Oh, Slate, just when I think you couldn’t possibly be any more contrarian, you go and do something like this…and totally redeem yourself!

There’s no telling whether Creed will make good on its second chance, but the band deserves a second listen. If your impulse on hearing that it has reunited is to groan, stifle it long enough to locate a copy of Creed’s 2004 Greatest Hits collection. It’s a fantastic baker’s dozen of first-rate schlock-rock, courtesy of one of the most underrated and unfairly maligned groups in pop history.

Creed didn’t just sing songs about Jesus, they sang songs BY Jesus, in the form of Scott Stapp.  Turns out, Stapp was not without sin himself.  Addicted to painkillers, he was going to kill himself:

The next year, at home in Orlando, Stapp put two guns to his head, intent on blowing out his brains.

Obviously trying to one-up Kirk Cobain.  But then he realized that, just like his band, he would be unfairly maligning his head, along with his chances to chill with the J-Crew up in Heaven. 

Okay, okay, I admit, I did like their first album.  But this prognisticating just seems a little overdone:

“Higher” might turn out to be the nu-grunge “Don’t Stop Believing“: dismissed by cognoscenti on arrival as bludgeoning and gauche but destined for rehabilitation down the road as a triumphant slab of ersatz inspirationalism.

I would have accepted “Song you most likely listen to while deflowering your Christian girlfriend in High School.”