That’s right: get your slovenly, uncouth asses back to the back of the line, American bands! Once again, Great Britain — a.k.a. “the REAL country” — is providing the world with all the cultural cache it could ever need or want.
Since 2000 — which is when the Librarian of Congress at the time first heard Kid A and had his life changed forever — The Library of Congress has selected a small crop of songs and albums to preserved as part of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000. Every year, they select 25 recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and are 10 years old or more.
And this year, according to a recent post by NME — a.k.a. “the REAL music online magazine” — Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer has swiftly been “selected for induction into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry” (yes yes, even “Fitter, Happier”), presumably beating out all of its scrawny bumpkin-band competitors across the pond by a good country kilometer. Hey, maybe next year, George Gershwin. You HACK. Just kidding!
Anyway, not kidding: Radiohead’s album is only “one of a number of recordings that has been recognized for selection this year,” others including some decidedly less British and therefore less interesting offerings by the likes of The Doors, Joan Baez, and Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Also (as though anything really matters besides Radiohead), Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin” are among the individual songs to be preserved at the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation (which is located in Culpeper, Virginia, a place where Radiohead has probably toured. So that’s cool!).
After hearing this news, some critics and journalists have expressed their concerns that these other artists’ inductions may somewhat lessen the impact of Radiohead’s and may thus compromise their status as the “only band on Earth.” But I’m not one of them.
• Radiohead: http://www.radiohead.com
• US Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov
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