One Song - Radiohead's "Creep"

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

You love this song. But the band who wrote it? They hate it. And in many ways, that’s entirely appropriate. Because on this episode of One Song Diallo Riddle and LUXXURY are wading deep into a song that ’s an ode to self-loathing, anxiety, obsession, neurosis, self-lacerating rage, and … being kind of a creep.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to One Song, a podcast we make here at Sirius XM at Heartbeat Studios, because I'm luxury and your diallo. Welcome to One Song. Luxury, my man, that was amazing. Was it though? No, it was. I always, you know, I think of you mainly like keyboards and all this other stuff. But you're a hell of a guitarist. You're very kind.

You know what? It's very kind of you to say that. We're going to talk about a band today for whom technical proficiency wonderfully is actually not necessarily front and center. So, you know, I played a few chords there. It's true. But one thing I do love about the band we're talking about today is how what they do is playing with sound and ideas coming out of an era where being Eddie Van Halen was important.

They're like, you know what, let's get past that. You don't have to play a bajillion notes a second. What's funny is when I first saw the title on our calendar, today's song kind of has me in a mood a little bit. It's a darker song. And I think that I'm like, I'm absorbing a little bit of the energy of the song today. Like I got the toad, man. I feel like I'm like in the 90s.

Right. A little brady, a little cranky. Yeah, a little slackery. Right. But also it's funny you say that because, because the band probably feels pretty similarly to you about this song. It's a great song, they love it, but they're a little tired of it. Throughout their career, as we'll be talking about today, they've had a love-hate relationship.

Yeah, they didn't even play it for several years. Yeah, they go on and off many years without playing it. Well, listen, today's song is an ode to self-loving, anxiety, obsession, neurosis, self-lacerating rage, and being kind of a creep. Just kind of, kind of, sort of a creep. This is a band that went on to be known for far more experimental and challenging music. a little bit later. That's right. I actually often forget that this is them. Right. Who sing this song. It feels like a different band. It feels like a different band. Yeah. Interesting,

right? And this song is by far and away their biggest hit. It's not even close. It's like 1.5 billion streams. It went double platinum in Italy, Spain and the UK, three times platinum in New Zealand and Portugal. Seven times platinum in Canada. VH1 ranked it one of the best songs of the 90s and Rolling Stone named it the 118th greatest song of all time. And if Rolling Stone says it, it's got to be true. That's your catchphrase. I think we found it. I want beef with Rolling Stone.

I think they stopped publishing a magazine at some point. Then they just started coming out with lists. And we used those lists all the time on the show. Who's writing the list this month? Its biggest impact comes from being an alt rock slacker anthem that helped define the early 90s aesthetic. And I think about this song and I think about Loser by Beck. And I think about some of the other songs.

There are a couple of things. songs that scream 1990s. Yeah, they're all of the same moment. You're right. Sort of the post-grunge, post-Nirvana. Like, the thing that changed when Nirvana happened is this. Yeah, absolutely. This episode of one song is for all the weirdos.

It's Creep by Radiohead. Okay, so Diallo, creep drops in 1993. Set the scene for me, where is young Diallo when you first hear this song? You know what's interesting? I didn't realize this song came out in 93. I guess the first time I heard it was in high school. But, you know, by the time

I, you know, it was probably the summer that I was graduating. Was it like on the radio or MTV? Yeah. Oh, the video was all over MTV. This takes me back to a time when videos could like really launch a song. People would be like talking about the video.

The video was so important. The video was so, so cool. I kind of miss, you know, there being things like an MTV or you know, even like, you know, KCRW public radio out here. there used to be a lot of places to go to find cool new music. And I feel like nowadays with sort of everybody off in their Spotify corner

and the algorithm sort of feeding you what it assumes that you like, like, you know, I don't know that it would know from the songs that I've liked on Spotify that I would love this song, but I do. I do love this song. And it's cool in the discovery, as you were saying, like with MTV specifically or the box or whatever. Like when you've got video, there's something cool about the discovery happening like multimedia. Yeah. Like obviously it's music, so the song is important first and foremost, but the visuals and

who the band are, what they look like, can be powerful. It all makes a big impression collectively. Yeah, I agree. And by the way, the CDs that you would have in your CD rack back in the day used to say a lot about you. You know, like, I used to, you know, some people would advertise theirs. I would always, like, sort of like, rank them in my case. And I remember Pablo Honey was in every, every dorm room. Yeah.

By the time I was in college, Pablo Honey was always there. Were your CD racks, were they vertical or horizontal, though? Like, did you have to like? I, you know what's interesting? I'm thinking about the vertical, but most of the time I just stack the CDs on a drawer. Yeah, because you've got to be thoughtful. Because if it's vertical, then only the top one's ever going to get listening to. No one's going to listen to the one that's 10 down.

How about you? How did you first hear it? And what made it stick out to you musically? Well, I was going to say a little foreshadowing is I remember hearing this for the first time in San Francisco where I grew up. I was home from college, and I would have heard it on Live 105, the radio station, which is an important part of this story will be coming. coming back to in a minute. And it's one of those songs that it's memorably, it blows you out of the car. You've got to pull over to listen to it maybe kind of thing. So I remember very distinctly being like,

what is this? Because of the chachunk that we'll be talking about soon enough, the sound. It makes the song. I find like anytime I hear the song, I'm just kind of waiting for the chachunk to show up. I mean, we were just playing it in the room. Obviously, I just performed it myself. It's like, that is the moment. Like, it is the anticipation of that moment. And then the release, the catharsis, is so satisfying. It happens twice in the song, and then you've got to go back and listen again. Maybe you fast forward past the intro,

which is a little long. And Kachunk hits the deepest part of your... It really does. It's the inner part of my soul. And I want to know everything about it. I'm so happy that we have the stems for this song. So, yeah, yeah, I would say... In a completely new way than you've ever heard it before.

