BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
Before there was Nickelback and Coldplay, there was Creed.
It seems every few years there becomes a band that becomes so popular that they become the butt of everyone’s joke. That’s pretty much the place Nickelback is now. When a band’s quality doesn’t match up to their popularity, the nerds will revolt. Eventually the nerds will bitch about a band long enough for everyone else to just cave in and accept the fact that a band is lame.
It sounds like a dickhead move, but it’s for a good reason. This kind of thing is what keeps people humble and what keeps the music world in check. It’s pretty much the survival of the fittest. I’m sure no one cares though. The music snobs get an easy target, lame people get a band to listen to while drinking their domestic beer, and bands like Nickelback makes millions on top of millions of dollars. So we ALL win… I guess.
Creed wasn’t always the butt of people’s jokes. Scott Stapp wasn’t always laughed at for making a porn tape with Kid Rock (and some chicks). The band was strong for a while. I have no shame in admitting that I really liked their first album. The song “One” was a good tune. I always felt it could have made for an interesting entrance theme for a wrestler, even on an ironic level.
The band just got more and more popular and their music was shoved more and more down our throats. It was never an issue that the band wasn’t talented. They obviously are strong musicians. I think the problem was the overplayed aspect and the whole part that their lead singer came off like a total d-bag.
It wasn’t ALL bad though, right? Let’s watch the videos and find out!
Track: "My Own Prison"
Album: ”My Own Prison”
Year: 1997
Director: Stephen Scott
A man looks through a peep slot in a door. Random people in business attire stand around as Scott Stapp kind of floats by. We get tons of late 90’s style visuals. The coloring is interesting. It’s washed out whites, purples, and aqua greens. The post on it is pretty cool, I’ll give it that. The song is one of their better ones, but the video is a bit lack luster. The narrative is, I guess, about being stuck in one’s own prison but it’s a cross between 1984 and vague STP/Tool looking image drops. There was nothing too overwhelming about this video. It wasn’t great and it wasn’t horrible.
Rating: 6.0
Track: "What’s This Life For"
Album: ”My Own Prison”
Year: 1997
Director: ?
This was a fairly big hit for the band. I was never a huge Creed fan, but I thought this was a solid album. I thought “One” was the best song, but it didn’t get a video. The band performs in the desert as we get cuts of a lot of people looking around worried or in pain. A man is homeless and asking for help, a woman hates her relationship, one dude hates his family, and just random pain and angst. Then the song breaks! Everyone’s pain goes away! They just get up and move on with a happy and up lifted existence. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of gothy 90’s kids roam towards the band in the desert… then it rains! Basically, the video teaches us that when Scott Stapp sings in a storm in the desert your problems go away. It’s well done, but the narrative is a bit too cheesy for me.
Rating: 6.5
Track: "Higher"
Album: ”Human Clay”
Year: 2000
Director: Raama Wilson
I’m watching this for like twenty seconds and I’m tired of it already. To be honest, it’s not a bad song at all. It’s just it was never good enough to merit it being hammered into my brain. At this point in my life, I was all about watching music videos and listening to the radio. Not much has changed, but still. This video and song was on HEAVY rotation. Now watching it a good ten years later, the automatic cringe came right back. The band is all chill and quiet backstage and slooooowly walk to a stage in front of a lot of excited fans. The camera then roams around, cuts sharply, and gets some really amazing shots. The editing and the camera movement is pretty cool. That wasn’t something I noticed too much in high school. The “in front of a crowd” type of video has been done many times before, but I will say this one stands out. It’s the direction stuff I’ve already mentioned plus the freeze effects. The song was played out to the point of it sounding REALLY generic to my 2013 ears, but the video is good.
Rating: 7.5
Track: "With Arms Wide Open"
Album: ”Human Clay”
Year: 2000
Director: Dave Meyers
This song was played out JUST as much as “Higher”, but I don’t think it’s as good of a song even subjectively speaking. Okay. Seriously folks. I don’t know what I missed here, but this music video is the most magical music video I’ve ever seen. I never paid attention, but the truth is in the deets folks. The truth is in the deets! The camera slowly swoops around to find Scott Stapp sitting on a tree stump on what looks like the set of a Twilight or Lord of The Rings movie. Scott sings as the band appears casually playing. Scott sings to the skies and holds his arms out a lot. He’ll take a break from this to occasionally look bashfully at the camera. Then out of nowhere asteroids fall from the sky! They hit pretty much everything BUT Scott Stapp! He walks around and ends up at some weird castle place with a long winding staircase, but before he can go up it a bell almost falls on him. It crashes through the floor so he decides to jump and follow it. He goes underground to a weird cave looking place with brooding and bubbling waters. He then jumps in, baptizes himself, and rushes out of there. He ends up being in the mountains. Then he’s on top of a mountain… with his arms….wide… open. I want to make fun of it, but I can’t. It’ just too… I don’t know. “So bad, it’s good” is a term invented so people like me could describe videos like this.
Rating: 7.75
Track: "What If"
Album: ”Human Clay”
Year: 2000
Director: Dave Meyers
One of the best independent wrestlers I’ve had the pleasure to see is Devon Fury. He’s a great personality and one of the most solid workers from the Midwest in the past fifteen or so years. One of the many cool things about him is that he actually made Creed cool with me. He’d use “What If” as his entrance music for a few years. It just worked for him. THAT is what I’d like to think about when thinking about this song. But today there’s a video to consider as well and it’s from the Scream movies! “Officer Dewey” lurks around as people are in panic. A woman leads a man around some wardrobe or cheap clothing, one dude kisses on a hot chick, and randomness goes on. Then the song breaks down and the Scream killer starts taking out the band members in their respected scenarios. Of course there is a performance section to cut to. The band rocks out in a warehouse looking type of set with some cool lighting and nice camera movement. Dave Meyers rocks at direction, but so far the narratives for these two videos have been lame. At least this one has a narrative and tells a clear story. For a movie soundtrack tie-in, this is actually a pretty decent clip.
