In the album version, lead singer Thom Yorke sings, "You're so f--king special." For radio, he recut it as, "You're so very special." Yorke regrets changing the line for the radio version, saying it disturbed the "sentiment of the song." According to him, the song lost its anger as a result.
Yorke says this is about being in love with someone, but not feeling good enough. He describes the feeling as, "There's the beautiful people and then there's the rest of us."
Yorke wrote this in 1987 while he was a student at Exeter University in England. He first recorded it acoustic.
This was written before the band formed. Yorke gave his demo version to Colin Greenwood, who joined him and helped put the band together.
This wasn't released in the US until Radiohead's debut album in 1993. The band finished college and signed their record deal in 1991.
Yorke based this on a song called "The Air That I Breathe," which was written by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood in 1972. After "Creep" was released, Radiohead agreed to share the songwriting royalties, so this is credited to Yorke, Hammond and Hazlewood.
This did well in the US, but not in their native England. When they released their third album, O.K. Computer, it was huge in England but not in the US.
When this was first released in England in 1992, this song flopped. It did well when it was re-released a year later, after Radiohead grew a fan base.
According to Q magazine April 2008, the recording of this song came about as a result of producers Sean Slade and Paul Q Kolderie struggling with "Inside My Head" and "Lurgee." They remembered a track that that the band had played in rehearsal, introduced by Yorke as "our Scott Walker song." This portrait of an outsider was then recorded in one take.
The video was recorded at a club in Oxford called The Zodiac. (Thanks, Ned - Oxford, England)
This is nicknamed "Crap" by the band due its slacker-anthem ubiquity.
The first country this charted in was Israel.
The 3 blasts of guitar noise that precede the chorus was the result of Jonny Greenwood trying to sabotage a tune he considered too "wimpy."
Yorke claims he received fan mail from "murderers" saying how much they could relate to this song.
Prince performed this at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2008. He also played Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" and The Beatles' "Come Together." (Thanks, Bertrand - Paris, France)
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"Enjoy The Silence" • "We Got the Beat (Previously from Rock Band 2)" • "Torn (Ednaswap song)" • "Open Water" • "Shy (HUNNY song)" • "Bloodhands (Oh My Fever)" • "Who's Your Lover" • "Radio (No Small Children Song)" • "I Remember You (Skid Row song)"" • "Here I Go Again (Previously from Rock Band 3)"" • "