90s Alt-Rock Self Loathing Anthems

Loser's self-loathing is funnier and less maudlin, so voted that

I will leave a room if I hear "Creep." Even the Pretenders' version is loathsome.

baby's in reno with the vitamin D....i'm a weiiiiiirdoo

Gotta go with STP though I had no idea there was any hot S. Weiland slash out there.

(Can you guess who topped and who bottomed in the slash?)

kinda funny that the big selling pt on both these is guitar riffage

well ok that's not that funny

what about if they'd both used synth washes

wash yo synth keep ya synth clean

I dunno, though. Seriously, I don't know that I've heard Loser in like 10 years, and the last time I heard it, it just sounded like an in-joke that had passed its expiration date. I heard Creep for the first time in ages on the soundtrack of that Oxford bands documentary ACPG, and found it oddly moving and still really quite powerful, so I think I'm voting for Yorke over Hanson.

Mmmmm, Yorke over Hansen.

loser is funky and makes ppl happy

wow Mellow Gold not available on any of the download sites, I guess they really are cracking down lol

radiohead would vote for loser in this poll

a good album

'Loser'

I actually feel kinda bad for how badly poor Thommy is gonna get landslided in this. ;_;

Or should that be ;_. (there is somewhere a guide to Thom Yorke emoticons but I've lost the link.)

'c.r.e.e.p.' by the fall >>>> 'creep' by radiohead

I like how both of these options refer to a (lol) 'cool' alt-act (Radiohead, Beck) and a 'lame' one (STP, 3 Doors Down)

I vote for this one over all the others combined...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_K3-dX204A

would be happy to never hear either song ever again but if i had to choose it'd be "Creep" easy

just because it's the one with the cool JUH-JUH guitar noise

I always thought "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?" was a bit of a weak chorus in an otherwise great song. I really like "Creep", actually: as four-chord progressions go, it's pretty clever imo; nice tune and aforementioned guitar noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4a4X341Dt8

just keep it on the down low said nobody is supposed to know

creep is better than than anything on the last five radiohead albums, real talk

theyre both really good but i'd rather not hear either for about 5 years

soy un perdedor

creep is better than than anything on the last five radiohead albums, real talk the king of limbs

Really kinda bored of TKOL moaners. But, you know, p much anyone who records a concept album about ~trees~ is gonna get my undying love and affection.

I think the thing about hearing Creep for the first time in ages is that in my memory, it suffered from total Grunge anthem syndrome - that I always remembered the LOUD LOUD guitar bits (and the ker-CHUNKs) but I had totally forgotten how the quiet parts went. Spent quite some time marvelling at how shamelessly they had ripped off The Hollies, but then was all "actually, these bits are really lovely."

wasnt moaning.. i like TKOL..

"Creep" makes me miss the days when Radiohead was just another one of those bands played between Janet Jackson and Blind Melon videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfEBFj71l74

I don't think they watched Loser, but this is good enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNTnkfIwJI4

Both songs were voted by John Peel listeners into his Festive 50 countdowns even though he never played either song.

besides during the countdowns obviously

in my mind, i usually lump these in with "Undone The Sweater Song" as the most slack-off songs that were ever played on the radio

Fucken LOL I haven't seen that Beavis & Butthead in a billion years. "There has to be the bit of the song that sucks so the bit that's cool sounds so much cooler." I'm surprised neither of them got their lighters out during the Hollies bits. That impression of Jonny's guitar is so spot-on. It's one of those songs it's impossible not to air guitar to. It's embarrassing because it was played in the shop all the time when I worked in a record store and I would always have to stop whatever I was doing and do the air guitar to those bits which my colleagues would always laugh at but the customers were kind of um.

Loser were first, though, wasn't it? I always forget what order they came out in, even though Loser is very much the sound of my sisX0r's old apartment in upstate NY and painting New Grape Twins t-shirts, and Creep is the sound of moving to NYC for the first time.

I can see where Beck was coming from with Loser but good grief it sounds dated nowadays. Like I used to love Beck as a teenager but every time I hear him rap now it's kind of cringeworthy.

The beat's pretty good though.

Both of these songs sounded pretty tongue-in-cheek to me.

