When: Released May 10, 1981
Why? Although I’ve heard of Kraftwerk (and, notably, their album “Autobahn”), I’ve never heard a Kraftwerk song. “Computer World,” while not the band’s most popular or critically acclaimed work, has been ranked among the top electronic dance music (EDM) albums of all time. And, hey, I like computers, so I figured it was as good a place as any to start.
What? Seven songs, 35 minutes of influential and formative German electronica.
First Impressions: When I think of modern EDM, I think of a steady, throbbing kick, deep bass, big buildups leading to sparse breakdowns. The focus is on pounding rhythms and layers of ear candy.
This is nothing like that.
Here, the synthesizers are warm and the melodies lullaby-like in their gentle simplicity. What lyrics there are—you could probably capture them all on the back of a single postcard—are also simple and unnuanced, delivered once and then, typically, repeated, over and over. Instead of big statements and sharp contrasts, these songs evolve through repeating themes and rhythms that slowly take on new complexities. Yet the arrangements remain spare, shockingly stripped down compared with today’s productions. Even the synthesized drum sounds, when they’re used at all, are more likely a background color rather than a driving force. Vocals tend to be spoken not sung, delivered in a monotone that mimics the stereotypically emotionless character of a computer.
Looking back from 40+ years in the future, I’m finding this a hard album to judge. It has been hugely influential across a number of genres…yet it seems so different from how those genres exist today that it’s difficult for me to see the connections. Listening to it as simply an album of music, with no historical context, it doesn’t feel in any way remarkable or insightful or even prescient.
Lyrically, these songs are straightforward declarations about life with computers (even though, in 1981, the computer world had barely begun). I don’t believe there are hidden layers of meaning here; anyone who finds deep meaning in the recitation of numbers 1 through 8—the entire lyrics of “Numbers,” presented in multiple languages—is probably just kidding themselves. The title of closer “It’s More Fun to Compute” is also the entire lyric for the song, repeated eight times.
My favorites here would include opener “Computer World,” which is quite warm and inviting despite lyrics that highlight the many ways computers are infiltrating the world; “Pocket Calculator,” with its now-retro bleeps and blips that sound more like R2D2 than any modern device (and remind me a lot of “Temporary Secretary” on “McCartney II,” which was released a year earlier); “Numbers”; and “Computer Love,” which I believe includes the only words on the album that are actually sung.
So? A song or two may be added to a playlist, but I’m going to file this one with the albums I’m glad to have heard but have no need to revisit in their entirety.