Creedence Clearwater Revival / YMMV

Award Snub: The band was never even nominated for a Grammy Award.^note
Broken Base: Who's to blame for Mardi Gras and what happened? This isn't helped by John giving a much different version of events than Stu and Doug, meaning that one of the two parties is absolutely lying. The boogieman depends on who you think is telling the truth.
- If you think Stu and Doug's version of events is true, then John responded to a not unreasonable request by screwing them over, forcing them to do much more than they'd asked for. This would've been partially out of spite (as Tom had left after expressing a similar desire) and partially to sabotage the band so John could start a solo career (which, if true, he certainly succeeded at).
- If you take John's story to be true, then Stu and Doug are blaming him for their own bad decisions and lack of talent. The general consensus is that Stu and Doug's songs are the weakest part of the album, meaning they overstretched their musical skills. They demanded to write their own songs and when it backfired, they shifted the blame onto John.
Covered Up:
- Their rendition of "Susie Q" is by far more widely known than the original by Dale Hawkins, and their version of "I Put a Spell on You" is usually played more often than the original Screamin' Jay Hawkins version.
- Discussed Trope with their song "Proud Mary": some might say it was Covered Up by Ike & Tina Turner. However, while most reinterpretations of the song are similar to Ike & Tina's version, CCR's version is still more streamed and remains one of their most popular songs overall.
- Fogerty had a minor solo hit with "Rockin' All Over the World". Then Status Quo covered it... And it became a contender for their Signature Song.
Epic Riff: "Susie Q", "Green River", "Born on the Bayou", "Bad Moon Rising", "Proud Mary", "Down on the Corner", "Up Around the Bend", "Fortunate Son", "Who'll Stop the Rain", "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?", "Run Through the Jungle".
Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: "Bad Moon Rising" is about the apocalypse.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: They have a huge Latino (especially Mexican) fanbase.
Harsher in Hindsight: The opening line of "Travelin' Band" ("737 comin' out of the sky") after two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 MAXs in 2018 and 2019 caused the fourth-generation planes to be grounded.
Memetic Mutation:
- A very early example of one is in "Bad Moon Rising". It was a popular thing for drunk people at concerts to get the lyrics wrong (sometimes by accident) by saying "There's a bathroom on the right". Some of the lesser informed concert goers would actually think those were the lyrics, helped by the fact that Fogerty will occasionally slip that line in when he plays it live.
- "Fortunate Son" has become a meme, thanks to the proliferation of various Vietnam War-themed memes as of 2019. Also setting the song to various ending scenes in movies or video games.
Refrain from Assuming: One episode of Jeopardy! had "Proud Mary" as the final answer, but the three contestants answered the question assuming the title was "Rollin' on the River." Their debut album is not Suzie Q, as iTunes sometimes identifies it, but the Self-Titled Album Creedence Clearwater Revival. And if you want to find a song called "Some Folks" or "It Ain't Me", don't even bother. The song's name is "Fortunate Son".
Serial Numbers Filed Off: In what has become one of the most infamous moments in the history of copyright law, John Fogerty got sued by his old record label because they felt that his 1984 solo song "The Old Man Down the Road" sounded too much like "Run Through the Jungle". The court sided with Fogerty, since he wrote both songs and the judge determined that an artist can not plagiarize himself.
Signature Song: Many, but "Fortunate Son", "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" and "Bad Moon Rising" are the ones that tie for gold overall, while "Proud Mary", "Down on the Corner", "Lookin' Out My Back Door", "Who'll Stop the Rain", "Up Around the Bend" and "Green River" tie for silver. Going by album:
- Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Susie Q" or "I Put a Spell on You".
- Bayou Country: "Proud Mary", with "Born on the Bayou" which is also regarded as a classic.
- Green River: "Bad Moon Rising'', although also the Title Track and "Lodi" are very well-remembered.
- Willy and the Poor Boys: "Fortunate Son", with "Down on the Corner" as a direct runner-up. Their versions of "Cotton Fields" and "Midnight Special" are also well-remembered.
- Cosmo's Factory: "Up Around the Bend", "Lookin' Out My Back Door" and "Who'll Stop the Rain" come first, but the album is full of classics ("Travelin' Band", "Run Through the Jungle", "Long as I Can See the Light" and their version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" anyone?).
- Pendulum: "Have You Ever Seen the Rain", of course, as it probably is their absolute Signature Song. Another song regarded as a classic is "Hey Tonight".
- Mardi Gras: "Someday Never Comes", though it ties with the song that, technically speaking, is the biggest hit on the album, "Sweet Hitch-Hiker".
- Then, there's Fogerty's solo career. Fogerty's best-known solo song is "Centerfield", with "The Old Man Down the Road" and "Rock and Roll Girls" as runner-up songs. "Rockin' All Over the World", instead, while not a big hit for Fogerty, arguably became Status Quo's Signature Song.
Sweet Dreams Fuel:
- The song "Lookin' Out My Back Door" is probably their best example of a feel good song. It's just so damn happy you can't help but smile when you listen to it. Plenty of fans loved the trippy lyrics and wondered what Fogerty must have been on when he wrote them. It's really just a cute song he made for his kids, somewhat inspired by And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
- Not to mention "Up Around the Bend". A song all about forgetting about your troubles and just having a good time. It can put a smile on anybody's face.
Suspiciously Similar Song: "Travelin' Band" was close enough to "Good Golly Miss Molly" that Little Richard's publishers sued the band (and got an out-of-court settlement). Oddly enough, CCR had covered "Good Golly Miss Molly" itself on one of their earlier albums, making the comparison even more obvious.
Tear Jerker:
- "Lodi". The protagonist is a musician who had a tour arranged for him and spent all of his money to get to the first location, the titular town of Lodi. Once there, his agent ran off, and he's now forced to perform in dive bars full of uncaring customers just to scrape together the money for good and - he hopes - a train ticket home. Months later, he's no better off, and seems resigned to being stuck in Lodi.
- "Someday Never Comes". The song's narrator feels a bittersweet nostalgia for the last words his father said to him before he left him and his mother following a divorce, which turns out to be all too prescient as the now-grown-up narrator is presently in the midst of his own divorce, forced to take the role of the father saying goodbye to his own son, further suggesting that the cycle of abandonment will only continue with his son. The song takes up an even sadder context as at the time of writing, Fogerty really was dealing with his marriage falling apart and recollecting the divorce of his own parents when he was young.
Values Dissonance: The band name that they went by in 1964-1967 (i.e. the one that immeidately preceded their use of the name "Creedence Clearwater Revival") is derived from the name of a character from a British children's book from 1895^note which is widely considered to be an offensive racial caricature. This might be more offensive in the UK than elsewhere (because there's a racial slur used in the UK that also originated from that character's name), but beware that it may well also be considered offensive in the U.S. and other places. (According to one published biography of CCR, that previous band name was chosen by the record company's executives because they thought that it "sounded British"^note, and the band members strongly disliked it.)

YMMV / Creedence Clearwater Revival

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