It's really strange the way that, though the Beck track sounded more weird and out there at the time, and the Radiohead track really sounded like grunge-anthem-by-the-numbers, it's the Beck track that sounds terribly dated while the Radiohead track sounds less so?

But I guess that's always the case with throwing deliberately weird affectations on a track just because, the sound of "weird" dates a piece more quickly, like, what is considered outre or strange, while just going for simple or "classic" dates less quickly.

For the first dozen or times I heard the Beck song, it was always with the video (I've written before about how that was the exact moment I became aware that I was a *target market* and that I was being marketed to. Not that I hadn't been overtly marketed to before, but that was the first time that I actually was aware of the process of it (that might have had more to do with studying advertising at art school than the track or video itself, I dunno) and I didn't entirely like it.) while Creep was something that I heard music first and video a distant second so - believe it or not - Thom Yorke's looks were far less an influencing factor in the appreciation of the music than they were with Beck.

It's also just kind of funny, thinking about these songs in the context of my sisX0r, Beck was the ~kind of guy~ (in terms of looks and the sort of lyrics that he sung) that my more attractive sisX0r was always dating at the time. While I got stuck with the Thom Yorkes of the gene pool. LOL, that sounds much nastier than I intended. I'd have liked to have been dating the free spirited laid back surreal hippie dudes, but I always ended up with the weird looking, uptight dudes with massive chips on their shoulders.

LOL 90s. LOL nostalgia.

It is my own fault for ever watching Glee, but I still have terrible memories of them butchering Loser a couple of years back and it has made me hate that song. Loser is probably Beck's worst song, it's sad that that's probably what he'll be most remembered for.

I like Creep. I like the guitars on Creep. There's probably 100 good reasons to hate this song (and Lex can probably list them all), but I don't care.

just because it's the one with the cool JUH-JUH guitar noise

― TERMAINTOR 2 (some dude), Tuesday, February 21, 2012 9:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1qKy4cMPUI

These are okay, but I prefer Offspring's "Self Esteem".

Is "dated" a positive thing or a negative thing?

I don't really see how "dated" makes any difference when so many current bands have been borrowing old sounds.

"Loser" only sounds dated because of the hundreds of infinitely-worse songs it influenced.

^^^Patrice bit is pretty much all I can think of re: Creep now

definitely don't agree that "Loser" sounds more "dated"

cuz lol yeah these days bands never build songs out of drum loops, digital noise, pop-culture references, and half-assed heavily processed vocals, nope

i cannot imagine a more '90s-sounding beat than the one in Loser

It is kinda funny, though, that people are so willing to take me to task for being kinda mean about Beck when I've been being just as mean about Radiohead, but no one's butthurt on Thom's behalf.

Wait, that's my job, I guess.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Wednesday, February 22, 2012 6:10 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

apology accepted. i will forward it along to beck.

the internet seems unsure if beck is 5'4" or 5'7" btw

The author of the story has just suggested that there's really only one way to settle this: NAKED MUD WRESTLING.

If Beck is 5'7" then I'm 6 foot and change.

Thom Yorke's exact shortness has long been the subject of speculation and debate. He is tiny, though. Like, pocket sized. I reckon Thom 5'2" and Beck 5'4".

The author of the story has just suggested that there's really only one way to settle this: NAKED MUD WRESTLING.

sensing a fairly vague distinction between reporter and subject here

LOL, um, no. If I'd written slash about Beck, I'd have researched the subject a little better, and would have known his background. You can go look on cheesecake archive if you don't believe me.

beck: sufficiently dirty but insufficiently dronerock

i'd love to, but i have to wash my hair

xp

This is reminding me of old conversations about "Entertain Me": YOU WRITE EVERY STORY ON THIS SITE, DON'T YOU?!?!? DON'T YOU!?!?? Um, do I look like I have the time?

beck: sufficiently dirty but insufficiently dronerock

LOL

I really am gonna go to bed this time. Please feel free to going back to discussing musical and/or aesthetic considerations in my absence, heh.

