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Music / Creed (Band)
aka: Creed

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Can you take me higher?
To a place where blind men see.
Can you take me higher?
To a place with golden streets.
"Higher"

Creed was an extremely popular Post-Grunge band that sold a lot of music in the late '90s to early 2000s. Chances are, if you were between 12 and 20 during this time, you owned one of their albums. They formed in Florida around '95 and released their first album, My Own Prison, in '97. Two years later, they dropped Human Clay and you couldn't turn on a radio in America without hearing "Higher".

Over the next few years, Scott Stapp let fame go to his head and got loopier and loopier in terms of antics. They split not long after Weathered, their last album for 8 years.

Three-quarters of the band would go on to form Alter Bridge, a much more embraced rock act. Stapp did a solo album and got in trouble with the cops before dropping off of the face of the earth for a while.

They reunited in 2009 and, surprisingly enough, still sounded pretty good. They did a short tour followed by a brand, spankin' new album that some music critics said heralded the end times, before going on hiatus until reuniting again in July 2023.

Albums:

  • My Own Prison (1997)
  • Human Clay (1999)
  • Weathered (2001)
  • Full Circle (2009)


Tropes:

  • Album Title Drop: The song "Say I" contains a reference to human clay.
  • Call-Back: "Freedom Fighter" has some spoken dialogue buried within the first verse, which quotes a lyric from "Wash Away Those Years".
  • Christian Rock: Depends how you look at it. Their lyrics do often lean heavily into biblical imagery, but the band itself rejects a "Christian Rock" categorization on the grounds that they don't have a specific religious agenda.
  • Epic Fail: The last concert for their world tour celebrating Weathered was so bad that the fanbase sued the band and won, costing them millions of dollars and contributing to their break up the falling year. It was a result of Scott, having recovered from a throat infection, ignoring the labels on his antibiotics and downing a bottle of whiskey right before the performance. As a result, he mumbled through five songs, got tired and literally tried to take a nap onstage during the middle of the concert, even laying down. It was so bad that officials put a stop to the concert immediately.
  • Epic Rocking: "Who's Got my Back?", clocking in at 8:25.
  • Fading into the Next Song: "Wrong Way" into "Faceless Man" on Human Clay; "One Last Breath" into "My Sacrifice" on Weathered.
  • Foreshadowing: "Bullets" is basically an Alter Bridge song with Scott Stapp on vocals.
  • I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: "Higher" describes a lucid dream about heaven. The sunrise rather rudely interrupts it.
  • Large Ham: Scott's performance is very over the top, and often the subject of mockery.
  • Long-Runner Line-up: The band was basically the same four guys - rhythm guitarist Brian Brasher left before they even recorded albums - even if the bassist left during the Weathered era and there was a five year break-up.
  • No Indoor Voice: Scott Stapp has a habit of bellowing rather loudly on even some of the softer songs. It's mostly Yarling but it occasionally approaches Careful with That Axe levels of angst. This is his main criticism as a vocalist.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted by vocalist Scott Stapp and drummer Scott Phillips, though Phillips started going by Flip to better differentiate the two.
  • Power Ballad: Some of their biggest hits were these, including "Higher" and "With Arms Wide Open".
  • Self-Empowerment Anthem: "Overcome".
  • Seven Minute Lull: "Signs" has a conspicuous break in the music right after Scott snarls, "This is not about sex!"
  • Surprisingly Gentle Song: Human Clay had this in the form of "With Arms Wide Open" (which became one of Creed's biggest hits) and also "Wash Away Those Years". Weathered then experienced a bit of whiplash between some of the band's heaviest songs and more mellow fare like "Don't Stop Dancing" and "Lullaby".
  • Take That, Critics!: "Bullets", "Overcome", and possibly "What If" and "Signs".
  • Uncommon Time: The verses of "Wrong Way".
  • Yarling: Scott Stapp is one of the more notorious employers of this singing technique. More than the Christian undertones, this is the band's main target of contempt.

Alternative Title(s): Creed

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