Creed: Awesome or Sucks?

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First, I think the hostility towards pop might be a bit exaggerated. Though I live in a small, isolated town which probably does not well represent the most popular American viewpoint on any issue, many of hte kidz here seem to have little problem with pop music even though the favorite is undoubtedly modern rock. What maybe you don't realize is that just about anything played on the rock station of choice or MTV isn't really questioned. I can't imagine anyone in my class saying they don't like Creed because their music isn't authentic enough (not to say they're a popular band around here, I don't believe they are); if you need evidence that the kids don't care about authenticity, look at the success of Linkin Park.

J-hn D-hl-m, Tuesday, 11 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I don't follow the last step, though. They sing loud, they have loud guitars, they are Passionate About Frustrating Things = why can't they be authentic? It's just that Creed has God on their side -- but Dan's point about P.O.D. is good too.

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 11 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

wouldn't you think that a band that only had the trappings and background of true Xtian rock would have a wider range of appeal than a band that really WAS ham-fisted Xtian rock? Hence Creed's christianity can be a legitimizing factor, but the fact that they aren't IN YOUR FACE about it makes it all that much more appealing...? It's like the social psychology of the big strong guy who's just a little bit fallible being more popular than the big strong guy who never fucks up (and who everybody despises at little mister perfect).

I'm getting out of my league here, discussing a band I only know peripherally...

Shaky Mo Collier, Tuesday, 11 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

"if you need evidence that the kids don't care about authenticity, look at the success of Linkin Park": all this means is that "the kids" don't share your DEFINITION of authenticity, not that they don't care about whether or not the ppl making the music they like are doing it for real => they care lots

anyway, like i say, could you two please argue with EACH OTHER as you are claiming completely totally opposite and contradictory things abt creed; I REITERATE I HAVE NEVER HEARD A NOTE BY THEM!!

mark s, Tuesday, 11 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

(you two = shaky and JD) (ned you can argue w. whoevah you like)

whether or not authenticity is a feature of this or that rockband, the WORRY ABOUT AUTHENTICITY is central to the defn of rock as a form: that's the point i'm making

linkin park lyric that is in a panic abt authenticity:
What do I do to ignore them behind me?
Do I follow my instincts blindly?
Do I hide my pride / from these bad dreams
And give in to sad thoughts that are maddening?
Do I / sit here and try to stand it?
Or do I / try to catch them red - handed?
Do I trust some and get fooled by phoniness,
Or do I trust nobody and live in loneliness?
Because I can’t hold on / when I’m stretched so thin
I make the right moves but I’m lost within
I put on my daily façade but then
I just end up getting hurt again
By myself [myself]
I ask why, but in my mind
I find I can’t rely on myself

note keyword: phoniness

mark s, Tuesday, 11 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

You're all just a bunch of phonies!

Holden Caulfield, Tuesday, 11 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

christian and gospel albums sales rose 13.5% vs a 3% decline for the all music category. salem broadcasting has 83 stations and is expanding, businessweek says it is a good investment.

keith, Tuesday, 11 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

P.O.D., though they carry the Xtian Seal of Approval, are more in tune w/ the type of salvation offered by your grunge forefathers - even in a song as uplifting as "Alive", there's that sense of foreboding doom, of life being a temporary state, and a struggle. (That could be the Dropped D tuning talking, I dunno.) It's moody as hell, just as moody as anything offered by Pearl Jam or Soundgarden circa 1992-3.

Pearl Jam offered salvation through suffering - I know, when I was 17 and 18, I felt soothed listening to Eddie villify himself and The World. In a sense, he was dying for my sins, absolving me of my mistakes and faults by sticking my nose in the doo-doo. (Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.) Creed offer a guilt-free epiphany - doesn't matter what you did, or how bad you were, because you're free now. Hell, "My Sacrifice" manages to completely gloss over the messy sacrifice part; it just skips to the holy hossanas and the glorious light beaming through stained glass windows. It's the same sort of escape offered by any pop act, but it's couched in this portentious rhetoric, and offered via grandiose musical gestures that signify significance (or, at the very least, importance, in that BOOMING VOICE OF GOD manner).

Whether the band MEANS any of it or not is immaterial - the SONGS mean it. Pearl Jam's long since given up on the tortured messianic path to riches, but listening to _Ten_ nowadays (speaking as someone who was there when it happened), the power's still there.

