus is a quasi-concept album about the perils of a technology driven culture. Operatic epics like “Paranoid Android” are paired with beautiful pieces like “The Tourist” to create one of the most cohesive statements of the band’s career, worthy of its place in the rock canon.

And then there's “Fitter Happier”. Coming right in the middle of the record, it’s essentially a two minute treatise on the themes of the album. Over a bed of bleeps and bloops, a vocoder voice details the pressures we pile upon ourselves in modern society.

From a conceptual perspective, “Fitter Happier” is entirely appropriate. It’s disarmingly creepy and lyrically worthy. It’s perhaps the least oblique example of what Radiohead are trying to say on the album. But it’s not at all fun to listen to.

It’s aural cod liver oil, basically - it’s an important track, and definitely adds to the ambitious concept of the album, but once you’ve heard it once, there’s no need to listen to it again, probably ever. Props to the lads for putting something so decidedly uncommercial on their breakthrough album, but have your finger poised over the skip button all the same.