So in the early 90s, we're talking about a moment where Nirvana has happened. As we talked about in our Nirvana episode, call back. If you haven't listened, go back and listen. Great episode on Smells Like, Chin's Spirit. We did a good job, I think. Yeah, I like that episode. We talk about, though, how the culture changed overnight.

Because what Nirvana brought in terms of the sound and the ideas and the attitude, the sort of punk rock energy, and suddenly it's on Top 40 Radio, changed everything. And one of the bands in its wake, and frankly, kind of an attitude that starts to happen in the culture in its wake is this, we got Beck with Loser. Very similar song, Loser, because literally this song is like, I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. And this is, I'm a loser, baby. Songs about not having a lot of self-esteem are starting to be a thing. And it's part of this sort of slacker culture.

We have the Richard Linklater movie Slacker. We have reality bites with Janine Garofalo. There's this thing happening in the culture where there's a cynicism, there's an irony. There's a kind of distancing yourself from feeling and emotion to sort of harden yourself. And the irony layer is really interesting to me because I think we've talked about this on an earlier episode, just sort of touched the surface. but like, you know, David Letterman comes on the scene, and he's all about this like knowingness, this tone where what he's saying, you know is the opposite of what he means.

Yeah. Which is kind of a newish thing in pop culture. We've always had cynicism. We've always had irony. But it being something on in the mainstream where you know that something is referring to something else, it's starting to feel a little different to me, I'd say. Yeah. And I mean, like, you know, this is like when Seinfeld's taking off and like,

perfect. All of these things are sort of being created on their own in their own. in their own sort of unique creative vacuums. But then taking a look back at this decade as a whole, you're sort of like, oh, there are some through lines here. Yeah. And it relates to me to Radiohead because a big part of who they are as a band is a band that's come up during the, you know, raised in the 70s and 80s.

They've been exposed to a lot of rock and roll and pop music cliches, and they don't want to be it. So when this song becomes a hit and they become this big pop music darling and traveling the world, they have to deal with having their cake and eating it too. To them, they wanted this. They wanted success. But it's not necessarily on their terms. It's not their favorite song in their catalog. So it's a very interesting moment of having to be like, are we becoming this cliche that we're trying to rail against? Well, one other thing I would point out is that, you know, early and mid-90s have two very different scenes that I feel like Radiohead got lumped in with, sort of against their wishes. But they don't fit in either group. So you have, you know, in America, you have grunge, obviously. And there is sort of like a grunge element to this song. There's a connection.

I would say, I hear what you're saying. I think the pixies are what connect. It's that quiet, loud thing. Yeah, quiet loud. Which we talked about in Nirvana episode. That's definitely the pixies. That goes into Nirvana. And it's kind of going into Radiohead in parallel.

Like they both share doing the quiet verse and the loud chorus, but they don't necessarily share a lot of the other aesthetics. But you know what else is interesting is that at the same time, so you have grunge, which, you know, creep sort of, sounds like a grungy song. But then you also have, you know, that explosion of Britpop happening. And I remember early on, like Radiohead used to get lumped in with like blur and Oasis and all the other British groups that were, you know, part of this, you know, whatever it was the third British invasion or whatever. The invasion didn't really happen because Britpot doesn't really take off in the United States.

Right. It never quite explodes. It never quite did that. It gets pretty big, but it's never quite, it doesn't take over the world. Like Nirvana takes over the world from us to them. Exactly. Our export. But I just find it interesting.

that like Radiohead got lumped in with grunge, got lumped in with Britpop, and it doesn't, and those genres can't be any different. Yeah. And Radiohead doesn't fit in neither of those genres. And they never did ever again, outside of this one song, which barely fits on the album it's from,

Paolo Honey, where you don't really have any other songs that sound like it. Yeah. So it's just this one song, this one moment. Imagine being at some of those early Radiohead concerts. Yeah. It's just like, I'm just waiting for creep. I'm just waiting for the Chechunk.

And the band is just rolling their eyes going, they're just here for the Chichunk. All right, D'allelah, so this song has a pretty interesting story, but before I walk you through that, why don't you walk us through the band's backstory a little bit more? Yeah, just real quick, I want to say a little bit about Radiohead. First off, they took their name Radiohead from a Talking Head song, Radiohead, off of the True Story. That's really cool. I totally didn't know that.

Yeah, that's cool. Can we hear the song? Yeah, let's hear. Let's hear a little bit of Radiohead off of True Stories. That's such a strange choice of the Talking Head song, because I love the Talking Heads. It's not my favorite record. It sounds so unlike all the like Afrobeat influence stuff, which is my favorite talking at Zara.

But that's where the band... That's where they got their name. That's where Radiohead got their name. That's crazy. That's cool. Because before they chose that name, they actually were called on a Friday. And I think the label was like, no, we don't want to do this.

I mean, Radiohead's a pretty bad name, too. It's one of the things that you get used to it over the years, but then when you're thinking about it's like Radiohead. Not great, but love the band. Tom York, the singer from Radiohead, said, that he always liked that song because it's about communication in the ways that, you know, he says it more eloquently than I,

but he's got a really sort of like deep philosophy on why that song means so much to him. I love that. And so he put them together. He latched on to that word. He did. Yeah. They came out with an EP called Drill, you know,

pretty much flops. Like it doesn't do anything in the UK or obviously. Before Pablo Honey, there isn't a P, people don't talk about very much. But when they decided that they were going to tour America in the hopes that they would use some of that momentum to break them ironically in the UK. Usually we hear the opposite.

