3 Covers of Radiohead’s “Creep” You Should Hear Now

When Radiohead released “Creep” as a single in 1992, the BBC refused to play it because Britain’s national radio station felt the song was “too depressing.” Alas, the Ministry of Feelings couldn’t sustain its ban for long.

Though Radiohead’s single nearly languished with its lukewarm reception at home, an Israeli DJ spun “Creep” endlessly abroad. Then it caught on in other countries and soon became a slacker anthem in the United States. Another “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

For most bands, “Creep” might have been a one-hit wonder—the song they close sets with years later on the county fair circuit. But Radiohead ran from it, disavowed it on “My Iron Lung,” then reinvented the very idea of the rock band on OK Computer and Kid A.

But “Creep” remains a touchstone of ’90s alt-rock. Though it’s been ruined countless times in bars and on singing competition television shows, the occasional great “Creep” cover does exist in the wild. Here are three you should hear now.

Weezer at the Portland Hootenanny (2008)

Rivers Cuomo took Radiohead’s Brit-grunge anthem and turned it into a campfire song. But he also made it sound surprisingly bigger. Using an intimate audience, Cuomo conducts a group of fans equipped with acoustic guitars and tambourines and turns them into a ragtag orchestra. It’s weird and beautiful, and if you imagine someone or something observing this moment from outer space, they’d understand the human condition without having to learn the language. Cuomo and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke remain two of their generation’s most important rock musicians. They were built for the ’90s. The outsiders, the geeks, the wallflowers who also happened to be songwriting geniuses.     

Arlo Parks, “Creep” Single (2020)

Following her gorgeous single “Black Dog,” Arlo Parks released a piano version of “Creep.” Her version returns Thom Yorke’s painful song to its lonely origin. An artist alone, in despair, who’s writing from the inside to an outside world, indifferent and occasionally cruel. The singer preserves the arrangement’s austerity and resists the temptation of using production to raise the emotional stakes. Still, her stunning soliloquy has all the necessary impact of someone struggling inside their own body. She yearns for a lover, trying to find the specialness in her weirdness. You’re so very special.

Prince at Coachella (2008)

When Prince covered “Creep” at Coachella, it became the defining moment of that year’s festival. It loomed over everything else that happened, similar to how Prince created the greatest Super Bowl halftime performance in history—“Purple Rain” in the actual rain. His take on Radiohead’s brooding classic transformed Thom Yorke’s self-loathing hook into a therapeutic gospel chorale. For Jonny Greenwood’s blown-speaker guitar break, the Pixies’ quiet verse to loud chorus move, Prince reached back to Hendrix at Monterey for an offering—a cleansing for the Coachella congregation, bathed in greatness.

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