You know when I first heard Creep I hated it. Compared to the other stuff from the US I was listening to at the time I thought it was too much self-indulgence and feeling sorry for yourself for my liking. They got hugely better after that rocky start. I'm guessing what happened was they signed a record deal and the management were all grunge mad at that point and made them record an appropriate album. This actually happened to a friend of mine who got signed around the same period. It took a couple of albums for them to get over that, perhaps once they had a big fan base I guess the record company let them do their thing. It's a sad fact that most albums you here, especially ones riding the wave of a new fad, were concocted in board rooms and sales meetings and not by angsty musicians bearing their souls.