The big hit single. When it was first released, Radio 1 found it too depressing, and so after being aired only twice it was taken off the station's playlist. The song has been analyzed by many people, and theories of what it's about range from Thom's terrifying childhood to Thom's deceasd wife. Thom, however, was not an abused child, and he's never had a wife. At certain shows, Thom offers a partial explanation of the song. Written while he was at Exeter, he says, it tells the tale of a drunken student who tries to get attention of a woman he's attracted to; in the end, he lacks the self-confidence to pull it off.

The song has been released in a few versions: the original contains the word "fucking"; radio edit (on which the F-word is replaced by "very") appears on several compilations and is a bonus track on the American version of Pablo Honey. Thom has been quoted saying that the 'very' edit was a joke, and now he regrets it.

This song shot Radiohead to fame, possibly before they were ready. As the rest of their work at the time couldn't equal the quality of this song, and they were labeled by mant critics as 'one-hit wonders' because of it. At the same time, without this hit, Radiohead might have never made it at all.

The song that nearly broke the band apart, Creep was released twice as a single in the UK and was a pretty major hit, but not as much as in America, where Radiohead were known for "that Creep song". As the band toured America, people would turn up just to hear Creep and leave. No-one paid any attention to Pablo Honey, or any of the new songs from The Bends, and very soon every college student was singing it, and it graced every karaoke machine and jukebox in the country.

Ever since then, the band have been trying to break free of being bound by Creep. They hate the song, yet do feel obliged to play it "we only play this because it is still a good song". They wrote My Iron Lung purposely about their hatred of the song, but it was not until the recent hit of Paranoid Android that the band start to see some mass recognition of other songs. However, they band will always be burdened with Creep.

Bizarrely, the original words to the song had a line : "shoulder of lamb, frying in a pan", and reportedly, Jonny's now-famous guitar 'scratchings' were his way of showing frustration which was otherwise a boring, quiet song.

Having not been played for nearly 5 years, the band decided to play Creep at the last minute (instead of listed track Motion Picture Soundtrack) at Oxford during the big homecoming gig in 2001.