We hear like, oh, we had to take Jimmy Hendrix to the UK so that people would book them in America. This is sort of the opposite of that. And they enlist Paul Coulterie and Sean Slade because they had worked with the Pixies. I heard you mentioned earlier like, oh, yeah, there's a little bit of a pixies thing going on here. They produced the debut album, Pablo Honey. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting because you mentioned Paul Coldery and Sean Slade,

producers who work together and produced the whole album, Pablo Honey, that Creep is on. You know, most people know Nigel Goddrich as being kind of the, I was going to say the fifth member, the fifth beetle, but he's the sixth, he's the sixth beetle of Radiohead, and he's produced all their records after this one. But he wasn't in the picture yet. So the two producers, Couldery and Slade, they were working on songs looking for a single. They were looking to help basically craft the thing that would blow everybody up, including their own careers. Creep was not one of the songs that they were hired to produce. It wasn't one of the singles in contention, in other words. What happened was during the rehearsals for the songs that are called Inside My Head and Lurgy, by the way, neither of which

I think made the cut, Tom York started playing the song he had written at Exeter University in late 80s. And the whole band knew it because they had been playing it in rehearsals, but they just, to them, it wasn't a serious thing. It was just something to do to goof off to kind of like break, they're getting sick of the two songs they were playing over and over again. So let's play that other song, that one that Tom wrote. So when they played it, Slade and Couldery heard it and we're like, this is pretty good, you guys. Like, what about this one?

We think with our producer ears, our American producer ears, and we did the pixie. So listen to us, we think this could be something. And dismissively, it's sort of a joke. Tom York was like, oh, no, no, no, that's just, that's our Scott Walker song. So Scott Walker, for those who don't know, this incredible singer, very well-known. kind of in indie circles as like one of these names, one of these artists that never quite break into the mainstream, but like all indie, you know, it's like the Velvet Underground. Only 20 people ever saw them play live, but every single one of them formed a band.

It's kind of like Scott Walker. I'm going to play you a little bit of Scott Walker. He's got a beautiful voice. You may hear a little bit of one of Tom York's influences in it. It's from 1960s. But if you're able to kind of, you know, there is a connection. This is a beautiful haunting voice. He's got a really beautiful voice. It almost sounds like a French song to my ears. And then it's got this very strange thing happening in the background with the strings. It's almost dissonant. It's very jarring. And then there's this like sort of beautiful melancholy pop song over it. I mean, foreshadowing to the rest of Radiohead's career after creep, right? This is something they end up using kind of as a template. So Scott Walker is already in the picture. And, what happens is the producers misunderstand. They think that it's a cover.

They think that what Tom York has just said is, oh, that's a song, that's a cover of a Scott Walker's song. And then when it's finally clarified that, no, we just refer to it as a joke. It's our Scott Walker song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once they realize that this is in contention, that this is a song, a brand new original song, they decide, you know what, we think this is pretty good.

Let's record it. They do. And then everyone listens back and they're like, wait a second, we have something special here. Tom turns... Something very, very, very... I wish I would be. special? So very special. Tom turns to Johnny, apparently, Tom York, the singer, turns to

guitar player Johnny Greenwood after they've listened back and they said, what do you think? And Johnny goes, it's the best thing we've ever done. So interesting that they have this... By the way, if your name is Johnny Greenwood, you have to be a guitarist. Like, that just sounds like a guitarist. It's a very guitar player name. Yeah. So Caldery, the producer, convinces AMI to release Creep as a single. It goes out in the UK, September 21st, 1992, and it flops hard. Yeah, I didn't It only sells 6,000 copies. That's crazy. It gets reviewed very poorly.

The London Evening Standard says, quote, a gloomy anthem of self-loathing, sprinkled with the F word, and a miserable refrain. I think this is the first song we've ever done that was actually blacklisted by BBC Radio One. They played it three times and dropped it saying it was too depressing. Too depressing. And then the enemy, just to add insult to injury and injury on top of the insult, said pitiful, lily-livered excuse for a rock.

rock and roll group. Dang. So it does not do well. It peaks at 78 in the UK charts. And they are ready to throw in the towel. I don't know. I don't know how what the mood is inside the locker room. But one day they hear that it's becoming a hit in Israel.

There's this DJ down there who's sort of the John Peel of Israel who's playing it. It's becoming a hit. Start spreading. New Zealand. It becomes a hit. Spain. It becomes a hit. There's a DJ in San Francisco who is actually a friend of mine.

Shout out to Aaron Axelson from Live 105. At the time, he was an intern and a college radio station called KCRH in the Bay Area. He was also interning at Live 105. He buys the record because he's working at a record store and he listens to it and he's like, this is amazing. And this is a classic DJ as tastemaker slash career maker story where he takes it to his boss, Steve Masters at Live 105,

says, we should play this. They start playing it and it gets into heavy rotation just on this one radio station, but then other radio stations start to join in because that's how radio works. It's kind of this phenomenon. I'm like, wait, this is a hit, getting a lot of attention. The listeners love it.

