Creed 2024 tour: I was on the “Summer of ’99” ship. I know why this band is huge again.

It’s high noon on a blazing April day, which is the ideal time to be sitting in an Irish pub aboard a cruise ship the size of a small asteroid. Entertainment Weekly, reviewing Human Clay, the band’s bestselling album and one of the highest-selling albums of all time, bemoaned the record’s “lunkheaded kegger rock” and “quasi-spiritual lyrics that have all the resonance of a self-help manual.” Meanwhile, Robert Christgau, the self-appointed dean of American rock critics, wrote Creed off as “God-fearing grunge babies,” comparing the group unfavorably with Limp Bizkit. And I was like, Oh, shit, I like them now.” “Who would’ve thought, after our last show in 2012, our next show would be 12 years later, on a boat?” — Scott Stapp His point is indicative of a strange tension in this new age of Creed: If “the worst band of the 1990s” is suddenly good, does that mean all music is good now? “Everyone should be dancing pogo.” Nothing about Creed’s music has changed in the past decade, which is to say that many of the quirks that people like Hobey once used to mock the band for were on brilliant display during its first show back. Stapp, meanwhile, has long called Bono—he of the flowing locks, billionaire best friends, and residencies in extravagant Las Vegas monoliths—his “rock god.” Creed’s sole aspiration was to become the biggest rock band in the world, and for a few years there, the group actually pulled it off.