Radiohead: Creep

One of the most recognized songs of the 1990s, and indeed one of the songs that continues to define the decade musically, is Radiohead: Creep. The song was also the public’s introduction to Radiohead, an enormously influential band that continues to be on the cutting edge of music.

About Radiohead: Creep

Although it was technically preceded by the somewhat obscure Drill EP, Creep was Radiohead’s first single from their debut album, Pablo Honey. The song was released with a distinct lack of fanfare in September, 1992 in the UK, and was generally met with a lack of enthusiasm. The UK’s all powerful Radio One – the station that a band needs to be playing their records on if they are to make it in the charts – gave the song a couple of spins and then famously deemed it “too depressing” to play again. The band quickly followed up with a second single, Anyone Can Play Guitar, which was slightly more successful in the UK, and then a third, called Pop is Dead, in early 1993 as the band was heading out to tour in support of Pablo Honey.

Although the UK was only slowly warming up to Radiohead, the rest of the world slowly began to beg to differ with the British line on Radiohead: Creep. The first sign of success was a huge boom in popularity in Israel, as the influential Israeli radio station, Galei Tzahal put the song on their A playlist. Things really began to take off for Radiohead when first American college radio stations and then American mainstream radio stations began to pick up on the song in May 1993. Seemingly overnight, the Radiohead: Creep video was in heavy rotation on MTV and Radiohead quickly became a fan favorite stateside. The song cracked the Top 40 charts, which is an almost unheard of achievement for a so-called “college rock” band (a label understandably despised by the band).

Given the success of the single in the US, EMI, Radiohead’s label, re-issued Pablo Honey and re-released Creep as a single. This time, the song caught on and rose to number 7 in the UK music charts.

My Iron Lung

Nothing makes a band as unhappy as being forced into the role of one-trick pony, and it didn’t take long for Radiohead to tire of taking to the stage in front of audiences only interested in hearing them play Creep. The band took to berating the audiences for wanting to hear the song before they played it, and then eventually they stopped playing it altogether.

The song was on mothballs from summer 1998 until 2001, when the band launched into it at a concert in Oxford, UK – apparently to cover up some equipment failure problems. Since the 2001 show, the band occasionally trots the song out, most notably at the V Festival in 2006.

Radiohead chronicled the way they felt about Creep with the 1994 EP My Iron Lung (the title track of which would also later appear on 1995’s The Bends). The song My Iron Lung compared Creep to a life support system for the band.

Radiohead as Activists

Radiohead eventually went on to even larger success than Creep when their album OK Computer and later Kid A, both went on to win Grammy Awards. Despite the musical success, however, the band is equally as well known for championing the causes of digital downloading, internet neutrality and keeping P2P networks legal. Radiohead’s views on P2P networks are shaped by their own experiences, namely the impact of P2P sharing on sales of OK Computer. Weeks before the release of the album, all of the tracks from OK Computer were leaked to Napster (when Napster was not a fee based service). The tracks were traded millions of times before the album release date. The result? OK Computer debuted at number 1 in the charts.

The band put their money where their mouth is with the 2007 release of In Rainbows. The album was released as a digital download and fans were allowed to pay whatever they wanted for the album – even if they wanted to pay nothing at all. Official sales figures have not been released, but the band’s Thom Yorke claims that the profits far exceeded the downloading profits from all of their other albums combined.

Listen to Radiohead: Creep

You can watch the video for Creep by clicking here.