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This is all an elaborate joke, right?

by Will

Freddie must have infiltrated Slate’s editorial staff to write this gem, which masquerades as a serious defense of Creed’s musical stylings. Wait, what’s that you say? It’s not a parody? Oh dear . . .

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Tags | Contrarianism, Creed, Slate

14 comments

1 Bo { 10.21.09 at 6:02 pm }: Did you see that up in the banner area, right between the stories about Israeli nuclear espionage and vaccination, was a story titled, and I’m not making this up, Is the New Shakira Song With Lil Wayne Any Good? And that it has Jonah Wilder, the same critic defending Creed, wondering if he hooked up with Shakira, she’d be the dom from “She Wolf” or the sub from this song?

I wonder if Jonah Wilder has decided on his own to parody Slate on their own pages, and the editors just haven’t noticed yet.
2 Joe Carter { 10.21.09 at 9:28 pm }: I’ve never understood the animus against Creed. Sure the music can be a bit schmaltzy. But Scott Stapp can sing, unlike, say, Robert Plant from the inexplicably overrated Led Zeppelin. What is the standard when a horid band like Zeppelin can enter the pantheon of rock while Creed is considered an embarresment?

Will
October 21st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
This comment is just an incredibly meta joke-within-a-joke, right? Right?

JosephFM
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Creed are just ehh. The problem is roughly the same as with Oasis, say, or the Killers (bands I enjoy but acknowledge to be derivative and sorta mediocre): they have a sense of self-importance wholly unconnected to the actual quality of their music, and are self-righteous jerks about it.

JosephFM
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:16 pm
I should note said bands have a hatedom of similar intensity to Creed’s, which was the point.

JosephFM
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Now Nickelback, on the other hand, are just truly terrible.
3 Joe Carter { 10.21.09 at 9:41 pm }: No, I’m absolutely serious. (Well, as serious as you can be about Creed. Or Zeppelin.) I’m really curious what aesthetic standard we collectively use to determine that Creed is crap yet Zeppelin is genius.

Will
October 21st, 2009 at 9:44 pm
I’m not a huge Zeppelin fan, but I think they deserve credit for creating a unique (and incredibly influential) musical aesthetic. Creed, on the other hand, just sounds incredibly derivative. I mean, they’re a cheap Pearl Jam knock-off.

Joe Carter
October 21st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Zeppelin unique? I thought you were making a meta-joke there for a minute. ; )

The one area I give Zeppelin credit for is that they are one of the greatest rip-off artists of all times: http://www.associatedcontent.com/video/26428/led_zeppelin_rip_off_artists_.html?cat=33

But I don’t begrudge them that. There’s nothing new under the sun and certainly nothing new in rock music. Zepplin is a knock-off of blues singers, Creed isa knock-off of Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam is a knock-off of . . . ad infinitum.

But it still doesn’t get to the heart of the aesthetic question. Stapp has a good voice. Creed has a decent guitarist. Their lyrics are better than at least 75% of the gibberish that passes for rock lyrics. I just don’t get why people hate them so much. I can see them falling into the category of “Not to my taste” (a category that Pearl Jam feel into for me after “Ten”). But why the active distaste?

greginak
October 21st, 2009 at 11:53 pm
well i always like …ad infinitum, they rocked hard, but were a bit of a pale imitation of creed.

Will
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:22 am
Surely we can acknowledge that Zeppelin is both derivative and incredibly influential?

As far as aesthetics are concerned, Creed’s lyrics are awful, Stapp’s vocals are mind-numbingly bombastic, and the riffage – while competent – is totally indistinguishable from a thousand other Pearl Jam rip-offs.

Dave
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 am
They both suck. End of discussion. Personally, if we’re going to talk about music, I’d much rather talk about Allan Holdsworth’s incredible sense of phrasing and his killer legato lines than two completely underwhelming bands who have more than their share of derivative horseshit to cause our ears to bleed.

I have spoken.

Bo
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 am
That was part of the genius of Led Zeppelin, that they took blues vocals and replaced the traditional backing music of the singer wailing on an acoustic guitar with a wall of noise*. It wasn’t that they were new; it’s that they took something old and made it new. Of course, now Led Zeppelin’s old too, so the whole thing just seems like one old guy ripping off another to the young ones.

* Well, at least 1 and 2 were. Everything after that was pretty generic 70s power pop.
4 Ryan Davidson { 10.22.09 at 11:55 am }: An acquaintence of mine once described Creed as a “theological dry hump.”

I think that’s about all that needs to be said about them.

But I also think we’re missing the real question, which is “Why does Jonah Weiner have a job?”