Daver, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

John, that is such a rockist reading of pop! Creed are "real pop", and their fans are "real pop fans", eh? So talking about pop is somehow less pop? I bet those "authentic" Creed-lovin' dronez never think about music like we meta-freaks do... (Not that this is necessarily your argument, but it kind of goes with it...)

Clarke B., Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Oops, maybe I should read further down threads before I post...

Clarke B., Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

And doesn't the success of Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne -- young women who would have been marketed as Britney clones two, three years ago, now given guitars and pianos (and Billy Joel soundalike songs to boot in the case of Carlton) further epitomize the current trend towards "authenticity" in the way pop's being consumed at present? Even the way Pink's being treated as the next coming of punk, thanks to Linda Perry (and watch out Xtina is next!) belies this.

maura, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Recipe for a Creed Hit:

Step One: Write down the first contextless sentense fragment that comes to your mind. (For example "With Arms Wide Open");
Step Two: Record yourself repeating the phrase incessantly, without clarifying what you are referring to, preferably in a parody of the singer from Jars of Clay pretending to be the singer from DC Talk pretending to be a very boring version of Eddie Vedder...on Thorazine.
Step Three: Record a dull corner-bar band with HORDE aspirations doing listless, sleepy "anthemic", "passionate" "riffage" behind the prerecorded vocal.
Step Four: Subtly insert a few subliminal messages advertizing Tim LaHayes new apocalyptic book "The Turner Diar....Left Behind."
Step Five: Payola Payola Payola.
Step Six Six Six: Sings the praises of Mammon for you new found wealth and "critical acclaim" from such respected musical experts such as the cast of the 700 Club.

Lord Custos X, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Wait, so if we don't like it, it made the charts due to payola, but if we do like it, then it's genius pop which clearly made the grade on its own merits? Creed is pop Creed is pop Creed is pop

John Darnielle, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Listen to Creed aged 12

Become rockist aged 14

Start defending prog aged 16

Give up and Get the Gold Ultradisk Box Set of Michael Bolton at age 18.

Lord Custos X, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Wait, so if we don't like it, it made the charts due to payola but if we do like it, then it's genius pop which clearly made the grade on its own merits? Creed is pop Creed is pop Creed is pop
No, John. In the real world it works like this: Crappy band on Big Label owned by Megalocorp gets mondo airplay. Genious band wallows in obscurity and gets famous via word of mouth and gets to the top with NO mainstream airplay. Thats just how it is. If you hear a "NEW BAND" on a standard radio station, payola is involved. If you hear a "NEW BAND" on a radio station with a wattage equal to the bulb in your desklamp, then no payola is involved. But at soon as the song ends the DJ will begin pleading for donations.

Lord Custos X, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

No, Higher is definately pop. I just dug out my mp3 of it since I remembered the song being at least a little better than it's getting credit for here. The rest of their songs are shit, but Higher is kind of catchy. I kind of like the very beginning. Obviously a lot of groups can play the guitar better, but they have a nice little melody or whatever that is there.

It is waaaaaaaaaaay too long, though- more than 5 minutes. If you edited it down to 2:30, it would be a much better song, since it's not really strong to stand up to itself before it starts getting ridiculously repititous by the end. Actually, end it at 2:52, right at the end of the chorus, and you'd have a cute little pop song.

With Arms Wide Open, on the other hand, sounds like it took all the lousy parts of Higher, slowed them down & muffled them, and then stirred an extra bit of blandness.

I can't believe I'm defending Creed here, but all the "it just sucks" answers were ticking me off.

lyra in seattle, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

i'm a bit confused. Is this Pop as in 'popular' or pop as in simple and catchy, or both at the same time? The 'poppest' band in my world are probably The Clean - from NZ, early 80's - who were never really that 'popular', certainly not as popular as Creed - so does being popular make something pop - if it wasn't in the charts would it be Big Rock and would that be that? I'm intrigued by the story that Creed's fanbase grew organically. It's interesting how important the narrative seems to be in lending authenticity. Or did I miss something? Narrative or not, pop or not, I don't enjoy Creed's music at all. That seems beside the point now though.