And it spreads up and down the West Coast. It ends up being quite popular in California by the end of the year. In fact, it's number one on Live 105. K-Rock starts playing it. And as we get into 1993, it is starting to spread throughout the U.S. There's this buzz happening. And just like a little quick anecdote, many years later, again, Aaron Axelson, the same DJ who played Radiohead for the first time and broke them in the U.S.,

he played my music for the first time. So I have him to think, because that was my, pulling over to the side of the road moment when I heard my own music on Live 105 many years later. So I'm very grateful to him. I think Tom York and the boys from Radiohead are grateful in many more dollars worth of grateful perhaps. But he deserves his flowers. I mean, you may not, I don't know if you'll know this, but when did MTV get into it? Because I feel like, again, I think my first exposure to it was probably through MTV. This is around the time in early 1993. So first of all, in February, Pablo Honey, the album,

is released, because it is released as a single leading up to the album, in hopes that it'll build buzz, which number 78 and 6,000 sales in the UK does not build buzz, but in America the buzz is starting to build. And they did redo that F word, the one

that the London Evening Standard complained about. They redid the line You're so fucking special, which is still on the album version, but they made a cleaned up version for American radio ears. So very special. So very special. Which sounds so sarcastic. I can just picture him singing that and going, you're so very, it's perfect, though, for the tone of the song.

You know what's crazy? And we've talked about this on the show before. Sometimes those edits make a song better. Like, I'm not saying, like, yeah, so fucking special is really good. It's really good. But so very special. Like, there's something nice going on. There's something nice about withholding. A little bit because we haven't even gotten to the Kachunk yet, and you're already, the anger's already there. Let's have more of a buildup, a slow build to the Kachunk. Absolutely. I'm reminded of the Snoop Dog lyric. I got my gauge and who's, and a motherfucking 22, which for radio became,

I got a gauge, and Uzi, and my nickel-plated 22. I always thought, better imagery. Yeah, that actually works better. You know, it's more specific, nickel-plated. Yeah.

Hold back on some of those F-words. Yeah, come on. It gives them more power. Snoop. Come back on the F-words. Well, to answer your question, by the summer of 93, creep is a massive alt-nation,

you know, slacker anthem, if you will, thanks to MTV, thanks to world, thanks to, I should say, not worldwide, but thanks to U.S.

radio, is making it a hit. And, they are actually the first ever guests on Conan, late night with Conan O'Brien. In September, they play, they play Creep. My next guests have taken self-loathing and raised it to an art form.

Please welcome our very first musical guest, and I really like these guys, Radiohead. Almost exactly 12 months from its initial launch, EMI re-releases Creep in England, and it goes to number seven, and it is on. Yeah. It is on. The song starts to take over planet Earth.

That's so wild that it had to have a second life. Yeah, it's so lucky, too. And again, the story, I think it really can't be over-emphasized how, like, the decision of one DJ had such power. Like, that one choice that this gentleman, Mr. Axelson's ears were like, I really like this song. I just like this. I think other people will too. Sometimes, especially in this era where radio has become so corporate, we have this sometimes presumption that it's all algorithms and, you know, focus groups. No, a lot of times it's just one person saying, I like this.

and having the power to play it on the air. And other people like it, too, is what makes a song happen and what makes a band's career begin. Coming up after the break, more creeps, more weirdos, and an isolated guitar stem that will blow your head off.

Get ready. It's going to break your speakers. Welcome back to one song, luxury. I'm so excited to hear the stems. Let's start. What do you want to play for us? Let's get into it with the drums. This is Phil Selway playing the drums.

I just heard a song in my song. What did you hear? We hear the same thing? It's not pour some sugar on me. It's one of those hair metal bands. I'm going to play it and you'll be like, that's the one. It's the Aerosmith Walk This Way, Beat. You know what's funny is that like, you forget, this song was, you know, kind of composed probably in the late 80s since you said he was still a student. Yeah. And those drums would have been perfectly in line with the music on the radio at that time.

With the Aerosmith Run DMC remake that had just come out. Yeah, it's so funny hearing them. The drums don't kind of go with the vibe of the song. It's hilarious. This is such speculation on my part. I'm just going to say it, though. I really feel like so much of this song is a goof. In other words, we've talked about this phenomenon.

Sometimes you're playing something as a musician, whether it's your part or the song as writ large, and there's something about it that you know is a little bit, maybe not corny, but there's something like, cliche, that's the word I'm looking for. There's something done before, especially these guys. This is Radiohead who make a career after, this song of doing the unexpected. The chord changes, the time signatures, the like use of

instruments, you know, songs without any drums. I know. All of that experimentation is about to happen in their career, but they haven't quite maybe gotten there yet. But I definitely think that playing that drumbeat, they were maybe all winking a little bit, a little bit like, this is walked this way, isn't it? So when we get to the chorus, Mr. Selway unloads, he starts to loosen the high hat, and then he breaks into the big chorus beat. Let's hear that. But he's still playing the kick drum, but don't, but that's walk this way.

It's interesting. When you hear those symbols, you realize it's, you know, it's kind of a slacky way of playing the symbols. Like it's kind of like, you can hear the self-loathing

and the fact that the symbol is not quite with the rest of the song. You know what I mean? It's synectiki. Each of the individual parts comprises the whole, even the ride symbol is like,

I'm slacking and I'm a creep. It's like, I'm not happy playing the symbol. I'm a bad person. And then he has a couple Phil's here and there. Phil plays some fills. Oh, poor guy. I just ran into a guy called Justin in the hall.

And the door was about to lock. And I said, thanks. You came just in time. And he goes, my name's Justin. Poor Phil. He hears that all the time when he's playing the drums. They always say never make a joke about a person's name because they've heard it. Trust me, they've heard it.

Well, here comes Phil playing some fills. But that's it. Nothing more complicated than that. Not fancy, simple, strict tempo. He's doing his job. He's laying it down. It's tempo, but I'm telling you, he's selling the theme of the song with that symbol. Phil is selling, Phil Selleway is selling the song with his Phil.

