Intro: Cultural Shorthand for "Bad"

To some, Creed is a widely-known post-grunge band whose early-2000s hits like "Higher" and "One Last Breath" dominated rock radio. To many, however, Creed is cultural shorthand for a widely-known thing that everyone apparently dislikes.

Yet things weren't always so bad for Creed:

• Formed in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1994, Creed scored their first Billboard hit five years later with "Higher," an omnipresent and vaguely spiritual earworm. The band would grace the Hot 100 four more times, including a number one single in 2000 with "Arms Wide Open."

• In 2001, Creed reached their cultural apex with a nationally televised NFL halftime performance on Thanksgiving Day. Mere months after 9/11, the broadcast intercut footage of first responders at Ground Zero while frontman Scott Stapp sang "My Sacrifice." Today, the band sells t-shirts commemorating "The Greatest Halftime Show Ever," complete with an animated rendering of Stapp sporting angel wings. The vague implication here is that Creed was integral to the nation's post-9/11 healing. I am too young to say otherwise.

And then things started to go downhill for the band:

• In 2003, disgruntled Creed fans filed a class-action lawsuit against the group following a disastrous performance where an intoxicated Scott Stapp repeatedly left the stage and slurred his lyrics beyond comprehension. A year later, Creed disbanded, citing tensions between Stapp and the other members.

• In 2013, Creed topped a Rolling Stone readers' poll as the worst band of the 1990s, a result frequently cited as definitive proof of cultural inferiority.

• In 2024, the band announced their much-anticipated "Summer of '99" reunion tour. A few months later, my friend Zach decided it would be fun to plan his bachelor party around a Creed performance, and so I boarded a four-hour flight to New Orleans to see a band Entertainment Weekly once called "lunkheaded kegger rock."

Upon arriving at Smoothie King Arena, I noticed two things:

1. This Stadium Deserves a Better Name: The Romans had "The Coliseum," and the people of New Orleans have a state-of-the-art entertainment complex named after a middling smoothie chain.

2. This Concert is Sold Out: An artist The Washington Post recently dubbed "The World's Most Hated Band" filled all 18,000 seats of this smoothie-centric stadium.

An obvious paradox arises: how can a band derided as "lunkheaded kegger rock" and widely labeled the worst, most hated group on planet