Andrew, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Lord Custos at the risk of sounding pissy I must say that I do in fact know something or other about the workings of the "real world." Creed are, if you can stop cursing them long enough to study them a little, a band who worked a much older model of rising-to-the-top: they toured Georgia, Florida, etc relentlessly for a couple of years, establishing a fairly fanatical audience. At which point no doubt some money changed hands to get them played on Infinity or Clear Channel affiliates, but that wasn't my point anyhow. My point was that the word "pop" seems to achieve its definition only by passing through several filters which are less interested in defining than in establishing the good taste of the person establishing the definition. Creed remain a pop band, whose songs are fairly pure pop. Somebody please make a bootleg of "My Sacrifice" vs. that Ludacris song where he says "So much mon-ee" so I can prove this.

John Darnielle, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Saying "haha, Creed is pop!" is like trying to rile up Capricorns by saying "haha, Ted Bundy was a Capricorn!"

Clarke B., Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

y'know what's awesome?

that creed video where they are 3D animated angelic/spartan warriors in some sort of bad fantasy scape, battling some weird alien lobster creatures with long swords and crazy kung fu skillz

geeg, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Their guitars are recorded well.

Kris, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I had two choices on the radio today: the latest Creed single, or Yellow by Coldplay. The Creed single was better.

Melissa W, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Melissa you totally rule for that. Sorry to lapse into the expat Californian parlance but it can't be helped when somebody says something that just totally rules.

John Darnielle, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's true, John, yet surely a fluffy cotton ball is more interesting to listen to then "Yellow."

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

I'd have turned off the radio and sang "Lazy"

Ronan, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

I can't stand it. I dislike their music because it's ugly and offensive to my ears. It's close to the only music than can make me wince, I just can't deal with it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Bobby D. Gray, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

the question that was being asked is why, on a musical level, creed suck. i've got two reasons, neither of them particularly political.

1. their sound is an amalgam of traits pilfered from bands i like. scott stapp's voice is so affected, like the worst moments of scott weiland filtered through days of the new, with a dash of layne stayley. he's more histrionic than mariah carey. plus, the guitars sound awful, compressed to hell and run through the most irritatingly banal fuzz box ever made (possibly the DOD Metal pedal?). basically, they take the worst sonic qualities of grunge and make them even more irritating than that. 2. nothing they are doing is particularly interesting in the way that, say, chart pop is interesting to me. i like that brandy single because it's funky in a weird way, and i like songs about wronged lovers. on the other hand, i can't figure out what the hell creed songs are about, and they aren't interesting on any musical level. they simply take what others have done, and make it worse.

Dave M., Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

seven months pass...
Creed Sucks, PERIOD. Creed is one of the symptoms/causes of everything that is wrong with America. Creed is shitty music for Middle-American, White-Trash Christian Teenagers who don't have any taste or sense. The singer Stapp tries his damndest to sound exactly like the bastard lovechild of a homo three-way between Bob Seegar, Jim Morrison, and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder (who also sucks, along with Nickelback and any other band that sounds even remotely like Creed or Pearl Jam). The ridiculously over-mannered "underbite" vocal style of Stapp (unfortunately plagarized by many bands these days) sounds like a piece of shit straining to poop out of a constipated ass. They appeal to the kinds of trailer-trash mulletheads who like Professional Wrestling, their music is boring, tuneless arena-rock full of embarrasing histronics and bombastic bullshit. Creed appeals to meathead conservative assholes who have "United We Stand" stickers on their cars, and Creed promotes jingoistic "patriotism", which is actually the main cause of America's decline. I bet George W Bush likes Creed, and that means they SUCK. Creed also pretends (let's hope they are only pretending) to be Christians in order to sell more records to stupid, tasteless Christian Teenagers who don't know any better because they are so retarded.
Creed Sucks. End of story. If you like them, then you have no real taste in art or music. Christianity sucks too, it is a nonsensical religion for brainwashed idiots. Deuteronomy 23: 1 -2 for example.

Thorrific, Wednesday, 29 January 2003 15:25 (twenty-one years ago) link

Is anyone actually a Creed fan here? Have we finally found something everyone on ILM can heartily agree on (that Creed suck balls)?

Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 15:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yes, it seems even the random googlers heartily agree.

Vinnie (vprabhu), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 15:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

Thorrific

WILL NO-ONE COMMENT ON THE BRILLIANCE OF THIS NAME? Mr. Darnielle, we have a winner.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 15:46 (twenty-one years ago) link

all of mr. darnielle's points are well-taken.

but creed still sux

Tad (llamasfur), Thursday, 30 January 2003 08:38 (twenty-one years ago) link

Creed sucks. Thorrific is absolutely spot-on describing a segment of their fans.

