The Worst Song in the World: Bagdad are utterly baffled by the crappiness of ‘Creep’
Somewhere beneath a city spire in Poland, the native band Bagdad perform an underworld seance to capture the spirit of grunge. The Wrocław three-piece began as school friends, and their sound perfectly captures that sentiment of musical obsessions. That is not to say that it is derivative – quite the opposite – while there is a healthy dose of Nirvana evidently in the mix, it tumbles down its own insular rabbit hole of buddy experiences.
In the end, their debut EP, They Don’t Know, makes Poland seem like the natural home of grunge. The brooding atmosphere of Eastern European melancholia abounds in their sound as introspective tales of growing up in the creaking Silesia unfurl. Paradoxes are everywhere—there is incredible tension but liberated carelessness. There is a friendliness and an affrontery. There’s a dense swirling mix.
To help explain that, at least in the case of the track ‘Somewhere, Nowhere’, frontman Franciszek Drobiński explained, “I wrote the music in 2019, in my senior year of high school, and then completely forgot about it, leaving it somewhere among hundreds of other recordings in my voice memos. I unearthed it three years later and added the lyrics. It’s a simple song about a breakup, but it’s also the first song we worked on together as a band, so it’s quite special to us.”
Though it might be simple, it has depth beyond its years. A high school break-up song is often a province for the most cringe-inducing songs in history, but Bagdad are wary of such pitfalls. The band crave depth and meaning in music, and that’s why they pick out ‘Creep’ as the musical height of crappiness. As it happens, Radiohead would probably agree with them at this stage—but that is no excuse.
The worst song in the world, according to Bagdad:
Bagdad’s verdict: “Let us make it clear: we could list here dozens of much worse, absolutely unlistenable crap that by some miracle came from the hands of human beings. But that would be too easy, though. That’s why we chose a song by a band considered to be one of the most important in the history of popular music. For some reason completely incomprehensible to us, despite the many great songs in Radiohead’s discography, ‘Creep’ is the one you hear most often on the radio.”
“And it’s not at all pleasant. ‘Creep’ is like a whining kid sitting next to you on an airplane during a ten-hour flight. Thom Yorke, however, instead of moaning about the uncomfortable seat, spouts pretentious and existential drivel about being a sad outcast. Pathetic, wearying, and, to top it all off, unoriginal – the tune is a plagiarism of ‘The Air That I Breathe’ by The Hollies, to boot. And it’s hard to believe that the same guys created OK Computer.”
Of course, Bagdad will hope that their journey through music mitigates regrettable moments. That journey begins with their debut EP, They Don’t Know, which is due out on March 27th via Houston’s tastemaking powerhouse Rite Field Records. Thankfully, from the outset, they might be youngster, but they at least don’t come across as whiny ones.
