A few years ago, I wanted to start a tradition to release something out of character for myself, annually on Halloween. The idea emerged after I’d spontaneously covered “Lullaby“ by The Cure and decided to drop the song on Halloween, just for the fun of it. It became, one of the most popular songs I’d done in years, so obviously I wanted to do a follow up.
I’d started recording Radiohead’s “Creep”, a year later, but got stuck in the song and never finished it. Maybe for the better, because ”Creep” turned out to be one of those songs a lot of people liked to cover, including the most unlikely people like me, so I wasn’t at all surprised when I heard that 80s group Tears For Fears were touring with the song.
Yes, Tears for Fears are still around. From what I can gather, they are not releasing any new music or anything (I think they haven’t since the “Seeds Of Love” album), but they are very actively performing at various festivals and they’ve been touring with Hall and Oates.
Of course, they are performing with all of their greatest hits, like “Shout”, “Everybody Wants to Rule The World”, “ Sowing the Seeds Of Love” and “Woman in Chains” (though it’ll be without the wonderful Oleta Adams), but when I heard they’d performed “Creep” at Hyde Park this summer, I couldn’t wait to check it out.
It turns out that “Creep” has been part of their official live repertoire for many years, but their cover got an official release after they’d performed it (and other covers) for a special Spotify session in 2014. When you start looking for the song, you can find many of their live renditions since.
The song doesn’t get changed that much when they perform it, so it honors the original, but it does showcase that Roland Orzabal is able to pull this song off as well with his vocals, despite it coming from a different angle than any Tears for Fears song. I don’t think they’ve ever shown any self doubt in their lyrics, ever, at all. And for that, it makes it an unlikely song for them to cover.
In case you were wondering, no, I don’t think my version of the song will ever see the light of day. I’ll let Tears For Fears continue bringing you their cover version.
