Radiohead - Creep

whatever makes you happy: Radiohead’s distancing themselves from this song is well-known (given that they even wrote another song, “My Iron Lung”, about how much they disliked it) and understandable: As a radio-friendly guitar rock song that unfolds its whiny lyrics full of teenage obsession over a plagiarized four-chord progression, it is hardly representative of what Radiohead's sound evolved into. It follows that in Radiohead's rare later performances of the song, the alienation on Thom Yorke’s face could not be more obvious. Yet, the song has one of these glorious moments that let us catch a glimpse of later Radiohead’s trademark greatness: the bridge, a wonderful climax that integrates a meandering, fragile but powerful falsetto voice with some crisp drum fills and a contrasting melodic line in the shredding guitar style typical of Greenwood in his early days (which undoubtedly contributed to his sustained carpal tunnel problems). My interest in playing this song is owed to that bridge, to the challenge of having a shot at the falsetto and adapting the shredding guitar to the possibilities of the piano: It may sound like a made-up story, but during the days I was practicing Radiohead’s “Optimistic” with its falsetto chorus, one night I dreamed about playing this bridge, and in my dream the falsetto came out perfectly and it was all a powerful and cathartic experience. So I decided to give it a try, and eventually it turned out to be that passage that I find most enjoyable to play. There is something about singing falsetto that goes to the core; the feeling I have is of changing gear and switching to a steady pitch at full throttle. It may be similar to primal scream therapy in that there is something deeply liberating about falsetto, as opposed to chest voice which I find harder to domesticate and where I could never really go to the limit. From a songwriting perspective, this song’s strength is its structure – it is a perfectly balanced pop-rock ballad: The basic chord progression which repeats throughout the whole song (as evidenced in the bass line) provides cohesion, the outbursts of the chorus strongly contrast with the subdued verses, the bridge unleashes a furious climax, and the coda functions as a sort of resigned acoustic afterthought. In my arrangement I have decided to leave the parts as intact as possible, save for the chorus where I had to take some decisions on chord voicing while maintaining the rhythm. As with all of my arrangements this creates some rather un-piano-like moments with big arpeggios and leaps, but maintains the sound of the original. The opening remarks are not to say that this is not a good song lyric-wise; it is a perfect snapshot of a feeling that many people can relate to, of a time when you are looking for your place in the world, when you are fostering an obsessive, self-deprecating affection for someone you perceive to be perfect and above your league, and when you are pitying yourself for your misfortune. As perfectly as the song may encapsulate these feelings, there is an immaturity in all this typically associated with teenage years, and I guess this is where part of the uneasy relationship Radiohead has with this song comes from: Having outgrown their teenage anxieties they did no longer want to align themselves with and pander to the maladjustment and insecurity of younger audiences, especially when bigger issues of environment, government and society entered their radar. So while there is nothing wrong with “not belonging somewhere”, wallowing in self-pity and stylizing some girl into a sort of über-figure and savior is certainly not the way to go about it. As I sing this song, I cannot evoke the pathos I had when I was a teenager, but I try to sing it with a sincere respect for these feelings which seem a little ridiculous in retrospective, but feel very real when you are there. Today, although I still do not belong in most places, I do not give myself the benefit of blaming it on being a weirdo – even if you identify with this song, chances are you are not a weirdo either, despite what you think.