Single Review: Creepin’ – Eric Church
12 years ago Liv Carter 2
Songwriters: Eric Church, Marv Green
Following the success of ‘Springsteen,’ Eric Church is not playing it safe and has released the dark ‘Creepin” as its follow up.
We find him post-breakup, tumbling into self-destructive despair, wrestling with loss, loneliness and lunacy. Everything points towards his decline over the course of the song: lyrics, performance, arrangement.
As with much of the material on Chief, the album this is drawn from, the writing is remarkable. Church doesn’t explain much, he expects you to keep up, meaning he credits his listeners with the intelligence to do so. The set dressing he uses for the scenes he builds is exquisite and, in this case, the vocal interpretation is perfect. What he says about himself, listeners can say about the song – ‘I can feel the lonely/I can hear the crazy.’ A little more with every line.
Producer Jay Joyce once again leaves plenty of rough edges, starts the song of almost sounding newgrass with gorgeous use of banjo and steel, and quilts together an appropriately chaotic background over a framework of extremely tight drums (if only someone could keep him away from overprocessing voices). The music, brilliantly, mirrors the character’s state of mind as he tries to hold on to his sanity before losing it and tumbling into a closing final frenzy.
Annoyingly, the radio edit has been (unnecessarily) run through the filter and so ‘your cocaine kiss and caffeine love’ becomes ‘your caffeine kiss and nicotine love,’ presumably as to not offend the delicate sensibilities of the conservative core of country radio listeners. (Ironically, most of whom will likely claim to be Johnny Cash fans. Go figure.)
Eric Church remains, seemingly no matter who he partners with, one of the most interesting writers in Nashville. With his continued success, he will hopefully be able to lead the way for others to release their more complex material, and inspire country radio to embrace substance over style.
Liv Carter
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
Latest posts by Liv Carter (see all)
- Well yes, racism, but it’s more complicated - February 13, 2017
- Black River Entertainment had a great reason to party! - October 25, 2016
- Keith Urban returns to the States for US arena leg of his “ripCORD WORLD TOUR 2016” - October 10, 2016
