Creep: The Hit Radiohead Spent Years Refusing to Play

By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-06-27

Creep, from Radiohead’s 1993 debut Pablo Honey, is one of the most striking examples of a band at war with its own biggest song. It broke them internationally. It also became something they reportedly couldn’t stand — a single, defining hit that threatened to be the only thing anyone knew them for. For long stretches they simply stopped playing it live, refusing to be the Creep band.

The credit it had to share

There’s a documented twist in its DNA, too. After release, songwriting credit was extended to Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, the writers of The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe,” because of a melodic resemblance. So the song that announced Radiohead as originals quietly carries a debt to a 1970s soft-rock ballad — a reminder that almost nothing in pop is invented from nothing.

The noise that became the signature

Its most famous moment is the burst of harsh, scraping guitar that detonates just before the chorus. The widely told story is that Jonny Greenwood played it trying to sabotage a song he didn’t like — and instead created the exact jolt that makes the track unforgettable. Disgust, accidentally, became the hook.

What it measures like

On our scale it lives on contrast: hushed, restrained verses that break open into a loud, distorted chorus. That quiet-to-loud swing is the whole emotional mechanism. Full profile on its song page.

Creep appears on Radiohead’s 1993 album Pablo Honey. The shared songwriting credit with the writers of The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe,” and the band’s well-documented uneasy relationship with the song, are matters of public record. The account of the guitar bursts’ origin reflects widely reported history. No lyrics are reproduced.