It's Time to Stop Hating Creed

Creed is back—the once ubiquitous (and “ubiquitously loathed”) rock group is releasing a new album later this month and going on tour. But “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,” writes Jonah Weiner for Slate. “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.”

Though the band was dismissed from the start “as derivative blowhards with a self-righteous Christian agenda,” it has sold 26 million records in the US to date—and now that it's been off the scene for a few years, “it's hard to reconcile the animus against the band with the music,” Weiner continues. “One of the surprises involved in returning to Creed with a fresh pair of ears is how rocking, exciting, and, yes, moving, the songs can be.” (More Creed stories.)