Entry 4: Radiohead's "Creep"

Radiohead is an English rock band that became popular in the early nineties and released their latest album last February. I love Radiohead, and they're recognized one of the great alternative, angsty rock bands. However, most people know them from their song "Creep." 

Gotta love it

There was an acapella-ish version used in a trailer for The Social Network (The Social Network-Creep), which I also thought was really good. The point is that it's well known and listened to a lot.

No, this song is not an advertisement for anything. The lyrics are intensely depressing, and perfect to listen to when you need a good cry. I'll admit I've laid on my floor at least once thinking, Oh Thom Yorke, I wish I was special too.(I was probably not only thinking, but singing it soulfully as well). This approach is generally the opposite method advertisers use to reach potential consumers. If someone is sad in a commercial, they end up happy by the end of it, but the last lyrics of Creep are "I don't belong here. I don't belong here." But that's because advertisers are trying to convince you that you need something, so somewhere in there they have to have someone being all happy that they own this thing you now need. All musicians are trying to sell is their music, and once you're listening to it it's already been sold to you, so they have more leeway to send different kinds of messages. 

Creep is kind of an anti-commercial. Normal ads leave you with this optimistic, life-will-improve mindset, while this song basically says "go die, you deeply flawed, worthless...wait for it...creep." And yet, it sells itself in a similar way advertisements do. 

"I want to have control/I want a perfect body/I want a perfect soul/I want you to notice when I'm not around" These are the need to dominate, need for attention or affiliation, and need for autonomy (breed apart), almost exactly expressed. Commercials appeal to these needs to make you feel inadequate, but in a treatable way, with their product being the treatment. This song appeals to these needs purely to engage our more fundamental cravings as humans. There are very few people who don't identify at all with wanting a perfect soul and body. 

Why would people listen to something that's inevitably going to make them feel bad? It's like the cliche ice cream-eating stage of a breakup. 

It will get better

There's a part of us that wants to feel bad, that revels in wallowing. It's a kind of bitter satisfaction, I mean, look at emo kids. Most of them have no reason whatsoever to be as "depressed" (big emphasis on the quotes) as they are, or want to seem. For some reason, desolation and angst have become glorified. It's almost attractive in some social circles to be this plagued, tortured soul, and people (teenage girls, especially, as usual) are trying so so hard to seem cool by acting depressed.

Get off Facebook, poser.

Radiohead has been accused of being whiny. In one of the best South Park episodes ever, Scott Tenorman Must Die, the members of Radiohead make fun of Scott: "Geez, what a little crybaby. You gonna cry all day, crybaby? You know, everyone has problems, it doesn't mean you have to go and be a little crybaby about it." Because this is South Park, it's definitely making fun of more than one thing at a time. Not only poor Scott is being mocked, but Radiohead as well. It's describing their music in the words of many Radiohead critics. 

As painful as it is to admit about one of my favorite bands, Radiohead is pretty whiny, especially their song Creep. It appeals to listeners because it gives us an opportunity to wallow in our buried, but ever present self-hate, and also feel like we share it with other listeners and the band.