I Can't

manic hedgehog

It is an On a Friday song. In October 1991 the band recorded a demo at Courtyard Studios, Chris Hufford's place in Oxfordshire, and it went on sale as a cassette at Manic Hedgehog, the Oxford record shop whose name the tape has carried ever since. This song was on it, with early versions of “You” and “Thinking About You”. Later that year Colin Greenwood met EMI's Keith Wozencroft in a record shop and handed him a copy; on 21 December On a Friday signed a six-album deal with EMI and, at the label's request, became Radiohead.

an older song

When the band made their first radio session, for Mark Goodier on BBC Radio 1 in June 1992, this was one of the four songs, and it was already being described as one of the old ones next to “Creep”, which was brand new. It was recorded again for Pablo Honey, where it sits tenth of twelve, though not with Slade and Kolderie: the booklet marks it and “Lurgee” as the two recorded at Courtyard and produced by Hufford.

The words are an apology that turns into a plea: someone who has said the wrong thing, blames it on his own doubt, and cannot make himself do better however hard he tries. Zaleski in Salon heard desperate crooning set against raucous pulses of guitar. Scott Plagenhoef, reviewing the 2009 reissue for Pitchfork, filed it with “How Do You?”, “Ripcord” and “Vegetable” as “run of the mill at best”.

eight nights

It had left the set before the album was out. The archive has eight performances: two in 1991, one of them at the Jericho Tavern on 31 October, and six in 1992. The last was the Duchess of York in Leeds on 27 October 1992. That same night the archive has the first “Lurgee” and the first “Vegetable”, so the album's live set was being assembled as this song was leaving it.