\n<\/p>\n
A few years ago, Mark Tremonti<\/strong> went to his manager with a vision of getting \u201cCreed reintroduced to the world.\u201d Tremonti, the lead guitarist for Creed, had success performing on the ShipRocked cruise with his post-Creed band Alter Bridge, and so he figured that the purveyors of such hits as \u201cHigher\u201d and \u201cMy Sacrifice\u201d could also draw a crowd at sea.<\/p>\n The pandemic capsized those plans, which were delayed further by other commitments. Frontman Scott Stapp<\/strong> has pursued a solo career, with his fourth album scheduled to be released in March, while Alter Bridge, which Tremonti started with Creed bassist Brian Marshall<\/strong> and drummer Scott Phillips<\/strong>, just released its seventh record last year.<\/p>\n But Creed recently announced that it will embark on a nationwide tour beginning next summer, its first in more than a decade, in addition to headlining two cruise festivals in the spring. It turns out the band didn\u2019t need a boat\u2013\u2013or even a stage\u2013\u2013to reintroduce itself to the world. By the time the reunion tour was announced, Creed was already in the midst of an unlikely revival, thanks to a pair of surging teams that embraced its music with arms wide open (sorry).<\/p>\n The Texas Rangers started blasting Creed in the clubhouse to lift themselves out of a midseason funk, and kept it going all the way through their improbable World Series title run. And as the Rangers were powering through the postseason in October, the Minnesota Vikings\u2013\u2013at the behest of starting quarterback and avowed Creed superfan Kirk Cousins<\/strong>\u2013\u2013turned \u201cHigher\u201d into a locker room hymn and promptly went on a five-game winning streak. \u201cThe Rangers have been playing Creed and they\u2019re rolling in the playoffs,\u201d Cousins said after the Vikings\u2019 win over the Chicago Bears last month. \u201cIt may have made the difference. Who knows.\u201d<\/p>\n If Creed helped propel the Rangers and Vikings, then the two teams have in turn provided a lift to a band that peaked nearly a quarter-century ago, when the Clinton years gave way to a second Bush presidency and Survivor<\/em> was the biggest show on television.<\/p>\n \u201cHere we are in this moment where the fans have spoken, we\u2019re back, and wow,\u201d Stapp told me. \u201cThe Rangers and the Vikings are rocking \u2018Higher\u2019 to get hyped and involving a stadium full of people in a sing along.\u201d The timing of the reunion tour, he said, \u201cwas too perfect to have ever been planned.\u201d<\/p>\n Tremonti agrees.<\/p>\n \u201cYou couldn\u2019t ask for a better marketing strategy than having a World Series baseball team using your music to get them a championship,\u201d Tremonti said \u201cIt couldn\u2019t have been more serendipitous.\u201d<\/p>\n A veritable force in rock music around the turn of the millennium, Creed produced two chart-topping albums and won a Grammy between 1999 and 2001, leaving the band with an enduring connection to that period. Creed was everywhere in those days\u2013\u2013on Letterman, Leno, and Saturday Night Live<\/em>\u2013\u2013as songs like \u201cWith Arms Wide Open\u201d played relentlessly on the radio. The band was the penultimate performer at the infamous Woodstock \u201999 festival, just before the Red Chili Peppers took the stage and shit hit the fan. Eventually, Creed broke up, leaving its music mostly confined to karaoke bars, supermarkets, and the memories of aging millennials and Gen Xers. But in 2023, relics of the Y2K era are ripe for excavation, whether by TikTok archaeologists or, apparently, professional athletes in need of a nostalgia-fueled spark.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of just a random thing that everybody started singing to one day, and it\u2019s kind of built on itself,\u201d Rangers star and World Series MVP Corey Seager<\/strong> said last month, providing a neat description of a meme\u2019s birthing process.<\/p>\n For the Rangers and Vikings, what began as pregame superstition among players quickly spread throughout both organizations and their supporters. \u201cHigher\u201d made its way from the clubhouse and locker room to the stadiums themselves, as fans of the Rangers and Vikings celebrated wins with Creed karaoke. And as the music led to more winning, the teams\u2019 commitment to Creed only deepened. Rangers players devised handshakes inspired by different songs, turning the fandom into something befitting a secret society. In the Vikings\u2019 case, Creed became a religious experience. Before a home game last month against the San Francisco 49ers, Vikings safety Harrison Smith<\/strong> stopped a teammate from turning the volume down on \u201cHigher\u201d before a team prayer. \u201cHe said, \u2018Guys, this is the prayer,\u2019\u201d Cousins recounted after the game.