"Karma Police" is the second single from Radiohead's acclaimed 1997 album OK Computer, and is perhaps Radiohead's best known hit worldwide, apart from "Creep." It is perhaps best recognized for its piano riff, which is similar to Sexy Sadie, and its dark bass line.
While few songs from 1995's The Bends became hits outside the UK, and the six-and-a-half-minute "Paranoid Android" (first single from OK Computer) received MTV promotion but was hardly played on radio, "Karma Police" became an alternative radio anthem. In the UK, however, the single peaked at #8, hardly the band's best showing. OK Computer's popularity was largely not seen to be single-driven. The song also appears on the inaugural Now That's What I Call Music compilation in the United States, which is highly unusual since the song did not manage to break the Top 40 in the country (It was, however a successful song on US Modern Rock radio, hitting #14 on the chart) .
Similarities have often been noted between the piano riff of "Karma Police" and The Beatles' "Sexy Sadie". The band has apparently acknowledged the similarity, though the rest of each song is quite different. While recording OK Computer, they listened to late Beatles albums, among other music (such as Miles Davis, DJ Shadow and Ennio Morricone), for inspiration.
The sound at the end of the song was created by Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien by "feeding sound through a digital delay machine". Webb, Robert. "blank">Story of the Song: 'Karma Police'" The Independent, 15 September 2006.
"Karma Police", like several other songs that would make up OK Computer, was debuted live in 1996, when the band briefly supported _Alanis Morissette on an American tour. A live version of "Karma Police", performed with a Rhodes piano on The Late Show with David Letterman, is captured in the Radiohead documentary Meeting People Is Easy. Today the song is usually an audience singalong when performed at live concerts, often as an encore. As of 2006, it continues to be played by the band somewhat regularly, though not at each show.
