How Gen Z Learned to Love Creed, Nickelback, and 2000s Radio Rock

Jonah Krueger
·8 min read

The post How Gen Z Learned to Love Creed, Nickelback, and 2000s Radio Rock appeared first on Consequence.

Consequence continues to celebrate Post-Grunge Week with a reflection on how Gen Z has embraced the genre. See our picks for the 50 Greatest Post-Grunge Songs, and keep checking back throughout the week for more lists, artist-driven content, games, and more.

Creed, the multi-platinum selling band and rock media’s punching bag for the better part of two decades, is having a 2020s renaissance. After breaking up in 2004 and again in 2012, bearing the brunt of countless jokes at their expense along the way, the group announced a return in 2023 to (ahem…) wide open arms. Sure, they were always popular, but this time around the tide of goodwill seems to be in their favor, and they can thank Gen Z for being a major contributing factor in making that a reality.

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Around the time many Zillennials were sucking on pacifiers, Creed released Human Clay, an album that’s sold a whopping 11 million copies in the United States alone. Boasting mega-hits and radio mainstays like “With Arms Wide Open” and “Higher,” the record positioned Creed as one of the biggest rock bands on the planet — as well as one of the biggest targets. Entertainment Weekly referred to their work as “lunkheaded kegger rock sculpted from tiresome grunge riffs and aggressive discharge,” while the Los Angeles Times derogatorily called them “grunge twice-removed.” “The songs sound less like knockoffs of such standard-bearers as Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains than they do facsimiles of Seven Mary Three and Stone Temple Pilots,” the review continued.

“I think the initial backlash, some of it was just part of being so big, so fast — eight straight number one singles. I mean, we were all over the radio. You couldn’t escape us,” Creed frontman Scott Stapp recently told Consequence. “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.”

But as much as it might have started out as the “cool guy club” rejecting the music of the masses, snobby critics fuming away at their typewriters weren’t the only subset that held contempt for Creed. Other musicians repeatedly took shots at the act, like the time Dexter Holland of The Offspring wore a “Even Jesus Hates Creed” shirt onstage, or when Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst antagonized Stapp to the point of Stapp challenging Durst to a boxing match. And as far as the general public went, even while they dominated the airwaves and moved tens of millions of units, the hate wasn’t exactly quiet as the years went on. They were eventually voted the “worst band of the ‘90s” in a Rolling Stone readers poll – and “it wasn’t even close,” the magazine reported.

Creed were far from the only band who found themselves dealing with the dissonance of wild commercial success and widespread hate. In fact, most of the bands in their lane faced similar tribulations; especially as the genre’s momentum died out, the era of post-grunge, along with it’s angrier cousin nu-metal (which Gen Z has also reclaimed), became increasingly perceived as a “dark-age” of mainstream music, not unlike disco in the ‘70s.

Take Nickelback, perhaps the only band that can rival Creed in both sales and generalized mockery. Ranking second on that Rolling Stone “Worst Bands of the ‘90s” poll, the Canadian rockers took jabs from music fans and fellow artists alike. “Rock & roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world,” lambasted The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney. “They became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be shit.” The whole thing even became a Deadpool bit.

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Both bands faced a somewhat middling 2010s. Creed’s initial rebirth only lasted from 2009 until 2012, and they struggled to command the arenas they once headlined. For the rest of the decade, the members’ side projects and solo albums failed to match the significance of Creed’s initial run. Nickelback, for their part, never went away. Instead, they attempted to adapt their sound to current trends, securing decent sales numbers as a result but falling short of making any lasting impact (not a single cut from their 2010s output is in their top 10 songs on Spotify).

And yet, while each act may have experienced dips in popularity along the way, they’re both kinda killing it these days. Creed’s “Summer of ‘99” cruise sold out so fast you’d think Taylor Swift was involved, and Nickelback’s 2023 comeback tour had to be expanded due to demand. What’s more is that they’re bringing their old friends along with them, bands like 3 Doors Down, Buckcherry, Fuel, and Finger Eleven.

So, why the reclamation? Well, in no small part, it’s thanks to them damned kids. Slowly but surely, the TikTok generation started to become nostalgic for the songs of their earliest days, ultimately revisiting it with the earnest ears such music demands.

“Some of them only knew of Creed because they heard their parents playing the records,” Stapp said. “I’m just excited and grateful for all of it.”

Stapp’s not wrong. Several of the genre’s online nicknames, like “older brother music” or “divorced dad rock,” hint towards post-grunge’s ground zero for many of these fans — the backseat of their dad’s car, the boombox at the block party, or the muffled vibrations traveling through the wall they shared with an older sibling. Other nicknames, like “butt rock,” have been lovingly embraced as a sort of rebellion against the once seemingly universal disdain.

“I think people are really sick of the other stuff that’s out there. The alternative format got so weird in the past 10 years that it’s like, I don’t even know who these people are or what this music is in a lot of respects,” Shinedown drummer Barry Kerch reflects. “And that’s [me generalizing], but a lot of it is just not good. It almost becomes background music. It’s almost muzak in a weird way. I think people want songs that they can relate to. They want to have a good time and they want a big rock show. That’s what these bands do.”

Supporting Kerch’s argument is the fact that many Gen Zers are within their first few years of being above the legal drinking age in the United States. The undeniable fun of singing Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel” or Creed’s “One Last Breath” at karaoke or dancing to Finger Eleven’s “Parlyzer” or 3 Doors Down’s “Kryptonite” at the local dive bar has seemingly captured the hearts of the recently 21. (Go to your local college bar and wait; “Higher” or “How You Remind Me” will almost certainly get the biggest cheers of the night.)

Post-grunge just so happens to make for some quality party music, and in a landscape where hip-hop is experiencing something of a commercial slump and rock has yet to find its next torch bearer for dumb fun, early 2000’s radio rock makes for a pretty damn good substitute. At the same time, it’s not just the beer goggles. Younger fans have put their money where their mouth is, showing up to the recent round of shows.

Hell, even artists are back on board. Far from claiming that Christ himself despises Creed, the new generation of pop stars, like SZA and Lizzo, are vocal in their support of classic post-grunge.

“They rock! That shit is bomb! Why do you all hate it so much?,” SZA said in an interview last year. “I like Creed so much — ‘Higher’? Why are you hating on it? Have you ever felt more inspired and uplifted in your life? I’m in the car and I’m blasting ‘Higher,’ I feel like it’s a gospel song, the vocals are going crazy and it’s also somehow slightly romantic, it just feels so fun. Because even if it’s cliche, he’s so fucking dead ass!”

“I will be a Creed fan forever,” the Consequence cover star continued. “Like, it started just on a whim in the shower, ‘Oh, let’s play this,’ and then it became a week of Creed and Nickelback.”

By all accounts, it’s become the year of Creed and Nickelback.

“I think social media has been a huge part of that, most definitely. I’m looking forward to playing in front of a lot of fans that have never seen us play,” Stapp explained. “Life is cyclical. Just like fashion trends kind of circle around over and over and over again. If you’re lucky, you hit on the right one as a designer. I think the same thing happens in music.”

To extend Stapp’s simile, Creed and their peers are like the whale tale of music: a trend that was once both immensely popular and regarded as tacky or trashy, which fizzled out sometime during the Obama administration, and was eventually reclaimed by kids who are just barely old enough to remember it’s heyday.

As a great philosopher once said, “Hello, my friend, we meet again/ It’s been awhile, where should we begin?”

How Gen Z Learned to Love Creed, Nickelback, and 2000s Radio Rock
Jonah Krueger

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