Music is a surprising art form...
Here we have a song with an extraordinary provenance that - somehow - works superbly. I find it very beautiful, tender, sweet; indeed listening often moves me to tears from a mixture of nostalgia, emotional resonance and sheer aptness.
Yet who would have guess it could do such a thing! The song Creep was the one-hit of a one-hit wonder pop group called Radiohead; and this parodic cover-version was done by an anonymous Canadian young woman with a joke-name (albeit possessed of a voice of crystalline clarity, lovely tone, and perfect intonation), from her bedroom at home with the help of her brother - using sampled sounds of 'medieval' instruments.
('Bardcore' is the name of this recent genre: intentionally amusing pseudo-medieval arrangements of modern pop and rock classics.)
The song itself was, apparently by chance - since it was never replicated by the band - built on a repeating sequence of four chords Cmaj, Emaj, Fmaj, Fmin - which has for me an extraordinary wistful, suggestive, yearning quality.
This was a common early-baroque means of composition - termed a chaconne and found in the lies of Buxtehude, Purcell, Bach; but uncommon in pop music!
In the original Radiohead version, the song is rather messed-up and obscured by its arrangement - or, at least, it fails to reveal the extraordinary, burning intensity which Hildegard v B extracts from it.
The lyrics (with their archaic modifications by HvB) are exactly expressive of the real experience of being helplessly, hopelessly, love-struck; for an idealistic and romantically-inclined young man (such as I once was - and, apparently, still am; apart from the 'hopeless' bit).
Anyway, from these rather unlikely ingredients we get a perfect lyrical gem. Everything comes together; everything works. Who would have thought it possible!