What are you doing, D'L? What are you doing? I'm just sending you up for pure jump shots. Dad Joe Kevin. What's the next time you want to play for us? Next up, we have Colin Greenwood on bass. One thing about this before I play it for you that I heard an interview with the producer, Paul Colerie. And while they were recording it, he was talking to Colin about like, Colin was like, all right,

not almost like an actor, what's my motivation? And he was sort of giving him some suggestions. He said, the verse is Al Green, the chorus is the Pixies. Oh, wow. I thought that was kind of an interesting insight. Al Green. Yeah, right? Let's listen if we can hear the Al Green in the verse.

Here on bass is Colin Greenwood, also known as Johnny Greenwood's brother. That's, I can almost hear it. You hear the Al Green? Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. It's a little bit of a syncopated note, a little funk groove to it, but not like funky James Brown. Yeah, I think if it had different drums and a completely different, you know, totally different singer, I could actually see the Al Green in there.

That's cool. And here's Colin and Phil together just so you can hear the full rhythm section. Playing in lockstep. They're doing their jobs. Yeah. Bass and drums, holding it down. It's funny. When you don't have the drums in there, I'm like, oh, I can hear some Al Green.

Once the drums are in there, there's no Al Green. There's no green here. There's a little bit of Aerosmith, strangely. I can't unhear the arrows. No, it's so funny. Just to take a step back for a second, the way the band, as I understand it, at the time, was writing songs,

which evolved over the years. At that time, Tom York, the singer, is kind of the main songwriter to the extent that there's a funny quote I'll read in a second. But the songs usually began as

Tom York's demo or a sketch of an idea, which then he would work with Johnny. They'd be sort of the McCartney and Lennon of the band and harmonically develop it. Because what Johnny Greenwood, the guitar player, brings to the mix is like a very eclectic musical background. He loves jazz. He loves all the avant-garde stuff. And he's not necessarily like a virtuoso guitar player, as he himself would say. And when we listen to the

guitar part, which we will next, you'll hear what he's playing is amazing, but it's not like technically insane. Anyway, what happened later on is the band started to become more democratic because Tom started to release his grip on the creative process from what I understand. He even said himself that in 2004 interview, he said that his power used to be, quote, unquote, absolutely unbalanced. And he would, quote, subvert everybody else's power at all costs. Oh, no. Yeah, I think this comes after being friends from childhood. And, you know, they learn to live with each other as friends and bandmates.

It's really important to mention that this is a band that has never changed its personnel. Radiohead has been the same five guys since high school to this day. They have solo projects. They come and go. But they are, they're friends. And they've learned how to, like, share the challenges. of power that come from being in a creative relationship together. So I really think that's a really interesting part of this story.

All right. Now I think you've got some guitars for us, and we are very much looking forward to guitars. Oh, man, I don't want to make the buildup too buildupy, but I'm going to have to build up just for a moment because there are two guitar players in Radiohead. It's Ed O'Brien and Johnny Greenwood. So I'm about to play the guitar parts, and we're going to hear The Noise, which is what they called it, in quotes. The Noise is what the band refers to this sound as. They knew how important it was. Yeah.

When they were writing the song, now it's different stories about how it came to pass. I'll tell you the two main ones. And it's for us, the listener, to decide what's true. Now, clearly with the Pixies conversation we had earlier, they were going for that quiet, loud, quiet thing. So at one point, I think Ed is playing the chill part in the verse, that arpeggio with no distortion on it.

And Johnny's waiting for his moment. He's waiting for his moment to arrive. He's got the distortion. ready to go. And according to the story, Ed says, he told N and me in 1992, this is the sound of Johnny trying to fuck the song up. He really didn't like it. So he tried spoiling it, and it made the song.

It made the song. Tom York, by contrast, tells the story, it's that nervous twitch he does. That's just his way of checking that the guitar is working, that it's loud enough. And he ended up doing it while we were recording. While we were listening to it, he was like, hey, what the fuck was that? Do that again. We're going to keep that. So either it was an accident or he was trying to fuck it up.

Now, we may never know the origins, like the very, very, very first time he ever did it. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was something he meant to do to fuck it up that he pretended it was an accident. But certainly by the time they went into the studio, it was part of the song. It was part of the repertoire was how they did it, as the producer explains. Like, that was just how the song was being done. So when you hear it in the song, that's not an accident.

That recording of it is definitely purposeful. Yeah. But the thing I love about it is that it does. seemingly come out of nowhere. It comes out of nowhere. It's just like this big, angry voice that just comes stomping onto the track. It's massive, and it sounds wrong even though we know it's right, and we're waiting for it because we're excited to hear it.

It just jumps out of the track. It almost sounds 3D, right? I love it. I love the idea of him doing it to intentionally ruin the song. Is that the explanation you want? I did that's what I want to hear. Yeah. Let's go with that one.

Let's hear it. So let's start with the chill. Is it Ed O'Brien? It's Ed O'Brien on guitar, probably for the chill. one. Certainly in the video if you watch it, it's Ed O'Brien playing it. I mean, you could literally put that guitar

part into a total rock, you know, a total rock anthem. Like, you know, like it sounds like you almost expect like, you know, Eddie Van Halen to come on the, you know what I mean? Right, right. It sounds like a setup for a totally different song when you isolated like that. It even kind of evokes

like an 80s power ballad. That's what I'm saying, yeah. If the drums were halftime as, do, do, do, do, do. It could be like a guns and roses. That's what I'm saying. It's so interesting when you isolate it and it sounds like a totally... So you got Al Green. You've got Walk this way on the drums.

You've got like this 80s. Guns and Roses-esque thing. Right, right. On this guitar. There's so many different things when they add them together, it's creep. It's something completely different. Well, that continues throughout the entire verse.

