To say I’ve always listened to Radiohead would be a lie. During my teens (which, in actual years would be mid to late nineties) I listened to a lot of indie music. Oasis were at the number 1 position in my top bands, followed with the likes of Blur, Manic Street Preachers, R.E.M. and the Stereophonics.
It was fair to say that my taste was fairly narrow and I was 16 when someone lent me a Radiohead album. It sat unlistened for a while in my room, until one day I decided to put it on as some background music. The album in question was OK Computer and immediately I fell in love with it. Paranoid Android for me really captured the whole album and I was blown away with the three distinct, but amazing sections of the song. I then wondered what other albums Radiohead had produced and I bought The Bends - again, love it!! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better I played the last track and found Fade Out, one of my favourite songs of all time. It was a couple of years later that I went to see Radiohead live and heard for the first time Creep.
When I bought Pablo Honey and started (as I always did with new CDs) reading the lyrics I noticed that Creep was actually the first song Radiohead had written. I was surprised mainly because I thought it was so good that only a truly experienced band could have written it.
So, as with a lot of things that I find interesting, I started doing some research on Creep. It was apparently written by the lead man, Thom Yorke after a girl came and watched them performing while he was doing a gig at the university he was at in Exeter. In fact, rumours are that Yorke started following this girl around campus, and this is where the inspiration for the song came from. Presumably this is where the lyrics “when you were here before couldn’t look you in the eye” come from.
It was released in September 1992 but met very little success, selling only 6,000 copies in the UK. Radio 1 only played it twice and then removed it from it’s playlist announcing that it was “too depressing”. However, it become popular in the US after a radio station in San Francisco heard a copy and starting playing it. Soon, other radio stations were playing it and MTV frequently played the video. After this initial success in the US Radiohead re-released Creep and it reached number 7 in the UK Chart.
As Creep became successful Radiohead began to dislike the song - during the mid 90s they played it less and less, and between 1998 and 2001 they didn’t play it at all. More recently however, Radiohead have started to play Creep again during their live performances.
radiohead creep is a dedication to the song - containing lyrics, videos, info and much more!