When you were here before couldn't look you in the eye
Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.
1992 : Creep - Radiohead
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I like this track, but I waaaay struggle to accept this took the year - surely a load of these people checked out Pablo Honey and never listened to the track again?!?
I didn't remember the video at all - and that's probably because it's 3:56 of them being on stage doing not an awful lot. It's in front of an audience but the director did a good job of making it very unclear how many of them there may have been there, although Wikipedia tells me that Four Tet was there - and that's all I have to say on the matter really (other than noting how young the band all look!).
Wikipedia has some interesting facts on the track - the band "borrowed" elements of the 1972 track "The Air That I Breathe" so (after legal action) Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood are credited as co-writers. Apparently the song was "inspired by a woman who Yorke had "followed for a couple of days", and who unexpectedly attended a Radiohead performance". Errr - OK. My thoughts go out to the poor girl - can you imagine being followed by Thom Yorke for a couple of days?!? When asked about the song, Thom said it was about being unhappy with himself, whereas Jonny Greenwood said it was a happy song about recognising what you are - which sounds like exactly the sort of contradictory replies I'd expect from the band.
This was Radiohead's debut single which was released in September and reached the dizzy heights of #78 - Radio 1 didn't add it to their playlist because it was too depressing and Thom was massively depressed about its failure. It was then, obviously, picked up by an Israeli DJ and became a hit over there - and a similar thing happened in the happening musical hot spots of New Zealand, Spain and Scandinavia. And then it took off on the US college radio stations (having similar themes to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Beck's "Loser") - the band played it as the first musical guests on Conan O'Brien's late night show.
At which point, EMI wanted to re-release it in the UK which the band (obviously) weren't happy about - but relented under pressure from the music press and fans and it reached #7. Wikipedia also, for no obvious reason, feels the need to tell us that it's been streamed 13 million times in Chile. And, of course, in no time Thom was massively depressed about its success. That boy really needs to sort himself out - although it's fair to say the rest of the band were also with him on this. They went through a period of not playing the track at all, but it seems like they're in a happier place with it now. However, its success did mean that the band weren't in debt to EMI and hence could make The Bends as they wanted and I think it's one of their better efforts (but, as with everything Radiohead, other opinions are available).
Wikipedia also made me aware of "Creep (Very 2021 Rmx)" - which is an interesting version, but possibly not quite as far out there as Thom thinks it is. Other versions mentioned are from Prince (as fine as you'd expect it to be), Jim Carrey (he doesn't add anything to it, but he also doesn't ruin it), Korn (ditto), Weezer (I didn't mind this), Damien Rice (good, but exactly as you'd expect), Amanda Palmer (from her ukelele Radiohead covers album - as mad as you'd expect), Moby (completely inessential), The Pretenders (I quite liked this), Kelly Clarkson (yeah, and this one - the vocal gymnastics really work) and Arlo Parks (nice piano and vocal work on this one) - which is quite the variety of artists. secondhandsongs.com also comes up with Tears For Fears (nice, but they don't really add anything), Richard Cheese (amusingly cheesy), Macy Gray (yeah, she does a good job with this) and Clan Of Xymox (quite nicely different with their electro-goth spin and that's quite some video) - I'd have to say the women generally won with their versions.
I like this song and think it continues the theme from last year quite nicely, but I suspect there are going to be other songs I would have preferred to take the year. The best selling single of the year in the UK was Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" - which is somewhat unsurprising given it was #1 for ten weeks, including Xmas. The rest of the top five were Snap's "Rhythm Is A Dancer", Charles & Eddie's "Would I Lie To You" (no, thank you), Shakespears Sister "Stay" (surprisingly popular given how weird it is) and KWS's "Please Don't Go" (which I'm pleased to say I can only vaguely remember). The rest of the top 50 is fairly underwhelming - the only track I'd say I particularly like from it is Tasmin Archer's "Sleeping Satellite", but I have a certain nostalgia for the nonsense that The Shamen's "Ebeneezer Goode" kicked off (it's definitely not about drugs, kids). There are also some perfectly dreadful tracks in there - Jimmy Nail's "Ain't No Doubt", Right Said Fred's "Deeply Dippy", Dr Alban's "It's My Life", Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart", Nick Berry's "Heartbeat" and Ugly Kid Joe's "Everything About You". Oh dear.
All of which didn't bode well for a trawl through the charts for the year, but I did manage to drag up Genesis's "I Can't Dance", CeCe Peniston's "Finally", Ride's "Leave Them All Behind" (some very fine shoegaze), Guns'n'Roses's "November Rain", The KLF's "What Time Is Love", U2's "One" (a very fine track), Crowded House's "Weather With You", The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love" and George Michael's "Too Funky" - which shows there was some decent music around in 1992 but it wasn't exactly the finest year ever. The US charts were topped by Boyz II Men's "End Of The Road", with Sir Mix-a-lot's "Baby's Got Back" at #2 which has maintained its level of infamy across the years. The rest of the chart are either stuff that we saw over here or identikit RnB or hard rawk numbers that didn't make it across the pond - with the exception of House Of Pain's "Jump Around", which is a fine track I'd somehow missed from the UK charts.
So, 1992 wasn't the peak year for musical quality but there were enough gems floating around and "Creep" is undeniably one of them. In common with many of the other tracks we've seen across this list, I don't quite see it has enough to it to take the year (Whitney feels like a more obvious winner to me) but take the year it has and it was nice to listen to it and all the random cover versions that were thrown up - and I'm hoping for better from 1993.
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