The Daily Epic Earworm For October 21, 2025
Everyone gets songs stuck in their heads that just won’t go away. They sneak into your subconscious. They are epic earworms that you find yourself humming uncontrollably, singing in the shower, or tapping the beat to with your foot or ballpoint pen when you should be working. Sometimes they even keep you awake at night. Whether they are current hits, one-hit wonders, movie soundtrack gems, holiday favorites, or songs from your youth, their catchy vocals, riffs, hooks, and choruses seem to linger for days.
Here, those songs find a home, no matter the genre. Here, those epic earworms are revisited, explained, and celebrated. Here, you may find the song that haunts you tomorrow. Here is today’s unescapable song of the day…and the story behind it.
Today’s Epic Earworm: Radiohead — “Creep”
Music video for “Creep” by Radiohead, Courtesy of Parlophone Records Limited/Capitol Records
Never has a song defined a band like “Creep” (featured above) defined British alt-rockers Radiohead. Five months before the band released their debut album, Pablo Honey, in February of 1993, the album’s lead single hit the charts worldwide. “Creep” would be the band’s biggest chart success in the United States, though they would have several songs outperform it in other countries. The song gained cult status in America, creeping into pop culture through MTV and its inclusion in the Rock Band video game series.
The song was written to be about an inebriated man taking a fancy to a woman who is way out of his league. As he follows her around, hoping that she will notice him, he begins to realize his inadequacy. He longs to approach her, but finds that he never has the self-confidence to do so. Everywhere the band went, that was the song that everyone wanted to hear.
From A Blessing To A Curse
Ironically, the success of “Creep” slowly turned from a blessing to a curse for the band, according to frontman Thom Yorke. Radiohead soon began to hate the song. By the time the band went on tour for their 1997 album OK Computer, they rarely sang it. The song “My Iron Lung,” off the band’s second album, was written about “Creep.” The gist of the song was that “Creep” was the only thing keeping Radiohead alive, like an iron lung, but it was also musically constraining the band like the medical device constrained its patient. How sad…
