Radiohead - Palo Alto

What this video is

Palo Alto (1999) sits at the intersection of Radiohead's peak OK Computer cultural moment and the band's exhaustion from the ensuing world tour. The song—originally titled 'OK Computer' before being cut as a B-side—thematizes Silicon Valley's 'city of the future' rhetoric, technologized social alienation, and hollow optimism. Grant Gee's video, produced in the orbit of his Meeting People Is Easy documentary,…

Why it matters

A canonical late-90s art-rock video that subordinates traditional performance convention to documentary montage. Its use of real tour footage, speed-ramping, and reverse motion as primary visual language prefigured the blurring of music video and rockumentary formats that became prominent in the…

The director

Grant Robert Gee (b. 1 November 1964, Plymouth, Devon) is a British filmmaker, photographer, and cinematographer. He studied Geography at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and completed postgraduate work at the University of Illinois. He worked on U2's Zoo TV…