Radiohead — Creep

Radiohead's debut single is back across the global charts today, appearing on 30 country and platform charts after a two-month absence. The band's early anthem of unrequited self-loathing — released on Pablo Honey in 1993, well before OK Computer remade their reputation — has become one of the most durable rock songs of its generation precisely because Thom Yorke and company spent years trying to disown it. The quiet-loud dynamic and that four-note guitar crunch before each chorus have kept it in circulation through covers and syncs, from a choral version by the Scala and Kolacny Brothers to a Lucifer needle-drop cataloged on Tunefind. Its slow build translates cleanly to short-form video, where remixed and slowed edits keep resurfacing. A 33-year-old catalog cut with this reach remains an exercise in a song outliving its makers' ambivalence.