Creed was the fulfilment of a prophecy. It spoke of a band that would look and sound like Pearl Jam but outsell them and get their kitschy music videos featured heavily on MTV. They’d sell millions of records. But nobody would admit to buying one. They would be hated for their fate and for Scott Stapp’s yarl.
Creed was an anomaly. The band propped itself on the post-grunge bandwagon and became an overnight sensation. At the turn of the century, they were the biggest rock band in the world. But respect was hard to come by.
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Today I’m taking a trip back into the dark ages: the 2000s, examining the public’s hate for Creed, and asking myself how a band everyone hated could become the most popular band on planet Earth.
Creed and post-grunge bullet to success
Creed, and other bands of the same ilk, were a phenomenon born out of grunge. No, they did not start their apprenticeship in sleazy Seattle bars. No, their flannel shirts hadn’t set them back $5.
What Scott Stapp & co. cleverly did, however, was to step in just as Nirvana and, especially, Pearl Jam were stepping out.
Between them, Seattle’s luminaries had turned grunge albums into a marvellous commodity. Pearl Jam alone has sold 90 million albums globally, most of them during the 1990s.
But Eddie Vedder was sick of the success and all the attention that came with it. A similar dislike for the limelights had sealed Kurt Cobain and Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley’s fate.
But the public wasn’t done with the grunge sound. Oh, no, there was plenty of room for angry, self-loathing music by the end of the 1990s.
Creed not only filled that void. They remade grunge in their image. It wasn’t especially good (or bad if we’re being honest). But record labels, MTV, the radio and rock audiences no longer needed to deal with the artsy Seattle bands refusing to make videos or festival appearances.
Creed, Collective Soul, Bush, or Puddle of Mudd didn’t have a lot of integrity. But they had their post-grunge formula worked out and were willing to work with the record industry, not against it as their predecessors had.
Eddie Vedder’s singing lessons
Eddie Vedder and Layne Staley are the most oft-copied singers of their generation.
Sure, every novice singer learns from the best. At first, it was charming to hear the grungey tone. But the passion that seemed to animate it had been completely sucked out by the millionth iteration of the same sound.
Scott Stapp sounded like Eddie Vedder. And everyone knew it. And everyone pointed it out.
Stapp, however, denied it, even going so far as to say that this couldn’t possibly be true. He and Vedder had started singing at about the same time. Could Vedder have ripped off Stapp instead? Could they be related? Was this a well-orchestrated family vendetta?
In fairness, Stapp wasn’t the only one jumping on that bandwagon. Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots performed an excellent rendition of Pearl Jam on STP’s debut album.
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Brad Arnold, Gavin Rossdale and Aaron Lewis could’ve easily passed for Vedder’s siblings, an error they wouldn’t wish to correct.
This style of passionate rock singing came to be ridiculed as “yarling.” It involved creating a distorted vocal sound by means of pushing a ton of air out of your lungs and jolting your chin and chest as forward as they’d go before cracking.
In fairness, it’s a striking sound. It’s not easy to get right. Stapp or Rossdale had figured it out. But by aping it too hard, they fell into parody.
Music critics split between strongly disliking and hating Creed
Rolling Stone Magazine called “Creed” the “greatest underdog movie since Rocky.”
However, they had less charming things to say about the Christian rock band. In a 2 1/2 star review, the magazine claimed that the singer “hiccups and wails like a male Alanis Morissette, letting the pleasure of singing distract him from his messages”.
They were even less caring when talking about their debut. The reviewer claimed that “Creed’s utter lack of either humour or self-awareness is the band’s most distinctive trait.”
This is blatantly false, however. Creed had humour. Why would they name one of their songs “Pity for a Dime” otherwise?
Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that “ambiguity is not Creed’s friend.” Robert Christgau expressed a preference for “Metal Machine Music” over Creed. And Pitchfork politely refused to acknowledge the band’s existence.
Meanwhile, Creed beat out bands like Limp Bizkit or Nickleback to the top spot of Rolling Stone’s worst band of the decade. The irony of featuring the band on the magazine’s front cover, often during that decade, was lost on many.
It seemed that being the biggest band in the world wasn’t cool anymore. How in the hell did The Beatles get by?
Creed was overplayed into obscurity
There was no escaping Creed back in the early 2000s. Copies of “Human Clay” and “Weathered” went flying off the shelves. “Higher” and “With Arms Wide Open” were blasting out of radios and shopping malls across the U.S.A.
When Creed wasn’t being played on television, it was being made fun of on television.
And where bands like Nirvana attempted to shake off their fairweather fans, Creed embraced their success full-heartedly.
Scenes of a shirtless Scott Stapp parading like Bono parading like Jesus Chris are still lodged into the collective memory of music fans.
Creed’s sound was born out of alternative rock. I don’t like to say that, but it’s true. But by the time it had reached its zenith, it had little in common with the philosophy of alt-rock.
Mike Tremonti, Brian Marshall, Scott Philipps and Scott Stapp seemed like well-adjusted, happy millionaires. Turns out that they weren’t. But the world hated them anyway.
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Kurt Cobain and R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe had, at least, had the decency to look miserable throughout their time as beloved rockstars.
Fancy some Christian rock?
Christian rock was easy to make of. All that business about turning the other cheek made the genre’s fans an easy target.
South Park, an old cartoon show about modern trends, lambasted Creed in their episode “Christian Rock Hard.” In this episode, Eric Cartman starts his own band, Fate +1 and, like Stapp’s group, uses passionately-sung spiritual songs to achieve national success.
As for Creed’s band members, they never expressed a direct affiliation with Christian rock or Christianity. Songs like “My Sacrifice,” “With Arms Wide Open”, or Unforgiven” made it so that they didn’t need to.
The demographic for the Christian music industry includes millions of people. In 2000 alone, Christian recordings earned nearly $700 million.
Clearly, there was money to be made from this demographic. The problem was that they wouldn’t play Green Day, The Offspring or Metallica.
Bands like Chevelle, Switchfoot or Creed cracked the code. Christian music stations would play hard-rock music, provided the anger was the result of spiritual passion and a burning desire to change the world. Creed and Underoath weren’t going to start any controversy.
Listen, I find it just as funny and upsetting that someone would disingenuously take advantage of this. Most of these bands didn’t mean it. They just wanted to sell records.
But is it ridiculous for a religious movement to have its own kind of music? You go and tell that to Bob Marley or the great Jil Jilala.
Creed was pretty good, actually
Nah, they may have been annoying, and their music was painfully obvious. But Creed wasn’t all that bad.
Mike Tremonti was a virtuoso guitarist. He achieved additional success with the Myles Kennedy-fronted Alter Bridge, a similarly colourless post-grunge group.
The rest of Creed was made up of competent musicians, even Scott Stapp. He got to sing for The Doors, for heaven’s sake, something that even Jim Morrison would find strange.
They weren’t clever or self-effacing like Pavement or Nirvana. Creed’s sound was certainly not original, either. And, unlike the grunge bands, they seemed eager to succeed. That didn’t make them very cool.
But listen to Creed with an open mind, and you’ll hear a pretty good band. The songs are hooky. They might be a Pearl Jam ripoff, but they aren’t ashamed to give the audience songs they can sing along with. PJ rarely did that after their second album.
It wasn’t Creed that sucked. The music industry sucked, overflooding a market it controlled with sub-par, overplayed material. Creed just went along for the ride, and its members were willing to be ridiculous while making millions of dollars.
It was that deal with the devil that had made them Christian rockstars. Here’s Creed’s version of “Crossroads.” Feel free to unironically tap your foot.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
