Creed and Garth Brooks
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28 September 1999
Creed
Human Clay
The two biggest-selling rock acts of 1999, Limp Bizkit and Creed, are veritable punchlines in 2009, proponents of booming me-against-the-world post-grunge solipsism that appeals to an ever-narrowing, eternally receding arena-rock audience. Unlike the Bizkit, who raged in the name of locker-room profanity and locker-door profundity, Creed sought inspiration from a higher power. From the ecumenical name to the ersatz-Dali album art, Creed oozed a platitudinous spirituality, albeit one vague enough to gain massive radio play and move millions of units. In fact, Human Clay went on to sell 11 million albums, despite widespread critical drubbings.
Of course, what do critics know? In the case of Human Clay, it turns out quite a bit. Creed’s first album, 1997’s cheaply-produced My Own Prison, issued on the then independent upstart Wind-up Records, was an out-of-nowhere mega-hit. It had a couple of modestly gratifying, derivative but listenable cuts. But on Human Clay, the budget was upped, and so was the grandiosity. This album had to sound huge, gigantic, gargantuan—as gargantuan as the momentous supernal themes tackled in the lyrics. But the vocals are pompous and self-important, the music clumsy and over-engineered, and worst of all, the hooks non-existent.
Human Clay remains a dreadful listen—56 interminable minutes of forced chest thumps and clenched fists. Scott Stapp spews his tenebrous passion plays like Mount St. Helens spewed lava. Every power chord, every guttural grunt, has to erupt with meaning, with depth, with substance. Whether addressing domestic abuse on “Wash Away Those Years”, praising his child on “With Arms Wide Open”, or attacking his critics on “What If”, he recites exhausted clichés as though the earth’s survival depends on them. His two-trick baritone, a flagrant oversimplification of the Vedder-Staley technique, does not sell his horrid lyrics—it importunes them. And while religious fervor motivates his pronouncements, God appears only indirectly, as a “faceless man” or “our maker”. As with antecedents from U2 to Live to Collective Soul, Creed avoids direct Christianity in the name of marketability. Mark Tremonti, a semi-skilled guitarist, breaks up Stapp’s sermons with the occasional shredding solo, but more often obscures his virtuosic limitations behind the ProTools. As this is utterly sexless music, the rhythm section is utterly utilitarian: this is voice and guitar music with bottom added as a conventional measure only. The result is songs that progress like gaseous cramps shooting through the abdomen.
Aesthetic failings aside, Human Clay was a hit, though a largely forgotten one. Like many messianic rockers (Fred Durst included), Stapp’s massive ego eventually swallowed up his fame, and Creed folded after one more even worse multi-platinum album. Tremonti pressed on with the equally unoriginal Alter Bridge, Stapp released a flop solo album and a much-lampooned sex tape, and once their dwindling notoriety mattered more their personal differences, they announced a 2009 reunion. Yet it’s hard to imagine this music triggering the boundless nostalgia of bafflingly beloved artistic lepers like Bon Jovi or Def Leppard. For one, Creed’s music is too self-serious to be fun, and too hackneyed to be inspirational. Many of the rock radio stations that put Human Clay‘s four singles into heavy rotation have folded into livelier formats, and as ratings sag, rock playlists have become more stagnant and homogeneous.
Creed’s once ubiquitous singles have evaporated from the public consciousness: they’re seldom played alongside the neo-cock-rockers (Hinder, Saving Abel) and almost classic rockers (Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains) that currently rule the rock radio roost. DJs mock Creed incessantly, and bartenders are known to cue up Human Clay to clear the joint at closing time. Unless revisionism resurrects it in another decade’s time (think Slippery When Wet revived in 2006 versus 1996), Human Clay is destined for history’s cut-out bin, which is where many critics rightfully thought it belonged ten years ago. 
Charles Hohman
28 September 1999
Garth Brooks
In the Life of Chris Gaines
“Why the hell is Garth Brooks dressed up like Ben Stiller with a soul patch, or a lost member of the Backstreet Boys?” This was probably what countless fans said after catching a glimpse of the cover of In the Life of Chris Gaines, featuring Brooks dolled up as his rock star alter ego. The album was originally intended to be a musical prequel to a film developed by Brooks entitled The Lamb, a greatest hits package chronicling the musical evolution of the fictional (and Australian!) singer/songwriter Chris Gaines. The Lamb never came to fruition, and while the character never had his life story fleshed out on celluloid, the world got to witness Garth playing dress-up in both a literal and figurative sense.
By 1999, Garth Brooks had accomplished nearly every feat in the world of country music, almost single-handedly reviving the genre and bringing it unprecedented mainstream attention. In spite of the numerous NBC specials and countless music-industry accolades, Brooks had contemplated retirement. When you’ve conquered your domain of choice, what else is there to do? The Chris Gaines project offered him a new creative avenue.
Produced by R&B mainstay Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and Don Was, In the Life of Chris Gaines pulled from a variety of musical styles, very few of which resembled country. The album’s single, “Lost in You” (which hit #5 on the Billboard Hot 100), as well as “Driftin’ Away” were loaded with vocal harmonies and slow, acoustic guitar—staples of Babyface’s repertoire. Singing in a high falsetto, through Gaines, Brooks finally got his shot to trot out the sort of vocal tremolo that would be employed by scores of American Idol contestants in years to come. Gaines shot to a decidedly less mellow end of the spectrum on the funked-out, bass-heavy “Way of the Girl”, complete with Hendrix-like riffs and nary a trace of Garth’s country roots, before doing yet another 180 with a slice of ‘90s pop-alternative radio rock on “Unsigned Letter”. He even managed to squeeze in a pseudo-cover with “Right Now”, rapping his way through social hypothesis while incorporating the chorus of the Youngbloods’ folk classic “Get Together”.
Great pains were taken to create the Chris Gaines character—right down to the liner notes featuring Gaines’s prefabricated discography (and era-specific hairstyles depicted on each album cover mock-up). Hell, actual bands putting out greatest hit comps in 1999 didn’t go through half the trouble that Garth Brooks did in piecing together the past of his alter ego. The scary thing is, it’s all very believable. If you didn’t know better, it would be hard to guess that the myriad of musical compositions contributing to this sonic jigsaw were attributed to Garth Brooks (who didn’t write the songs, but rather convincingly performed them in his genre-hopping persona).
In spite of the promotional effort put behind In the Life of Chris Gaines, (including a VH1 Behind the Music mockumentary special), Brooks’ risky retrospective of an illusory character tanked. Fans didn’t get it, nor did they take kindly to the country crooner pulling an Andy Kaufman with the creation of his own, much more emo Tony Clifton.
While Garth Brooks had made country palatable to a mainstream audience in the ‘90s, In the Life of Chris Gaines was his foray into reverse crossover appeal. Brooks’ experiment didn’t work very well, but artists in years to come would invert his formula to achieve greater success. The likes of Jessica Simpson and Hootie and the Blowfish’s Darius Rucker have used country as a platform to boost lagging pop record sales and revive their careers.
All things considered, it’s a shame Brooks’s turn as Chris Gaines didn’t get its due for the sheer creativity and multi-faceted finesse in crafting an above-board pop album from an unlikely source—and doing it better than some of pop’s “real” chart toppers of the ‘90s. Lana Cooper
