Consequence continues to celebrate Post-Grunge Week with a reflection on how Generation Z has embraced the genre. Check out our picks for the 50 best post-grunge songs and keep checking back throughout the week for more charts, artist-driven content, games, and more.
Creed, the multi-platinum band and punching bag of rock media for the better part of two decades, is having a renaissance in the 2020s. After breaking up in 2004 and again in 2012, bearing the brunt of countless jokes At their expense along the way, the group announced a 2023 return to (ahem…) open arms. Sure, they were always popular, but this time the tide of goodwill seems to be in their favor, and they can thank Generation Z for being a major contributing factor in making it happen.
Back when many Zillennials were sucking on pacifiers, Creed launched human clay, an album that has sold a whopping 11 million copies in the United States alone. With mega hits and radio mainstays like “With Arms Wide Open” and “Higher,” the album positioned Creed as one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, as well as one of the biggest targets. Entertainment Weekly referred to their work as “dumb rock sculpted from boring grunge riffs and aggressive discharge,” while the Los Angeles Times contemptuously called they “grunge removed twice.” “The songs sound less like knockoffs of standard-bearers like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains than facsimiles of Seven Mary Three and Stone Temple Pilots,” the review continues.
“I think the initial reaction, in part, was just part of being so big, so fast: eight consecutive number one singles. I mean, we were on the radio everywhere. You couldn’t escape us,” Creed frontman Scott Stapp said recently. Consequence. “I think the initial narrative was created entirely by the elite, the critical media, a kind of cool kids club, who liked bands that didn't sell many records. So it was a narrative generated by that niche of the media and then propagandized to make people think that was the voice of the people.”
But as much as it started out as the “cool kids club” that rejected mainstream music, snobbish critics fuming at their typewriters weren't the only subgroup that despised Creed. Other musicians repeatedly criticized the act, such as when Dexter Holland of The Offspring used a “Even Jesus Hates the Creed” T-Shirt on stage, or when Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit antagonized Stapp to the point where Stapp challenged Durst to a boxing match. And as far as the general public was concerned, even though they dominated the airwaves and moved tens of millions of units, the hate wasn't exactly silent as the years went by. They were eventually voted the “worst band of the '90s” in a Rolling Stone reader survey – and “it wasn't even close,” the magazine reported.
Creed were far from the only band to find themselves grappling with the dissonance of wild commercial success and widespread hatred. In fact, most of the bands in his line faced similar tribulations; Especially as the genre's momentum died out, the post-grunge era, along with its angrier cousin nu-metal (which Generation Z has also reclaimed), was increasingly perceived as a “dark age” of music. mainstream music, not unlike disco music in the 70s.
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