Sometimes I think that I might throw the word love around too much... I do tend to fall in love with music and sometimes don't know how else to describe it. But I worry that it might take away some of the value of the word. How do I describe an album that I love more than any other if I have already claimed to love dozens of albums this year already? I might need to just start describing albums as pretty good. I do seem to use this phrase a lot when describing my feelings of certain situations, but I really actually mean pretty great when I say pretty good. So when I say love or great, I really do mean it. When an album like this new album by The Gossip comes around I really wish I had a new word to describe it. I do love it...but I really, really love it. I was a bit worried that I might just sort of like it. How could they follow up the brilliance of the last album Standing in the Way of Control? There was just no way. Their albums have been getting better and better but I was worried they had just gotten as good as they were going to get. This new album also marks their debut on a major label. They have gotten to be huge stars in England with the last album and were signed. I was worried they were maybe too busy playing big festival shows and doing big fancy photo shoots, too busy to concentrate on making another brilliant album. But I really had no reason to be worried. I had heard rumours that the new album was going to be great, and it most certainly is. Music for Men was released last week digitally and as an import. We will have to wait for the domestic CD and LP until later in the year, but I could not wait for this one. I had to pick up the import. I had to hold something in my hands. I wanted to look through the liner notes as I listened to the album for the first time. I wanted to own the album! You know, like we all used to do.

Since Radiohead first released the Thom Yorke-penned song "Creep" seventeen years ago, numerous artists -- including many well known, high-profile acts -- have covered the Radiohead hit that became so popular that the band themselves distanced themselves from it for a spell.

Originally released in 1992 as their debut single, "Creep" was not initially a hit. But it did become one when it was rereleased the following year, when it also appeared on their debut album Pablo Honey. Out of uneasiness with becoming a sort of one-hit-wonder band associated with this sole major worldwide hit, plus the fact that Radiohead had shifted in style as the nineties progressed, Yorke and the band ceased playing it in concert altogether by 1998. After three years, they changed their mind and re-added it to their show playlists, although only sporadically.

Truth is that it is a great song and one that one that countless others have covered: many of which are included below in either video or audio format. Included in the versions are covers by Beck, Chrissie Hynde/Pretenders, Moby, KoRN, the Dutch band Shiver, Sad Kermit, and Weezer at a Hootenanny in Portland last summer. Weezer also played the song at a Hootenanny in the Bay Area and again at a concert in Tokyo last year. Also below is the original version by Radiohead. Not below but viewable on YouTube is Tears For Fears 1996 live in Brasil cover of the song. 

My personal fave remains the original, with Chrissie Hynde coming in a close second. I place off-key Moby (an ariist who I normally like) in the last place, even behind the frog named Sad Kermit. If you have time, check out the versions below and post your opinion / rating of best to worst version in the COMMENTS below.
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Amoeblog Update: thanks to the Amoeblog commenters SFatNIght who informed me of the Prince cover of "Creep" at Coachella last year which is not great audio quality recording but well worth checking out, and also to Amoeblog commenter Robert Gable who turned me onto the wonderful Edmund Welles bass clarinet quartet version of the song which I have added below. Thanks!