The success of the English debut single threatened to classify them as one-hit wonders, even after acclaimed albums
A hit song can become an anchor, especially when it doesn’t reflect an artist or band’s musical direction. It was the case of Radiohead with “Creep”who decided to remove their first hit from shows for years.
Present on the English quintet’s debut album, Pablo Honey (1993), the song had not even been considered for recording initially. The vocalist’s composition Thom Yorkecreated in the 1980s, was presented to producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie during a leisure time in the studio. The duo liked it so much that they proposed recording it — and as the album’s main single.
Some members were unhappy. The guitarist Johnny Greenwood tried to ruin the recording by banging his instrument during the pre-chorus (via Igor Miranda website), which ended up becoming quite a hook.
Radiohead’s unexpected hit
Initially, “Creep”, which was released as a single in 1992, was a sales failure. It did not reach the British top 40 and had “only” six thousand copies sold. However, it charted in Israel at the end of that year, soon after becoming a hit on college radio stations in California, in the United States.
The boom came with the turn of the year. Suddenly, Radiohead was catapulted to the same level as Nirvana and even labeled with a grunge sound that they never pursued.
The musicians were taken by surprise by this success and the dimension that everything took from then on. In particular, the difficulty of extending all of this. Guitarist Ed O’Brien told Rolling Stone USA in 2017:
A hit like that wasn’t part of the plan. We were really excited… the first tour was sold out, and our American manager said: ‘You know, I’ve been touring with active bands for seven, eight years, and this isn’t common here’. So it was great on the one hand. However, we couldn’t continue this. The album had some songs that were OK, but we didn’t have a solid body of work. We didn’t know what we were doing.”
Soon, Radiohead found themselves in front of an audience only interested in listening to “Creep”. Jonny Greenwood described to Classic Rock (via Far Out) scenes of fans leaving shows after the song was played:
We seemed to be living the same four and a half minutes constantly. It was suffocating.
One person who especially suffered was the vocalist Thom Yorke. In 2000, to the New York Times in 2000, the singer reflected on the pressure of not becoming a one-hit wonder:
‘You can’t imagine how horrible it was. And the thing about being a one-hit wonder: you know, you start to believe it. Even after proving otherwise, the thought is still there. It affected me a lot.”
The solution: take it out of shows
Radiohead’s third album, OK Computer (1997), became one of the most acclaimed works of the 1990s. Even so, journalists and fans still asked about “Creep”.
Thom Yorke has lost his mind. He shouted at a fan during a concert in Montreal, held in 1998, and cursed those still interested in the song.
It took until 2001 for the group to play “Creep” live again — and even then it was because of a technical glitch that prevented them from starting another song. Since then, Radiohead have rarely included the track in setlists. Brazil saw two appearances during shows in 2009, in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
During the album tour A Moon Shaped Pool (2016), the song began to appear semi-regularly at shows. Still, the band was hesitant to make it a regular part of the set. Ed O’Brien explained to Rolling Stone USA The reasoning is: people want to hear it, but they avoid playing it because they don’t want it to “become too showbusiness”.
Collaborated: Pedro Hollanda.
Source: Rollingstone
Earl Johnson is a music writer at Gossipify, known for his in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the industry. A graduate of USC with a degree in Music, he brings years of experience and passion to his writing. He covers the latest releases and trends, always on the lookout for the next big thing in music.