Projectin' time. I have this stuck in my head as a thoughtworm and yeah, I know, I should go and write my fan fiction on atease because ILX is sick of it, but that place is a fucking tedious pile of teenagers spouting banal shit about their cats and actually shouting at you if you wanna write intensely about Radiohead. I'm less drunk and sleep deprived and flippant so I'm gonna have another stab at it.

Both songs are kind of one-trick ponies based on riffage, but the difference in my reaction really is about the characters portrayed. I'm not sure if I'm talking about the characters in the songs, or the public image of the artists that created them - but my impressions are not about the real people.

That the Loser character is this fun, happy go lucky stoner dude who makes a total joke of his own pathos while being the entertaining wacky guy at parties. But both the song and the character project this underwhelming sense of shallowness - and the lasting impression is a kind of emptiness that is just as much an affectation as the clove-smoking Creep in the Joy Division t-shirt. (Whether that affectation is a front for a homeless kid from a broken home with one parent who's a cult member - or a borderline trustafarian whose dad actually owns a studio in LA, that's not really the point.) I don't even really buy the whole subversive act, like writing songs about "giant dildoes crushing the sun" and singing "MTV makes me wanna smoke crack" - while being played on MTV heavy rotation - it's such an empty gesture, it signifies nothing, it's just this kind of shrugging wacky laughter in place of a real reaction. He sings this dismissive song-diss about the "nitemare hippy girl" (or however he spells it) but it comes across as projection because he is equally the nitemare hippy boy, he seems just as shallow as the world he's laughing at.

And yeah, the Creep is the pretentious guy in the corner smoking cloves in a Joy Division t-shirt while holding up a book of Pablo Neruda to prove that he is just so above everyone else at that party - dudes like that are fun in their own way if you go up to them, ask to bum a clove off them, quote Emily Dickenson at them, challenge them for their opinion on Movement vs PCL then steal their beret and walk off with it and make them dance to Sprockets. Not that that has ever happened to me, mind.

But as fucking annoying as the Creep character is, the song is just more instantly relatable than the happy go lucky stoner dude. It's the way that those coruscating guitar ker-CHUNG strikes just absolutely mirroring the sickening sucker punch feeling in your gut when your own insecurities just take the wind out of you. That feeling of worshipping someone from afar, of being all "OMG you are the most beautiful person in the entire universe" and then, they turn up at your gig, and instead of being all "yeah, check out my band I'm a rock star..." like you felt five minutes ago, you are instantly reduced to being an unsettled, insecure teenager again, hiding behind your clove cigarettes and your Joy Division t-shirt too terrified to talk to anyone and too angry at yourself to do anything else.

I'm never going to be the Loser, I don't even aspire to being the Loser, he just irritates the shit out of me, because he's the kind of guy that turns up to a party and everyone makes a big fuss out of him coz he's so much fun, like, don't you see through this? But the Creep? I've been him. We'd be buds.

Which also reminds me that the character from Underwhelmed, he probably belongs in this thread, too.

Underwhelmed rocks... Although all of the third party candidates mentioned in this thread, including my own, don't belong in this poll as much as Loser and Creep.

There's way too much debate regarding facts and theories about Beck and Thom Yorke that are somewhat interesting, but make no difference in the way I hear either of these songs, or any of their music, really..

I decided to choose "Loser" because "he hung himself with a guitar string."

Write in vote for:

SKEE-LO - I WISH

I decided to choose "Loser" because "he hung himself with a guitar string."

― billstevejim, Friday, February 24, 2012 3:30 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that line was fire! love it

Oh snap it's alt-rock, sorry. Ok... let's see:

Beck is tongue in cheek, mocks hip-hop and 90s teenage-angst and it samples Johnny Jenkins's I Walk on Gilded Splinters.

Creep rip-offs the Hollies, wears its heart on its sleeve and it makes me feel ashamed to say I like Radiohead with certain people.

But that's the same thing it boils down to, for me. I have so much more love and appreciation for ppl or songs that wear their hearts on their sleeves than those that wrap everything in layers of irony and mocking and hip name-checking.

By the time 'Loser' came out it was kind of necessary imo. Someone had to do it.

Y'know maybe if Loser had demolished the Beastie Boys instead of lionising them?