And then, you know, an interesting thing happens. What does you do on the chorus? because I feel like that guitar gets forgotten on the chorus. On the chorus, he continues to play that, but we have the entrance of guitar player number two. Mr. Johnny Greenwood,

who's lying in the wings waiting for his moment, and here is his moment. Oh, come on. What a satisfying ending. I was just going to say that ending sounds like the end of like a 90s sitcom to me.

Or it could be like a symphony. It's like the final satisfying note. Yeah. And that's a funny, you're right because like, To the point that I was making earlier, my theory, that there's a lot of sarcasm or humor or wink-wink or irony going into the choice, not just of the song and the lyrical content, which we'll get to in a minute, but also each individual part. Like, it's kind of funny as a guitar player to end with, it's almost overly satisfying. You know, those two guitar, those two guitarists, when you isolate them, it sounds, doesn't it just sound like the 90s?

Like, I'm old enough to remember what the 90s was like. And I feel like, gosh, just this sense that like everything's going to be okay. And you didn't worry about everything that happened in the news didn't feel like an existential crisis. It all goes away, obviously, in 2001. But, man, the 90s were kind of fun. The other thing I really like about Johnny's guitar playing here is that it just, it has almost nothing to do with the verse. Like, it just comes in out of nowhere. It announces its arrival.

Yeah. And then it's just fuzz. It's just like this. a wall of sound. Rocking fuzz. And then it goes away again. It's a two bar chord.

Don, two, three, four, two, two, three, four. And then towards the end of it, he starts to do the sort of tremolo, like super fast thing. I never really heard that in the song before. Yeah, I'd never noticed that either until we isolated it. He's crazy. He came on the track. It was just like

my song now. He's making it energetic. I don't know if that's 32nd notes or a tremolo, whatever you'd call it. But that is his, at this point, I would call it his technique. When we get to the chorus, which I'll play it in the second, you'll notice that there really isn't a guitar solo to speak of. He's kind of doing that thing again. So it's, it's melodic. He's finding notes, but it's not like a whaling guitar solo, which would be filled with lots of notes, and they would

be very high on the scale, playing scales up and down and doing crazy stuff with whammy baries. He's not doing, we're coming out of the 80s. We're leaving the Eddie Van Halen, leaving that stuff behind. Inge, Ing-Day-Mamstein era of things and getting into post-grunge, I guess was what you would call this. Yeah. So interesting story I'm going to tell you about in a minute regarding another song with a similar chord progression. Now one thing actually before I get to that is to point out that it is an unusual chord progression. The chord progression has, it goes from G major to B major, which is interesting because technically you wouldn't play a B major, you play a B minor, the notes of the same. I'm not going to go down the path of being too musicologically, you know, music theoretical.

but that's an unusual choice, which is why in the second chord, it evokes a new feeling to the listener. It's like, oh, that's surprising. And then it happens again because the third chord is a C major, and then it goes to C minor. It's sort of the same principle. I'm just going to take a very quick music theory detour, which is relevant to the song for two reasons.

One, because it's going to explain a little bit why the song sounds simultaneously simple but also surprising. And secondly, because it becomes relevant a little bit later on when we get to the interpolation part of our broadcast. You know it was coming. You know it was coming. I've got a guitar, which I'm holding, so everything you hear, mistakes and all coming up on the podcast. Coming from me, this is not the stems. A little moment, I've got the guitar here to discuss how the chords of the song creep are, starts with a G major.

Then it goes to a B major. Now, normally in the key of G, that would be a B minor. So you go. But in Radiohead's Creep, it goes from G major to B major. So emotionally, you know, without knowing music theory as a listener, you hear that, and it's kind of surprising. And part of the reason why is what I just explained. Then it goes to the C major. And then it does kind of the same thing again.

It goes to another chord that wouldn't normally be there, which is the C minor. So that full progression is this. G major. B major, C major, C minor. You came to the podcast for C, but quietly, it's all one big music lesson today. Before we leave the world of Johnny, of Johnny Greenwood, he not only played guitar on this song, he also plays piano, and there's kind of a funny, happy accident story behind that, because there is, technically, he was playing, he was recorded playing piano throughout the entire

track. But back in the days of 1993 recording, before the sort of computer screen digital era, when you're mostly recording to tape and you had faders, that were actual physical faders. If you forgot to put the fader up when you were bouncing to tape, the instrument on that fader, that instrument in that track, the stem, if you will, using our terminology, you wouldn't hear it. So they played through, they were bouncing a mix. Paul Caldry, the producer, tells the story. and as they got to the end, they realized that the piano part had been muted the whole time,

it was a mistake. So the piano is in the song, it's at the very end, and I'll play that for you now, but it's just interesting to think that had he not forgotten to move the fader up, it would have been throughout the entire song.

That was their intent, was to have this piano part the entire time. Let's hear it. There's that minor. So good. And it kind of, it's sort of perfect because it feels conclusive. It's like a nice build to get to that.

Yes, I love the piano. I mean, again, there's one of those things where it's like, you want to think it's intentional because it works so well. Right, to only have it at the end. Yeah. But that was just, they just messed up.

Oh, that's crazy. Happy accident. I love it. All right, we got our guitars, we had our drums. This is usually the high point, but after I had the chichon, you know, I was good. But let's hear Tom's vocals. Kind of a hard song to sing.

Kind of a hard song to sing. Yeah, I mean, like that part about she's running out the door, you know, I guess that would be the bridge. That part is really high. It's very high. I saw you singing that earlier, and I was like, oh, that's really high. Yeah, you saw me trying to sing it. You heard me trying to sing it, and you're like, that's higher than Blake can get to.

