Radiohead 'Creep'

Chart Peak: 7 [78 in 1992]

YouTube

'Creep' was once described as "one of the finest pieces of rock since Everest"... It finally became a British Top 10 smash in September following the British band's big American breakthrough.

If anyone's bothered, that link at the bottom of this post is to the uncensored album version. The clean edit which of course is on Now! 26 can be found on a compilation called Monster Halloween Hits, should you need it. I'm sure Thom Yorke is very proud of that, probably almost as proud as he is of the rather lame video. He does look like he's telling the truth when he sings "what the hell am I doing here?" at least. 

Reputedly, the history of 'Creep' is full of happy accidents, the song apparently a piece of Yorke's student juvenalia that the producers of their debut album happened to hear the band rehearsing. When they were finally persuaded to record it, Johnny Greenwood's crunch before the chorus was a spur-of-the-moment improvisation that became one of the defining moments of the song; apparently it was also a mistake in the mix that the piano only arrives in the last 30 seconds of the song, although again it was good thinking on somebody's part to leave that in. Even this chart position owes a certain amount to luck: after the single had flopped the first time around, it was apparently picked up by DJs in Israel, which lead to the surprise US success (one of the few songs by a British rock act to make the Top 40 there in the 1990s), and eventually to a belated re-issue on home soil, though the band had supposedly already moved on from the album, releasing the non-LP single 'Pop Is Dead' (they later disowned it). None of this meant anything to me at the time, it wasn't until the success of singles from The Bends in 1995-6 that I was even aware of the band's existence, let alone of how great they were. It leaves me in the unusual position of never having known Radiohead as the band who did 'Creep' and thus coming to this song from a slightly different perspective to most. 

For good or ill, it's a lot more conventional than a lot of the band's most critically acclaimed work, and sometimes dismissed as excessively commercial, but I think that might be something of a retrospective judgement. Yorke has apparently claimed that the portrayal of a misfit is supposed to be a happy one, and if he wasn't just mucking about that offers an interesting perspective, implying that the song is about acceptance of inadequacy as much as suffering from it. That's a difficult interpretation to spin, really, not helped by the naturally anguished tone of his voice. Despite or because of this, I don't find it among their easiest songs to connect with emotionally, and I can't quite tell you why (I certainly don't lack personal experience of feeling inadequate). I like the song, and whenever I hear it on the radio or in a public place I have to listen up to the first chorus just in case they're playing the uncensored version by mistake. But it doesn't mean as much to me as a lot of their best work. That hasn't stopped it turning into a regular chart returnee for them in the download age though, and this very week Macy Gray has released her cover of it. 

They won't thank me for saying this, but I reckon as case could be made for this as the first Britpop track on a Now! album too.

Also appearing on: Now 26, 33, 37, 38, 39, 49
Available on: Pablo Honey (Collector's Edition) [Explicit]