Rating: 7.5
Track: "My Sacrifice"
Album: ”Weathered”
Year: 2001
Director: Dave Meyers
The WWE played this track a lot for pretty much all their long time wrestlers. If you were in the WWE around this time you’d have a video of being in pain a lot as they dramatically cued it to this song. It worked. I still fondly remember the Shawn Michaels one. Those video packages compared to this music video aren’t too different. In fact, I’d like the WWE stuff more. This video looks great. The band plays on a flooded street as Scott Stapp emotionally sings outward in a drifting boat. When Scott’s not doing singing outwardly he’s looking outward as people look at him from the water around the boat. It’s in slow motion and all dramatic. We see a lot of symbolic stuff like a tiger, a boy playing baseball, etc. Eventually Stapp pulls a hand from the water and pulls the person into the boat. It’s him! He’s wearing a red shirt though, so it’s a “different side of him”. The visual of the candles and school bus is neat. That’s the thing though. A lot of this “looks neat” and it’s a well-made video, but it’s just cheesy. The Stapp sings is almost painfully funny. I don’t know how anyone can take this seriously without taking themselves too seriously. Weird sentence, but it makes sense.
Rating: 6.25
Track: "Bullets"
Album: ”Weathered”
Year: 2002
Director: Vision Scape Interactive
I’m not going to lie. I have nothing to gain from denying that I always dug this song. It stood out A LOT compared to the rest of the album. It just had a cooler tone to it. I don’t remember the video so this is a first. Apparently it’s from the fine folks that made Twisted Metal 4. They spent nearly a half million dollars on this as fifteen people worked eighteen hour days to get this done. They did a beautiful job! This video looks like a video game that’d I’d want to get really stoned and play. A winged-warrior version of Scott Stapp is forced to fight off a herd of bad monster people. He then moves on to fight a weird spider creature and on to other levels. Eventually a big bad guy is his opponent. It’s like he had to fight through the levels to get to the main boss. Old school video games 101. I appreciate that. Stapp hooks up with his band, also bad ass fighters. They go out and beat shit up and then save the day. It looks really cool. It’s just a little weird for there not to be sound effects. It almost feels like a trailer for a game that I’ll never play.
Rating: 7.0
Track: "One Last Breath"
Album: ”Weathered”
Year: 2002
Director: Dave Meyers
I DO know this song, but I had no idea there was a video. By this point in the lineage of releases either they weren’t hitting big on the singles charts or I was successfully avoiding them. Rock music was really shifting forward to the garage band, old school sound of The Strokes or The White Stripes at this point. A nice guitar riff starts ona mountain top as Stapp stands on his OWN mountain top. By this point it’s clear that he doesn’t like interacting too much with the band in the videos. You don’t get even get the sense that they’re friends. Stapp stands on the edge of the ties in it. The rocks break up and Stapp falls. He sings, with his arms wide open, as he falls down for a REALLY long time. He lands and is okay. No problem for ol’ Scotty. Then a crazy sand storm beats the shit out them as they play. It goes away and there is a land of fancy ruins for Stapp to wander through in between singing outward. It can look nice and be well produced all it wants, but it’s just a lame video. Maybe everyone was successfully avoiding them. At this point, I’m at my Creed’s end of patience.
Rating: 6.0
Track: "Don’t Stop Dancing"
Album: ”Weathered”
Year: 2002
Director: Dave Meyers
I don’t even remember this song. I’m sure I heard it, but it’s just not a track I’ve heard. It’s not a bad song. It’s a down tempo track and Stapp DOES have a good voice, but it just always sounds the same in every song. I guess you could say there is a limit to his range. He at least pushes it in this one. The video has the band playing in an old church as there are cuts of people that are down on the luck, families, and a lot of heart-tugging stuff. There’s nothing too flashy about this video. It’s really mellow-dramatic, but it doesn’t have any crazy CGI so I’m not too bothered. It feels as “genuine” as this band can feel past the first album or two. I’m fairly certain this video wasn’t a big hit and it’s understandable as to why.
Rating: 6.5
Track: "Overcome"
Album: ”Full Circle”
Year: 2009
Director: Daniel Catullo
This video is pretty typical. It’s a live performance mixed in with some candid backstage shots. Pretty much most rock bands will go this route before too long. Every band thinks their “life on the road” experience is unique and that their backstage antics are totally original. But then you watch about a dozen music videos like this and it’s all interchangeable. THAT is an aspect of touring that I’d like to see captured other than this stuff.
Rating: 5.75
Track: "Rain"
Album: ”Full Circle”
Year: 2009
Director: Gavin Bowden
I “missed out” on all the newer Creed stuff. This video included. It looks really good. I like the blue hues and the water effect above them is kind of cool. The song isn’t going to stick with me at all. When I wake up tomorrow I won’t remember this song or video. It’s still well done and looks cool, but there was nothing to stick my teeth into.
Rating: 7.0
Track: "A Thousand Faces"
Album: ”Full Circle”
Year: 2010
Director: ?
Creed’s final music video is another live performance one. The band performs in front of a large catatonic crowd. It’s a down tempo track. Stapp really gets into it and seems more genuinely emotive for this song than some of their biggest hits. It’s not a bad song at all, but it just doesn’t grab me enough. The video is run of the mill live stuff. It looks nice, but there is nothing notable or remarkable about it. It looks like it was lifted from a live DVD.
Rating: 6.25
What is YOUR favorite Creed music video? You know you have one!
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