In a recent interview with Consequence, Scott Stapp was asked whether the enthusiastic response to CREED‘s current reunion feels like vindication for him and his bandmates after enduring significant backlash following their initial commercial success.
“To comment on the word you just said, ‘vindication,’ I don’t have time in my life nor space in my heart to ever think about vindication,” he responded. “So I’m just looking at everything from a positive perspective, and not a way of kind of, ‘Haha, told you so.’ That’s not who I am. That never entered my mind.
“I think the initial backlash, some of it was just part of being so big, so fast — eight straight Number One singles,” Scott continued. “I mean, we were all over the radio. You couldn’t escape us. I think the initial narrative was completely created by kind of the elite, critical media, kind of the cool guy club, who liked bands that didn’t sell a lot of records. So it was a narrative that was kind of generated by that niche of the media and then propagandized out there to make people think that that was the voice of the people. And as that narrative was being put out there, we were selling out multiple nights of arenas, releasing diamond records, and had stadiums on hold. So it didn’t even line up at all with the masses.
“Again, it was a media-generated narrative. And once that kind of gets out there and just gets hammered home, you’ll always have the fringes that come out on both sides, but it didn’t represent the people, and CREED has always been a people’s band. And that’s what meant so much to us, were the awards and the recognition that we got that the people chose, and that the numbers said, and that the concert tickets said. So that’s really my perspective on it, from a thousand-foot view, but at the time it definitely kind of caught all of us off-guard. We didn’t understand because we went from being on the cover of magazines that said, ‘CREED‘s the savior of rock ‘n’ roll’ to all of a sudden the most hated band by the media — not by the public, by the media. So, it was just kind of, like, ‘Hey, this doesn’t line up with our rock ‘n’ roll dream. What’s going on?’
“Being that young age, of course there was some frustration, anger, hurt,” he added. “But being where we are now, we kind of know that that’s just what comes with it. It’s just part of the deal. I mean, it happens in pro sports. Mark [Tremonti, CREED guitarist] and I were doing an interview the other day, and he was talking about how this has happened with LeBron James. He goes from King James and then now he gets hate. He’s one of the most hated players in the league, and it’s all because of how dominant and how successful he is. And so it’s just par for the course. It just comes with the territory, and being more mature and older now. All that matters is the fans, and all that matters is riding on the positivity and then just trying to deliver to the fans every night and focus on what’s good, and just let all that stuff go. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Last month, CREED headlined the Summer Of ’99 cruise, marking their first two performances in 12 years.
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.
