We all know that eras never start on time. Historians will often point to wars, national tragedies, or elections as the pivot points. The ’60s, as we think of them, actually started in 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The ’70s commenced with the Watergate scandal. The ’80s were kicked off by the election of Ronald Reagan, just as the ’9

It’s one of those albums that’s permanently lodged into my brain, where it just spins on a loop. Sometimes it comes through loud and clear, where I can feel every blip, skronk, and digitally distorted vocal. Other times, it plays on a low hum, following me like a shadow, like how the string section stalks Thom Yorke in “How to Disappear Completely.

Kid A embodied how things would eventually come to feel, look, and sound. The mood of ubiquitous dread and digital remove that the music evokes; the non-sequitur lyrics that double as status updates (“yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon”; “I’m not here, this isn’t happening”; “the best you can is good enough”); and the overwhelming feeling that tec

In either case, what was “real” was in fact extremely fictional. That was just how it was in the early ’00s. And you… accepted it.

Bodysong sounds very much like the ultimate sideman’s record. The pieces don’t really register as songs, but as evocative assemblages of incredible sounds—there’s some heart-stopping classical music in the style of Krzysztof Penderecki, some Bitches Brew jazz, a bit of skronky guitar, and a whole lot of irregular electronic beats.

Therefore, I have decided to listen to Pablo Honey from now on with the ears of my sixteen-year-old self. I will not judge it via the lens of subsequent Radiohead albums—I am instead tricking my brain into perceiving it as the only Radiohead music that I have ever heard. Because lying to yourself in order to once again enjoy albums you used to love

But even when Y2K didn’t bring about the end of the world, it did leave you with these unshakable feelings of both vulnerability (because it showed just how much technology controlled our lives) and oppression (because it showed just how much technology controlled our lives). And this made you want to believe that, maybe, there was still a world be

When you’re a person who thinks about music too much, you use it as a way to mark time.

So that’s how my life (and possibly yours) turned out in the future—hooked up to a Soma machine for ten hours a day as the rest of the Internet is increasingly corporatized, consolidated, homogenized, or lobotomized.