Creed killed the music critic
Scott Stapp has outlived most of the word jockeys who always hated him
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There’s something about Creed that makes writers want to get unholy with invective. In advance of the band’s show tonight at Target Center, I had planned to write a story about how the Book Of Revelation predicted the reunion of Creed. Can you believe that shit? I was actually going to read the last book of The Bible—The Bible!—and look for links between scripture predicting the apocalypse and a band whose most lasting legacy is influencing Nickelback. Obviously I was doing this for a laugh, but it’s not like I reach for the good book when Insane Clown Posse comes to town. Even after five years in hibernation, Creed still inspires a uniquely spiritual dislike.
For the record, I was only able to come up with two connections: (1) Creed’s latest single “Overcome” is the band’s first in seven years, and as you might remember from Sunday School, the number seven pops up throughout Revelation; (2) The title of the forthcoming album Full Circle suggests a rebirth of sorts, and what is the apocalypse if not a rebirth? (For believers anyway—the rest of you will live the same lives for all eternity in the fires of hell. In other words, you’ll be stuck listening to Creed’s first three albums.)
Maybe if I were disciplined enough to read the entire Book Of Revelation, I could have come up with more material. But, really, why bother? There’s absolutely no point anymore in mocking Creed, or saying Creed is worst band of its generation, or trying to blame Creed for God raining down toads and locusts on all us sinners. We all made up our minds about this band a long time ago. Music critics, in particular, executed enough trees to cover Africa 10 times over in order to write astonishingly mean things about Creed in the late ’90s and early ’00s. The most memorable slam came from Joey Sweeney of Philadelphia Weekly, who wrote this in a 2002 cover story poetically titled “Why Creed Sucks”: “They travel in only the most cringeworthy cliche, they are pompous to what would be the point of comedy—if only they were in on the joke—and they embody all that is dead, idealess and cowardly in present-day rock 'n' roll.” Yep, I think that about covers it.
(The funniest thing ever written about Creed came, of course, from professional band assassin Robert Christgau, who said, among other things, that “these God-fearing grunge babies sound falser than rape-inciting Limp Bizkit.” Incredibly, I think that’s supposed to be a bigger rip on Creed than on Limp Bizkit.)
You know how much good all that toxic ink did? Here’s how much good: Creed has sold 35 million albums—35 million. Consider that the band peaked in popularity during the height of Napster, when stealing music wasn’t only okay but actually trendy, and that number is even more mind-boggling. Creed is a tremendously popular rock band at a time when the term “tremendously popular rock band” doesn’t apply much to groups that formed after 1985.
On its current reunion tour, some concert reviewers have pointed out that Creed has occasionally played to less-than-full houses. But drawing 8,000-12,000 people ain’t bad for a group that hasn’t put out a new album in eight years. And it’s not like people are going to see Creed in 2009 because it’s cool or something. This band has real, true-blue fans who will fork over grocery money to hear “My Sacrifice” in truly horrid economic times. Anyone who thinks that Full Circle won’t put this band back into prominence is either naïve or exceedingly optimistic. (They’re also wrong.)
All of a sudden it’s all so clear. Creed didn’t get back together because, as Stapp recently told Rolling Stone, “we feel like we have a second chance to make a first impression.” Creed is here to stick it to music critics!
As Creed gets the band back together, music critics are having a tough time. With print media slowly dying off, and bloggers offering to write about music for fun instead of money, it’s become increasingly difficult to get paid for your musical opinions. Not that I’m complaining—it was a good racket while it lasted, and it was only a matter of time before somebody got wise. But some word jockeys aren’t taking this laying down. In this clip, freelance music writer Christopher R. Weingarten sings the blues of the soon-to-be-out-of-work scribe.
I’m sure Weingarten is a nice man and a fine critic, but I sort of doubt that the masses really need music critics to tell them that Fleet fucking Foxes sucks. In fact, if you were to ask people to describe what they imagine most music critics look like, “unshaven dork in a dumb-looking hat” would be right up there. Which really isn’t a good thing for our marketability, you know?
Maybe I should follow the example of Canadian writer Carl Wilson, whose Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey To The End Of Taste is one of my favorite music books of the decade. (Though it’s nowhere near as good as The Dirt: Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band.) Wilson wrote Let’s Talk About Love for the 33 1/3 series, where critics write about one classic album, discussing its history, importance, and (most importantly, of course) personal significance to the writer. Instead of writing about an artist he loved, Wilson wrote about Celine Dion, a singer he loathed. The idea was to figure out what other people saw in her. “If all these people see something in it, there must be something to see. Realizing I couldn't see it suggested to me I had blinders on,” Wilson told me in an interview last year. “If we can't share enthusiasm with other people for things we don't quite get, at least we can see where they're coming from.”
Wilson ended up immersing himself in music he hated in order to reach some higher level of empathy for his fellow man, and came away appreciating at least some of Dion’s music. Maybe I should do the same with Creed—after all, Creed could be accurately described as music for the boyfriends of Celine Dion fans. If I were to apply Wilson’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work method to Creed’s massively successful power ballad “With Arms Wide Open,” which Stapp supposedly wrote after he found out he was going to be father, I would say that the artless directness of the lyrics—which basically recount what I just said in the plainest language possible—makes the song more powerful, because millions of people can relate to its message. And when I saw Stapp sing the song on some awards show around 2000 while holding said fucking baby in his arms like a prop, I should have been moved by the band being even more fucking direct, instead of wanting to chuck my television into the nearest river. Because even if I hate “With Arms Wide Open,” I have to recognize that the song has probably brightened more lives than I or any critic ever will. Because (heavy sigh) art doesn’t have to be good in order to be important. There, I said it.
So, congratulations Creed. You win. If only you knew you won, since I can only assume that you stopped reading your reviews a long, long time ago. But if you are reading, I just have one question to ask: Are you hiring?