But any self-respecting trailer-trash mullethead would not like Creed when they have their Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and AC/DC.

I just see the trailer trash mullethead kids breaking beer bottles on the side of a junked-out double-wide saying, "TOOL IS THE FUCKIN SHIT!" instead of "CREED IS THE FUCKIN SHIT!"

Creed is pop music for "Ordinary Fucking People."

Donkey Hote, Friday, 31 January 2003 05:07 (twenty-one years ago) link

four months pass...
god this band are shite

Tad (llamasfur), Thursday, 5 June 2003 22:04 (twenty-one years ago) link

I stand by "With Arms Wide Open," and "My Sacrifice" is fun if you're drunk.

Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 5 June 2003 22:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

I stand by "With Arms Wide Open," and "My Sacrifice" is fun if you're drunk.

you know anthony, if yer gonna like cheese we gotta get you to like higher-quality cheese not cheez-whiz like creed!

Tad (llamasfur), Thursday, 5 June 2003 22:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

Too shit to even describe how shit they realy are.

Jrvision (visionjr), Thursday, 5 June 2003 23:18 (twenty-one years ago) link

Creed have composed some nice melodies.

Geir H0ngr0, Thursday, 5 June 2003 23:41 (twenty-one years ago) link

Mostly I just find them, as well as Staind, dull, mediocre and uninspiring rather than actually offensive. I did hate WAWO at the time, esp with all that radio overkill but "My Sacrifice" or the " . . . six feet ain't so far down" song ("One Last Breath"?) don't really either bother or do a lot for me. I will say for the former that the chords after the chorus do sound a bit more interesting than what I'd expect from a band of this nature and it kind of does achieve a tiny bit of a driving-into-open-spaces mood, though it's too plain to really do much with it. Nickelback are slightly better.

sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 6 June 2003 03:08 (twenty-one years ago) link

Nickelback have at least one fucking awesome song, "How You Remind Me." The video is classic cheese (the band even admitted it on tv, the singer was watching it going "oh she left, now I'm all sad again...boo hoo...") but the song grooves way more than anything by Creed or Staind (though "With Arms Wide Open" is a great I'm-a-be-a-good-daddy power ballad, with understandably self-loathing lyrics too boot!). "How You Remind Me," like Linkin Park's "In The End" is the kind of radio monolith that deserves to be played over and over again. The only people who can't like are the people who'd hate ANY song that got played on the radio over and over.

Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Friday, 6 June 2003 19:32 (twenty-one years ago) link

or who refuse to like anything that the frat guy next to them might also like too.

Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Friday, 6 June 2003 19:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

Can it be said that if you are a current rock band and are popular enough to have records playing on mainstream radio (Clear Channel--natch), then you probably suck?

I'd say this is almost true.

earlnash, Friday, 6 June 2003 20:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

The new Matchbox Twenty stuff is shockingly fun to listen to.

Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 6 June 2003 20:38 (twenty-one years ago) link

The only people who can't like are the people who'd hate ANY song that got played on the radio over and over.

And how wrong you are.

The new Matchbox Twenty stuff is shockingly fun to listen to.

They have a new album?

Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 6 June 2003 20:40 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yeah, very little fanfare but they've had a couple of hits off of it. Rob Thomas has finally learned how to sing and no longer sounds like a smug twat, which improves things immensely.

Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 6 June 2003 20:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

Ah, but does he still LOOK like a smug twat, though?

Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 6 June 2003 21:14 (twenty-one years ago) link

My lord, I thought I was the only one hearing the non-crapitude & lack of twatness in the new Matchbox 20.

David R. (popshots75`), Saturday, 7 June 2003 03:09 (twenty-one years ago) link

the first single from the new matchbox 20 was leagues better than anything they've released prior, though not so great I felt the need to download it or anything

James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 7 June 2003 03:22 (twenty-one years ago) link

That first was more fun than anything else (though that "If You're Gone" song remains my fave of theirs - the horns do it), but it still sounds like a rewrite of "Smooth," which may end up being Rob Thomas's greatest contribution to the world, aside from killing the commercial careers of the Counting Crows and Hootie & The Blowfish, whom Matchbox always seemed like a combination of what folks liked about both bands.

Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 7 June 2003 15:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

one year passes...
SUCKS!

Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 17:30 (nineteen years ago) link

i encountered "my sacrifice" in public for the first time in who knows how long the other day

dyl, Monday, 29 April 2024 05:42 (one month ago) link


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