Fair enough, fair cop. But let's hear Tom's vocals. What do you want to play for us? Let's start with the first verse. Don't worry, it's the PG version. You're so very special. But I'm a creep. You know what's interesting about that transition to the chorus

is that vocally, he's not changing very much the way he sings. The guitar does all the heavy lifting of making it go to like from one to 99. Yeah, he doesn't go, but ah, right, like he doesn't do that. He actually is singing it pretty much the way he was singing in the verse. It's not that much different. There's like a 2% change, which I think is for the best. I think if he was, what if it was the like, here I'll, let's do it together. I'll just get, let's mute Tom and just.

belt it. See, you don't want that. Nobody wants that. It's a weird mood today in the studio. Nobody wants that version. Did you want that version? I didn't like that version at all. Y'all was speechless with how much he disliked it.

Well, let's listen to what you were just alluding to. This is the second chorus. I'll play the whole chorus into the, what I'm going to refer to... It's a bridge. Yeah, but, you know, the Brits would call it a middle eight because they got a name for everything over there. And here it is.

Wow, that's a note. Damn. Okay, a couple of things. First, if you were in the studio with us just now, when you hit that one note, our speakers started, like, crackling. Yeah, it was like... And Metallica has played in this room.

I know. Voice was just a little too much for the speakers here. It sucks. But more importantly, I didn't know what he was singing in that part. And now I understand why, because he's singing,

she's running out the door, but he sings it in just a crazy way. Can we hear just that line? Can you pull up she's running out the door? Because he's doing so much on that lyric. I mean, by the way, I feel like I heard some laughing on the track. Did you hear that? You know what's happening here?

I heard it both times that I thought as our producer, man. I can tell you exactly what's happening here. You're absolutely right that they are laughing. I don't know. I didn't hear it in the track necessarily. I mean, that's really funny. but this is a tongue-in-cheek thing happening. I was speculating before about maybe the bass lines a little,

I mean, maybe the drummer's thinking a little bit, oh, I'm being Aerosmith. Tom York was 100% consciously emulating something else, and I will now tell you this story, because it's an expensive one. So what happened was, as they were playing the song, Ed O'Brien, noted that these unusual chord changes he had heard before in another song.

And when it was pointed out to the band where it came from, and I'll play you what it was lifted from in just a moment, Tom York doubled down on the connection between the two songs. Oh, wow. And he's like, I'm going to sing the melody from that other song. So here's the song. It's called The Air That I Breathe by the Hollies, written by Albert Hammond. And that's right, father of Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.

And Mike Hazelwood in 1972, this version is recorded in 1974. And it's The Hollies, The Air That I Breathe. Exactly. Notice the chords. It's the same chord changes. They would have gotten away with it, too, had they only did the chord changes. Because we've talked about on previous episodes,

cannot own chord changes. We're going to be talking about the Ed Sheeran case specifically on another episode. But that recently has demonstrated legally that you can't sue somebody for using the chord changes. Where they got in trouble was when they winked at each other and said, you know what? You're right.

It does sound like the holiday that I breathe. I think I'm going to nick the melody for the chorus. And that's what we all kind of, We heard the smile on his face as he's singing the laughter. Unfortunately, it cost them a little bit of money. By the way, one more musicological thing for the day, and that'll be enough for the episode. The phenomenon of using the same chord changes,

which I already know was not going to catch on like interpolation. But here's a new word for you. It's contrafact. So it's called it contrafact. You don't like contrafact? That is a terrible term. Okay, well. It sounds like...

I had low expectations for it as a cashphrase. It's a very funny sounding word that I do not think is going to catch on. The whisper didn't even work with it. It's too many hard sounds. But when the same chord changes are used from one song to the other, it's referred to as a contra fact.

It's obviously the basis of all jazz from one song to the next jazz standards. What if you have facts about the contras? It's going to cause confusion. It does make me think of Oliver North in Ronald Reagan. Exactly. People are always talking about the contras. What year is it?

Just give me the facts. So originally that was a guitar solo until Ed O'Brien, pointed out that the core progression was the same. And, you know, the quote from Greenwood about it was, it was funny to us in a way. It was sort of feeding into the fact that the court chains were the same. So they were doubling down without maybe thinking about the copyright consequences, which did come to bite them a little bit later.

Albert Hammond and Hazelwood's publishers did sue. But I found this fun quote where Hammond said in 2002, Radiohead came to them and said, you guys are right, you got us, you nicked us. We're not trying to pretend it didn't happen. And Hamon, the co-writers said, because they were honest, we didn't sue them to the point of saying, we want the whole thing.

We ended up just getting a little piece of it. So it's interesting that the actual manner, the tone in which they were approached of niceness, rather than saying, nah-a, like played into how much of a percentage they ended up taking. That's not the end of the story, however, of the chord changes from the Holly's air that I breathe. Okay.

Because one more song, more artist enters into the equation. And that's Lana Del Rey with her 2017 song, Get Free. So I don't know about you, but to my ears, I certainly hear not just the chord changes, but also the melody. And this is where it gets interesting because Radiohead did file a lawsuit against Lana Del Rey for that song in 2018. That's interesting. So Lana tweets about it. And she says Radiohead is demanding 100% of the royalties of the song, which in a sense, like, okay, I can see where they're coming from, in a sense, because it is both the chords, which they don't own, but the melody, which they do, which is usually the basis for these lawsuits. That's,

that, that's your interpolation right there, is that melody. But I think what ended up happening because they'd later dropped the lawsuit, I think they were shamed out of the lawsuit, or their publishers may have been shamed out of it, because it's a little bit embarrassing that Radiohead being the band that they are with so much integrity, and having had this experience themselves being sued over the Holly's song, it's a little bit lame.

