“With Arms Wide Open” by Creed (2000)

One person’s view:  “Overwrought, overproduced, and ugly.” – TumbleweedExtreme629 @ Reddit

The public’s view:  1.99 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2000 to 2002

Many music critics look back fondly upon the grunge craze of the early ‘90s.  They curse the day that grunge was replaced by the execrable post-grunge, which committed the unpardonable sin of sounding like grunge despite being slightly later chronologically.  It should have been clear from the beginning, however, that grunge would have only a brief time as the dominant force in rock ‘n’ roll.  The movement’s hero was an iconoclast who disdained wealth and fashion, and whose success led to hundreds of others imitating him in an attempt to become wealthy and fashionable.  The contradiction could not be sustained.  Within a couple of years, the price of flannel shirts was bid up so high that no one aside from Eddie Vedder could afford the extravagant lifestyle associated with the genre.  Plus, life insurance companies wised up and stopped selling policies to anyone who was in a grunge band.  Post-grunge may not evoke the same warm reminiscences as grunge, but at least it has better actuarial statistics.

Creed is despised even more than the average post-grunge act.  I don’t feel like writing a long essay about all the specific reasons why.  Instead, I fed a bunch of reviews and online discussions about the band and their #1 hit into a word cloud generator, and this is what I got:

To the professional and armchair critics who write these reviews, it doesn’t matter that Creed has sold over 50 million CDs.  It also doesn’t matter that Creed’s reunion tour – a quarter century after the band’s peak – is one of the hottest concert tickets this summer.  The band will never appease its haters, and its haters happen to control certain honors such as induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  In that respect, Creed can be compared to Styx.  Like Styx, it even has a religious, overdramatic lead singer who often antagonizes people.  I guess Scott Stapp is the baritone version of Dennis DeYoung.

I’m going to be a contrarian again, as I was with Michael Bolton, and say that “With Arms Wide Open” doesn’t merit this torrent of contempt.  It’s an inspirational song about becoming a parent for the first time, and it can be appreciated for what it is.  Yes, the production is a bit overdone, and any newborn who enters the world to the sound of Scott Stapp’s angry deep-voiced barking is probably going to turn around and go back into the womb.  Plus, Stapp pronounces the word “open” as if it has a “u” in the second syllable.  But this was the start of a truly forgettable decade for popular music, and Creed’s #1 hit wins some points from me just by not being everything else on the charts at that time.

No other hard rock band has had a #1 song on the Hot 100 since the chart-topping feats of Creed and the similarly maligned Nickelback in 2000 and 2001.  I’m sure it will happen again someday, perhaps as part of a White Lion comeback, but for now we must contend with all of the hip hop, country, and Ed Sheeran that the gods of popular culture choose to bestow upon us.  We still have plenty of material for this blog.