In 1993, a significant part of the western youth was not very active. This grunge music was still playing loud in the rooms of young people in plaid shirts with messy hair and living in agony and despair. All that energy translated into a good album chart, in addition to classics like Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ or the Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Siamese Dream’. by ‘Pablo Honey’ radio head. This was the album they were known for, and it was also, after all, only thirty years ago made them stars thanks to a song that everyone knew: ‘Creep’.
But between her debut and concerts, she had to take some time to spill over the world. Because that first album, which had little to do with its successors, was not a smashing success. “Everything was much slower than it seemed,” Joan S. Luna, editor-in-chief of ‘Mondosonoro’, of the group Prensa Ibérica, tells El Periódico de España. It was their first album and it featured a hit, but at the time, “no one was talking about the big band that would change UK pop rock history and everything that came after that. Mainly because they weren’t going to get it with that album. They were seen as a kind of British copy of the Pixies/Nirvana formula.flavored with a brighter sound than that of U2 from the early days”, he continues.
The band’s leader, Thom Yorke, wrote ‘Creep’ in the late eighties, when Radiohead still referred to it as ‘A Friday’ (which they called themselves because they only rehearsed on Fridays), and it was at a time when boredom bore him. washing with alcohol. He didn’t like the song very much.and it didn’t even appear in the demo, which the A&R executive got them under contract with the Parlophone label. It was eventually included on ‘Pablo Honey’ (the title comes from a joke they heard on a radio show) and the presentation was released as a single, but UK radio stations didn’t receive much attention. was in United States of America where did the gold gowhich made the British pay attention to it.
In their country, they also had a rival that eclipsed them with their debut album, Suede. The work of Brett Anderson and his band has caught the attention of the public and critics, thanks to songs like ‘Animal Nitrate’, which Beatriz Rodríguez Ruíz remembers as one of the best of 1993. both “two great albums”and he believes Thom Yorke should now do a full tour of Pablo Honey “so we can understand what that LP from thirty years ago really meant.” Writing for media outlets like Los 40 Principales or Cultura FNAC, the music reporter thinks that “many will understand the importance of songs like ‘Thinking About You’ or ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ and the evolutionary process of the band that has passed, it hasn’t stopped being a ‘One Hit Wonder’. [banda de un solo éxito]”.
cross of fear
Over time, though not so much, the theme gradually disappeared from the band’s concert repertoire. The more the public demanded, the more the group hated him.. Joan S. Luna thinks this rejection is normal. “Things happen to musicians. And not just because it’s a song that can outshine other successes, but also because artists are surprised—sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not—when one of their songs, which on countless occasions they consider their worst song, turns out to be a huge success. Rodríguez Ruiz also says. agrees: “Maybe what they hate is, the same attention is not given to the rest of an almost flawless discography. It’s also happened with great songs like ‘High & Dry’ or ‘No Surprises’, two viable proofs that if ‘Creep’ had never existed, they would have given us great songs too.”
As Urban Dictionary explains, colloquially “creep” is used as a disqualifier to describe a strange or uncommon person, just as the subject’s protagonist describes a man obsessed with a woman he deems unattainable. Has it stood the test of time well or has it become more sinister? “In my opinion ‘Creep’ has aged so well. Both the melody and Jonny Greenwood’s famous abrupt guitar, including the part reminiscent of The Hollies, have something very special that retains its value as a timeless hit,” Luna analyzes.
“Given everything that has been written in the pop rock world over the years, I don’t think it’s particularly sinister. Actually, They keep on writing songs that have a beautiful soul”, continues the journalist. One of them is ‘Get Free’ by Lana del Rey, who was accused of stealing ‘Creep’ in 2018, but eventually both parties came to a settlement. The Hollies theme that Joan S. Luna refers to is “The Air That I Breathe” composed by Mike Hazlewood and Albert Hammond in 1974. The dispute was resolved with the inclusion of the songwriters’ names in Radiohead’s credits and payment. a percentage of the profit.
Rodríguez said, “They recorded ‘Creep’ in one go, and that’s what it sounds like. I would never have put a ‘but’ in such a great introduction letter” and is now happy they’re playing it live again. Nor does he put it in lyrics that he thinks are “painful and hypnotizing” like the video clip. The band’s old name is On a Friday, which seems unlucky to me. I’m glad they changed it. Yorke’s nine-minute ‘Creep’ remix released two years ago was also unlucky in my opinion.
radiohead season
In 1997, a month before his 30th birthday, Thom Yorke decided to sneak backstage at Birmingham’s NEC Arena without telling anyone where he was going. It was right after the band had finished the sound checks for the concert that would be playing in front of thousands of people an hour later. The great idea he had was to take a train to distract him from the anxiety caused by playing that night, but he hadn’t been able to accurately calculate the extent of his fame. It had been just a few months since Radiohead had released their third album ‘OK Computer’ and they were already definitely a famous band. The awkwardness of her face didn’t help her go unnoticed either, so she returned to her place of origin surrounded by fans who took the train to sing her.
After the show, which included six encores, Yorke suffered the ultimate meltdown. He could not do it at the cost of his life: the band had been touring for six months, and there were five more to go. When that moment came, the number of concerts given was more than seven hundred, a number that surpassed the artist and left him speechless, empty, uninspired. So he put the guitars aside, bought the entire Warp Records catalog, and started playing electronics: It was the beginning of the band’s transformation. Rock in another new thing. The album ‘Kid A’, which was a process and result that took months, surprised everyone until it achieved the recognition that Yorke expected when he composed it at the end of the first decade of the 21st century.
This is one of the stories told by American music critic and podcaster Steven Hyden in his article ‘This is not happening’ ‘Radiohead’s Kid A and the beginning of the 21st century’ (Liburuak, 2022. Translation: Aixa de la Cruz). . A devoted fan of the band since its inception, the author goes back to the days of Pablo Honey to understand the band’s development and impact in an industry that has moved from physical format to the internet in the blink of an eye. and what were the results? Hayden’s work not only provides technical data on the band’s music, but also includes his personal experience and interesting stories for fansIn a sticky MTV show by Yorke, Dr. It’s like he nearly drowned by jumping into a pool with his Martens boots.
It is not the only book about the group currently published in Spain. On January 16, the Sexto Piso publishing house will release ‘Fear follows the region!’, a translated compilation by Esther Villardón of documents exchanged by Thom Yorke and visual artist Stanley Donwood between 1999 and 2000. The volume is a kind of field notebook consisting of texts, drawings, faxes or lists made during the composing of the ‘Kid A and Amnesiac’ albums. It wraps up well Hayden’s article, who wrote an ideal sentence in his book to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Radiohead’s debut: “’Pablo Honey’ is great.”