Radiohead have just blown fans’ collective minds by actually playing the song that made them internationally mega-huge live for the first time in close to ten years.
During their concert in Paris overnight, Thom Yorke & co performed Creep, the chart-topping Pablo Honey single that they’ve previously referred to as “crap”, and fans of which they have affectionately dubbed “anally retarded”.
As Consequence Of Sound points out, the band have often spoken of the deep emotional distress and complete artistic demolition that the song’s success wrought upon them, with Yorke describing the two-year world tour that came off the back of its release as akin to “[sucking] Satan’s cock”.
As noted by The Guardian back in ’96:
“Disaster struck when… ‘Creep’ (with the chorus: ‘I wish I was special/ You’re so fucking special/ But I’m a creep’), became a one-song phenomenon, an American anthem of alienation and self-loathing, propelling their first album, Pablo Honey, into the American Top 40. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, Yorke became ‘the Creep guy’.
Far from providing a sort of palliative to their neuroses, Radiohead turned success into something that only made matters worse. Encouraged by their American record company to capitalize, they toured the States for months, realizing too late that they where still playing material that was over two years old; just another band that turns into something they hate.”
So the fact that they just played that very song live, then, is pretty fucking special.
“This is for the funny guy shouting Creep in the back,” Yorke announced prior to the performance during the show’s second encore. “Only to shock you.”
Well, mission accomplished, m8.
As well as Creep, Radiohead also delivered the first full-band performance of True Love Waits in a decade.
Check out fan-shot footage alongside their full setlist, below.
Radiohead – Creep 2016 (live in Paris)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFw720Ir3BU/
Setlist:
Burn the Witch
Daydreaming
Decks Dark
Desert Island Disk
Ful Stop
Lotus Flower
The National Anthem
My Iron Lung
No Surprises (First performance since 2009)
Bloom (Happy Birthday sung to Phil)
Identikit
The Numbers
Separator
The Gloaming
Everything in Its Right Place
Idioteque
Bodysnatchers
Encore:
True Love Waits (First full performance since 2006)
Present Tense
Paranoid Android
Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Encore 2:
Creep (First performance since 2009)
Pyramid Song
