vocals and guitar of U2, and the "heavy but crunchy pop" of the Cure. Sharon O'Connell from Melody Maker viewed it as "a stormer, a perfect monster of a malevolent pop son that kicks in with a minimal, dismal shuffle and laconic whisper". She added, "Curiously, this makes Radiohead seem like some bunch of semi-industrial mates to Suede. It's the same self-awareness and suss that does it, the same brashness simply wielding different tools, and, like all the best pop, it gently strokes the nape of your neck before it digs the bread knife in. Agression is rarely this delicious." Martin Aston from Music Week gave it four out of five, describing it as "stunning". Tom Doyle from Smash Hits also gave it four out of five and named it Best New Single, praising Yorke's lyrics, the "crunching guitar" and the "delirious" chorus. A reviewer from People called it a "startling pop song" and a "gripping descent into love's dark regrets". Legacy Following the release of Pablo Honey, Radiohead spent two years touring in support of Belly, PJ Harvey and James. They performed "Creep" at every show, and came to resent it. O'Brien recalled: "We seemed to be living out the same four and a half minutes of our lives over and over again. It was incredibly stultifying." Yorke told Rolling Stone in 1993: "It's like it's not our song any more ... It feels like we're doing a cover." During Radiohead's first American tour, audience members would scream for "Creep", then leave after it was performed. Yorke said the success "gagged" them and had almost caused them to break up; they felt they were being judged on a single song. Radiohead were determined to move on rather than "repeat that small moment of [our] lives forevermore". According to O'Brien, the success of "Creep" meant that Radiohead were not in debt to EMI, and so had more freedom on their next album, The Bends (1995). The album title, a term for decompression sickness, references Radiohead's rapid rise to fame with "Creep"; Yorke said "we just came up too fast". John Leckie, who produced The Bends, recalled that EMI hoped for a single "even better" than "Creep" but that Radiohead "didn't even know what was good about it in the first place". Radiohead wrote the Bends track "My Iron Lung" in response, with the lines: "This is our new song /