And again, I don't think it's Radiohead is probably their publishers and their lawyers that are going after the 100%. They said that she had offered 40%, they countered with 100. It became this back and forth. At the end of the day,

they're not listed into the official writing credits. I think they may have just dropped it all together. They may have just been like, that's a little bit not our look. I think Radiohead may have stepped in a little off brand. It's very off brand, and I wouldn't be surprised if the band themselves came in and said to the publishers, guys, this is not cool. Let's not do this.

D'allel, I don't know if you're going to believe what I'm about to say, but it's been 30 years since the song's release. No, I'm not going anywhere. If you were going to say, get out of town, I'm not going anywhere. Oh, wow, 30 years is, that's really hard to believe. Why do you think the song still resonates after all that time? You know, I think it's just a really human emotion. We all feel that way sometimes.

You know, I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. I also, the line, what the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here. I mean, like, who doesn't. that way sometimes. Who doesn't feel like they don't belong sometimes? You know, like there's, there's so much pain in the song. Like, you know, the line

your skin makes me cry. Like, whoo, dark, dark place. And I feel like, yeah, I'm gonna stay one more time. Every time we come into the studio, we're talking about music that we love. And we love this song, but this song has like, you know, some darkness to it.

And I feel like it absolutely, you know, to have these kind of like lyrics flow over you, it's been an interesting day in the studio. But I will also say I was happy to know that they weren't taking things too seriously. I don't think they were, yeah. Laughing on the track when he kicks in with the...

Yeah, that was pretty fun. But I mean, like, this is a dark song, and these are dark emotions, and that is something that, you know, music can sometimes accomplish, you know, sometimes we need that song that is too depressing for BBC Radio One. Well, I hope this helps you feel a little bit better

about the balance of the song's darkness with the sort of sense of humor you were mentioning that we found during the interpolated, the expensive part of the song for the band. Do you actually know the origin of the album title, Pablo Honey? No, tell me. It's so, these guys have a sense of humor. I don't think Radiohead gets credit enough for having a sense of humor. The title comes from this. This is Pablo Honey, which is a track on The Jerky Boys 2.

Ha! Yeah, how is that? Pablo Honey. Ha! I'm washing your ass. problem? Who is it? Keep yourself clean, honey?

Now, for people who didn't live through the 90s, it may be hard to explain how funny this was in 1994. My college, everybody at some point was exposed to the jerky boys. It was just these guys who did, you know, prank calls, prank phone calls. Recorded prank phone calls. Which doesn't work in the cell phone age. Right, because you didn't know who's calling you. They were just pick a number out of the phone book at random and call somebody and say silly stuff.

And then they would record it. Put it out as a CD. By the way, the idea of Tom York sitting around listening to the Jerky Boys is funny in itself. Isn't that great? Doesn't it help lighten the load of the song's darkness? But you know what? This song does have a lot of dark energy in it. And sometimes you need that darkness.

And that's why artists continue to cover it. It's been covered by Weezer. Actually, one of my favorite all-time covers of any song is Prince performing creep at Coachella. Yeah. 2008. Let's play a little bit of that. I think if you don't know this clip, find it on YouTube.

It's outstanding. Well, he sped up the chord changes. They happen twice as frequently. That's an interesting choice. Woo. It's pretty amazing. Just watching this grainy footage from 2008. Oh, yeah.

We all had the iPhone 2 back then. I got the FOMO for this one. FOMO for Def Punk at Coachella. FOMO for Prince at Coachella. There's a lot of Coachella to have FOMO for. Yeah, man. Gosh, we, Prince, man, we miss him. Okay, it's time for one more song.

This is where we share a new song with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. Luxury, why don't you go first? What is your one more song? You know, this song is from, we're talking about songs that are from, you know, a number of years ago, and then when you look at the number of years, you're surprised, because it didn't feel that long ago. This is a song from 2000, which I've recently been resuscitating, pun intended, the name of the album, for my DJ sets, because it sounds so good to me. It sounds so fresh to me. And if you listen to our previous episode about Rihanna, I played for the one more song, I played my latest single,

which is called Strangely Familiar, I was very inspired the last time we had a DJ night together when I played this song. This is Adult with a period at the end. It's Hand to Phone, the Cordless Remakes. I love this track so much. Adult are a duo from Detroit. They use, I think, 606s and like old drum machines. they've got that pummeling 16th note marauder bass thing I talked about last time and this just like right now it sounds right to me even though it's a quarter century old

it feels really fresh to my ears for my one more song I'm going to go back about 10 years this guy out of the UK Lyndon Jay had a song called Be Like You I really wish it had been a bigger hit both there and here

but I really dug it this is Be Like You by Lyndon J I love that song. I love that song. Everyone out there wants to be like. Love that song. There's something really hypnotic about it. You know I love it when the chord changes are surprising.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting that second chord. It's really satisfying. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram or TikTok. And if you made it this far, I think that means you like the show. please don't forget to give us five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, leave a review, and share it with someone that you think would like the show.

It really helps keep the podcast going. It sure does. Luxury, help me in this thing. Well, I'm producer, DJ, musicologist, and songwriter and creep luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Ril. And always weirdo. No, that's not a mean. Oh, man, I'm out.

Done with this. I'm referring to the song lyrics, of course. This episode is produced by Weirdo Matthew Nelson. with engineering from Marcus Haum. Additional production support from Casey Simonson. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wiles, and Leslie Guam.