Who could have imagined that Radiohead’s “Creep”, that dark, spiky, idiosyncratic paean to self-loathing, would become one of the most covered rock songs from the 1990’s? It’s not only recorded by a huge variety of artists, but also covered in a rather dizzying variety of styles and attitudes.
Creep – Radiohead
The original version, a classic of 1990’s alternative rock is the internal monologue of an awkward young man as he tries to make conversation with a woman, or maybe just follows her like a stalker at a party. He thinks she’s an “angel”, but considers himself a “creep” who doesn’t “belong here”. His extreme self-loathing ultimately becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when the woman extricates herself from his attentions (“She’s running out the door”) and he’s left licking his wounds (“Whatever makes you happy”). The lines between his self-loathing, his crush, and a certain aggression against the woman herself are ultimately blurred. By the end his declaring her “so fucking special” sounds as admiring as it sounds angry. No wonder she runs out the door.
The particulars of Radiohead’s 1992 recording, the quality of the male vocal, recessive and haltingly melodic on the verses, then soaring in elongated falsetto on the bridge, combined with clustering guitar chords that slash into the song before threatening to overwhelm the singer on the choruses, make the original so distinctive and so seemingly dependent on its unique elements to succeed artistically, that one could have reasonably suspected at the time that this is one of those pop/rock songs that belong solely to the original artists, succeed because of the particular qualities of the recording and don’t lend themselves well to copying or reinterpretation. And oh, how one would have turned out to be wrong (for better and for worse).
Creep – Scala & Kolacny Brothers
Listen to the above version of “Creep” by Scala & Kolacny Brothers, a Belgian Girls Choir, singing live accompanied only by a piano. As I indicated already, there are many versions of “Creep”, in many extremely different styles, but this is my personal favorite. It was famously and very effectively used as the music for the trailer for the movie “The Social Network”. A girl’s choir is probably vocally as polar opposite from Radiohead’s pinched male vocals as one could get. However, the fact that the voices sound so young – before I saw a photo of the group, I imagined these could be middle school girls singing – imbues this version with a healthy dose of adolescent anxieties. I can easily picture an teenage girl feeling as awkward and self-loathing as the Radiohead protagonist. And the slow tempo, the plaintive singing, the menacing whispering of “I wish I was special” is ineffably sad, haunting, and suitably creepy.
“Creep” and Girls with Guitars
But how did this vogue and eventual avalanche of “Creep” covers begin? It looks like credit is due to Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders.
Notes from a Composer 