Creed is having a second. Really, if we’re being exact, it’s having innumerable moments, over and over, all throughout the web.
On Instagram, the band has been repurposed as a comedic device for dunking on President Joe Biden; on TikTok, shitposters imagined what it might be like to elucidate the butt rock legends to an alien race; and on X, Creed is a straightforward punchline for commenting on political theater. All of the whereas, these memes are collectively accumulating thousands and thousands of likes, views, and shares.
It’s secure to say that if Charli XCX hadn’t already made 2024 a “brat summer,” then this—so far as memes are involved—can be Scott Stapp season. And Stapp, for his half, appears to be totally conscious of it. “I’ve seen so many [memes],” the Creed frontman says. “Some are hilarious and I discover myself simply laughing, and a few are actually heartwarming by way of how a lot time and power the fan has put into creating the video.”
The wildest a part of all isn’t that Creed is being memed to demise—it’s that the band is seemingly being memed again to life. In 2024, Creed quietly clawed its manner again from web punchline to actual, honest-to-god, record-selling rock band. By June, the band discovered itself again within the charts—the highest 40 no much less. Final month, the band’s Biggest Hits was climbing in sales.
Because of its sudden resurgence, Creed is even again touring, taking part in sold-out reveals with fellow postgrunge staples like 3 Doorways Down. On high of that, they’re promoting tickets for area gigs for upwards of $100. For the tremendous Creed-core, there’s the band’s second-annual Miami-to-Nassau “Creed cruise” in 2025, which lists top-tier tickets for an eye-watering $4,300. These tickets, by the way in which, are offered out.
Positive, previous music finds new audiences on a regular basis, typically with a bump from the web—however Creed isn’t different bands. Creed is a band that hasn’t launched a brand new studio album in 15 years and has spent most of that decade and a half because the butt of web jokes. By business requirements, Creed was, at the very least till not too long ago, six ft beneath.
“Again in 2020, Creed hadn’t toured since 2012, so we had been sort of intrigued, I feel can be the phrase, to see the curiosity and to see the songs having new life and resurgence and renaissance,” says Creed’s agent, Ken Fermaglich, who has been with the band for many years.
All of that begs a pair apparent questions: Why right here and why now?
Based on YouTuber Pat Finnerty, whose channel “What Makes This Song Stink” ritually roasts bands of Creed’s ilk, the equation for Creed’s comeback is a straightforward one: time + cringe=reputation.
Creed, Finnerty says, at the moment are previous the 20-year mark after which most aged bands can really feel new once more. “However then there’s the meme factor—you see all these memes of like ‘this band sucks,’ however now, to make use of the parlance of our time, ‘this band fucks,’” he provides. “They’re switching it from ‘this band sucks’ to ‘this band fucks’ and it’s really funnier for them to get into it.”
Finnerty, like a very good portion of Creed-posters, sees the irony. Tasked with placing his finger on what makes Creed so memeable within the first place, he says merely, “Have you ever seen the act?”
“Anybody might do the voice, it’s simply he’s doing it. It’s similar to, [inaudible guttural singing],” Finnerty continues, mimicking Stapp’s signature sound.
Faraway from the context of late-’90s, early-2000s rock that birthed so many universally loathed Nirvana ripoffs, liking Creed’s music feels much less fraught. Much more so for youthful audiences who might not have the identical hangups about what constitutes “actual grunge.”
However time isn’t in and of itself a solution; simply ask bands like Buckcherry who’ve decidedly not loved the identical resurgence. Irony, as highly effective a power as it could be on-line, doesn’t are likely to promote tickets, particularly ones that value as a lot as 4 new iPhones.
Possibly, as one Redditor speculated last year, the band is the unlikely beneficiary of regret: “Creed’s rise in reputation and earnest help is because of a cultural phenomenon the place you’ve gotten a snowball impact of ‘we’ve been too exhausting on that.’”
In all probability the perfect level in favor of that concept comes from the singer-songwriter SZA. “I like Creed a lot—‘Greater’? Why are you hating on it? Have you ever ever felt extra impressed and uplifted in your life? I’m within the automotive and I’m blasting ‘Greater,’ I really feel prefer it’s a gospel music, the vocals are going loopy and it’s additionally one way or the other barely romantic, it simply feels so enjoyable,” she told Variety in 2023. “As a result of even when it’s cliche, he’s so fucking useless ass! I shall be a Creed fan endlessly.”
Or possibly, one might argue, the band matches extra simply into right now’s political zeitgeist. Creed’s music famously has a non secular bent that will attraction to extra conservative listeners. Stapp stepped additional into the realm of political commentary this month with an onstage speech about democracy and faith.
“We [will] begin reminding them of what our Structure says. We begin reminding them what our Invoice of Rights says. We remind them that we’re a constitutional republic constructed upon the Bible and the phrase of God and not a democracy,” Stapp mentioned between songs.
Stapp, who’s been open about his struggles with psychological well being and dependancy, has had a turbulent life within the limelight. There’s the time he fell from a balcony in Miami solely to be found by the rapper T.I.; there was the public feud with Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst. The record goes on.
Whereas a lot of that’s firmly within the rearview, these moments have all created fertile soil from which shitposting can sprout. Years later, that shitposting labored like an accelerant, serving to Creed totally catch hearth final 12 months when the band’s music turned a fixture at Texas Rangers video games. As legend has it, the Main League Baseball workforce began ritually blasting “Greater” within the locker room across the similar time they began successful, and ultimately went on to take the World Collection.
“The Texas Rangers factor got here out of nowhere and we turned the theme music for an underdog that made the playoffs as a wild card,” Stapp says. “There was a cut-off date that I used to be like, ‘Oh my god, I hope they win,’ as a result of this might go the other way. It may very well be the Creed curse. And as a substitute, it was the Creed contact.” (The Rangers’ hopes of a second World Collection this 12 months had been dashed over the weekend after they had been eliminated from the playoffs.)
Regardless of the genesis of Creed’s resurgence was or is, it’s clear the band is again—again in stadiums, again in individuals’s brains, and again as a punchline for anybody who can’t recover from the way in which Stapp inexplicably pronounces the phrase “open” as “oh-pawn.” As polarizing or enlightening as that could be, Creed appears to be alongside for the meme trip.
“I feel we simply embraced it and counted ourselves blessed and lucky that our music was nonetheless connecting to individuals in no matter method,” says Stapp. “It’s like we’re breaking as a brand new band yet again and we’ve the web and social media to thank for it.”
In the event you’re a fan of Creed, congratulations. You bought simply what you needed. And should you’re not? Nicely, watch out what you meme subsequent, as a result of typically a silly joke is all it takes to show our guiltiest of pleasures into butt rock’s second-coming.
