Rock music for me has always been the music of my parents. It was the music that they would force me to listen to on a long drive as a part of my Rock and Roll Education, their attempts to educate me on the wonders of rock music. As rebellious teens, my sister and I have been drawn to classical music to resist this parental influence. Although I appreciate the musical complexity of certain Rock songs, and enjoy Rock music’s strong fundamental pulse in general, I have never liked the genre very much. I have found that the lyrics distract from the music. I think that the trivial specifics of a singer’s life hinders the universality of the beauty that can be expressed through music. However, when I took Music Appreciation at Santa Barbara City College last semester, I gained a new perspective. As a part of the Medieval and Renaissance Music era, I learned about the similarities between the medieval Madrigal song type and modern day love songs. “Creep” by Radiohead exemplifies these similarities very clearly.

“Creep” is a song by the band Radiohead that tells the story of a male who lusts over a woman. This song is written in G Major. Despite this, this song has a melancholy tone, a gloomy vocal timbre, and chord progression shifts in such a way that the song sounds minor at times. “Creep” is written with a homophonic texture, as the main vocal melody is accompanied by guitar chords and percussion. The melody is largely conjunct, and consonant. Of the elements of music, the dynamics compliment the message from the lyrics the most. The song begins with Thom Yorke describing this woman, before continuing into self-deprecation, and sharing increasingly obsessive sentiments about her. This is matched with rising volume and harmonic tension. The song concludes with an example of word painting; as the voice diminuendos into the background, the singer says “I don’t belong here.” This conveys the sense that the melody no longer belongs, thus it fades into the background, ending the song.

While Rock music will never be my favorite genre of music, I now can see that it shares many musical elements with classical music. I really appreciated “Creep,” but for a different reason from my liking for particular classical pieces, for example the Well Tempered Clavier. I relish the counterpoint of a fugue, and the sparkling combination of timbres in a Mozart concerto. But, these classical pieces cannot manipulate my emotions in the same way that the combination of lyrics and melody in “Creep” does. I still don’t like the overreliance on lyrics as a way of manipulating emotions in Rock and other types of popular music. However with “Creep,” I can appreciate that lyrics do not necessarily obstruct the beauty of music, but may even enhance it.