Album: Pablo Honey
Year: 1993
. . .
Look, it’s not like I hated “Creep” or anything. But it sure did seem to get popular way out of proportion to how go it was, especially on U.S. alternative radio, where you can still hear it, nearly 30 years later, sometimes even with the phrase “so fucking special” left in. But, honestly, I never need to hear it again.
And given how tepid the reviews for Pablo Honey were I didn’t even bother with it until the summer of 1996, when I got both it and The Bends — where the reviews were somewhat better — thanks to the auspices of the BMG CD club. And it was . . . fine.
And, ironically, the one that I was most attracted to was the one that combined the darkest lyrics and the most soaring music, a trigger-warning in song form called “Prove Yourself,” which starts of with just Thom Yorke and a quiet guitar, contemplating suicide in front of a TV.
I can’t afford to breathe in this time
Nowhere to sit without a gun in my hand
Hooked back up to the cathode rayI’m better off dead, I’m better off dead
I’m better off…
And then, wham! The rest of the band comes in hard, both musically and vocally, the guitars of Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien crunching and roaring while O’Brien calls his bluff.
Prove yourself
Prove yourself
Prove yourself
Prove yourself
Like I said, some pretty dark shit, and only somewhat mitigated by the searing soaring noise that Greenwood plays after the second chorus, which then leads into a Phil Selway drumroll over which Yorke sings “I’m better off dead” over and over again. Which would be the climax, except Greenwood tosses an awesome bendy hook over the next few iterations of “Prove yourself” and some more cool noise at the end.
The cool thing is that they cram all of this drama into just 2:25, easily the shortest Radiohead song I’m going to be writing about, and while “Prove Yourself” is neither a harbinger nor a patch on the glories to come, I would have totally enjoyed it had it been on the radio as much as “Creep,” or at all, for that matter.
“Prove Yourself”
“Prove Yourself” live in London, 1994
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The Certain Songs Database
A filterable, searchable & sortable somewhat up to date database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written.
Certain Songs Spotify playlist
(It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.)
Support “Certain Songs” with a donation on Patreon
Go to my Patreon page
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