By the time 'Loser' came out it was kind of necessary imo. Someone had to do it.

― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC)

This, we had an overload of 'heart on your sleeve' kind of artists at the moment, many bordering on pathetic self-loathing. Loser felt like a breathe of fresh air.

Loser came out just prior to Cobain's suicide iirc

don't really get any more zeitgeisty than that

i don't really scan beck as "mocking" hip hop, like at all

me either

like he seems like a p natural outgrowth of beasties, cali slacker/punk/skater/bo-ho/surfer/post-hardcore culture like ppl glen e friedman took pictures of culture + a little folky my parents were 60s weirdos vibes

Beck isn't mocking hip-hop, he's just largely terrible at rapping.

Beck isn't mocking hip-hop, he's just largely terrible at rapping.

^^^ which is how Beck felt about his rapping on the song, and is where the chorus came from

beck originally wrote "loser" for Chino XL but he turned it down so beck did it himself

Y'know maybe if Loser had demolished the Beastie Boys instead of lionising them?

will not hear a word said against the beastie boys. would take nearly half the tracks on check your head over "creep".

and yeah, i get no impression that beck is mocking hip-hop. mockery is his basic stance circa mellow gold and odelay, but the influence feels p genuine.

Creep rip-offs the Hollies
whoa! which song???

beck originally wrote "loser" for Chino XL but he turned it down so beck did it himself
so Chino XL almost had both a "creep" song and a "loser" song

xp "white people mocking hiphop" compared to license to ill it sounds like straight-up homage

same chords/melody as "The Air That I Breathe" iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb7S8-Iewi0

LOL this thread is actually making me dislike Beck in some contrarian stance when, actually I got out Odelay yesterday and it was pretty good.

I'm just super protective over Pablo era Radiohead.

LOL this thread is actually making me dislike Beck in some contrarian stance when, actually I got out Odelay yesterday and it was pretty good.

I'm just super protective over Pablo era Radiohead.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake

Not even Radiohead would be protective of their Pablo era.

'Creep' meant a lot more to me at the time. Neither song means all that much to me now.

Regarding the hip-hop mock comment:

This is sort of an egg/chicken paradox for me. I'm not aware of this song's history but when I first heard it I thought:

Was his first idea to write a song mocking the grunge sentiments or did he started mocking hip hop by free-styling and realized he was so lame at it that he seeked solace on the self-loathing grunge movement?

I understand why they loathe it, and I have no desire for them to ever revisit it, but I still find it quite sweet and worthy of... I don't know. I'm on record that it's nowhere near as bad as ppl (including them) say it is, And it's valuable to me to have watched them grow up in public. But we had that thread in the Sandbox.

(Blow Out is my jam but you saw my defense of that on Atease.)

I understand why they loathe it, and I have no desire for them to ever revisit it, but I still find it quite sweet and worthy of... I don't know. I'm on record that it's nowhere near as bad as ppl (including them) say it is, And it's valuable to me to have watched them grow up in public. But we had that thread in the Sandbox.

(Blow Out is my jam but you saw my defense of that on Atease.)

― White Chocolate Cheesecake

Blow Out is great, I'll grant that. Specially the acoustic version from CBC Radio Vancouver that has a few of the Posies playing with Thom.

There's a lot of great ideas in the album which get lost in their effort to fit in the grunge style of the era. The sudden outbursts of angry guitars and 'emotional' choruses in most of the songs ruins them completely for me.

The more subtle songs like 'thinking about you' or the acoustic versions of lurgee and you with johnny and thom on electroacoustic guitars are superb.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I identify better with "Creep." He'd be the dependent and depressing friend whom I often tell myself I hate but who always somehow manages to get me to talk for eight hours straight.

"Creep." "Loser" has some terrible lyrics, "Soy un perdedor" among them.

That's the best line!

Really? To me it sounds like frat boy/Peggy Hill/public-speaking politician Spanish. But I guess you would know.

i think it's "hey, remember spanish class?" spanish. plus a good joke.

On paper it's stupid; in the song, with that sitar in the background and Beck's timbre, it's stoopid.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

That was closer than I thought it was gonna be!

Beercan!

Oh my goodness.

How you like me now?