<\/p>\n Cousins suffered a season-ending Achilles tear in the Vikings\u2019 win over the Green Bay Packers last month, but the music didn\u2019t stop. Following the injury, the team acquired journeyman quarterback Josh Dobbs,<\/strong> who stepped in immediately and helped lead the Vikings to a come-from-behind win over the Atlanta Falcons in his first game. Dobbs was savvy enough to play the hits after the victory, posting a celebratory TikTok<\/a> video accompanied by \u201cHigher.\u201d<\/p>\n The Vikings lost for the first time in more than a month last Sunday night, falling in a heartbreaker to the Denver Broncos. It remains to be seen whether the band will continue to provide the season\u2019s soundtrack, but history suggests that Minnesota won\u2019t be the last place where a team summons Creed for inspiration. The Philadelphia Eagles turned to a \u201cHigher\u201d power on their run to the Super Bowl earlier this year, playing the song at practices during the playoffs.<\/p>\n It comes as no surprise to Stapp. From the beginning, he said that Creed \u201calways seemed to connect with athletes and sports teams.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur songs had been labeled as inspirational, anthemic and good workout music with big riffs that didn\u2019t sacrifice melody,\u201d Stapp said.<\/p>\n In addition to bringing the band more exposure, Creed\u2019s revival this autumn has raised Tremonti\u2019s standing within his own family. He lives in Orlando with his wife Victoria, their daughter, Stella, and two sons, Pearson and Austen. When the Rangers invited the members of Creed to make a surprise appearance at a game last month, Tremonti knew he had to bring his children, who he said are diehard sports fans. The whole experience has made him, well, a rock star at home. \u201cThey finally think I\u2019m cool because as far as music goes, they wouldn\u2019t know who half the people that I tour with are,\u201d said Tremonti, 49. \u201cBut with the athletes, they absolutely love it.\u201d<\/p>\n Born out of the post-grunge movement in the mid-90s when Tremonti and Stapp were attending Florida State University, Creed\u2019s legacy has long been colored by public mockery. There are fair reasons for that: Stapp\u2019s quivery baritone, reminiscent of Eddie Vedder,<\/strong> begs to be impersonated; the lyrics, Christian rock\u2013adjacent, invite parody. Creed is a band that is far too easy to hate and only loved ironically, a distinction shared by its early 2000s contemporary, Nickelback. As The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> once put it,<\/a> Stapp and his bandmates \u201cwere rock\u2019s favorite whipping boys through the late 1990s and early \u201900s,\u201d panned by critics \u201cfor being too earnest, too pompous, too attractive, too pop, too derivative of Pearl Jam or just too inescapable.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of the hate directed at the band is over-the-top, of course. You don\u2019t have to like Creed as much as Kirk Cousins, but you should be comfortable admitting that \u201cHigher\u201d is a certified banger. The band, to its credit, doesn\u2019t get too bent out of shape about the criticism. \u201cIt\u2019s something that we accepted,\u201d said Tremonti, whose solo career has included a Frank Sinatra tribute released album last year to benefit the National Down Syndrome Society (his daughter was diagnosed with Down Syndrome in utero).<\/p>\n Since 2004, he\u2019s performed in Alter Bridge with Marshall, Phillips, and lead vocalist Myles Kennedy.<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019ve kind of gotten to live on both sides of the fence. I\u2019ve got to do the Creed thing where it was a very well-known band that had a ton of fans, but also a ton of people that would make fun or whatever,\u201d Tremonti told me. \u201cBut then I got to do the other thing with Alter Bridge and my solo bands where it\u2019s much less known. You sell less records but you have these diehard fans and the critics praise it. And so it\u2019s kind of, What would I rather do? Sell tons of records and not get the critical praise or get the critical praise and not sell the records? They both have their perks. They both have their ups and downs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n