04-14-2009, 09:12 PM
A friend of mine has always hated Nickelback and made the completely reasonable claim that most of their songs sound the same. Our mutual friend is a 10th grade English teacher that complained one day about the quality of writing she has to deal with. She had just graded assigned essays about a hero or villain and she asked my friend to write one so she could show her class what decent writing is. His beef is more with the lead singer of Creed but Nickelback is referenced several times. I apologize for the length, Adobe Acrobat isn't on this computer I'm using. He sent me a copy and I am posting it here without his permission, bear in mind this was written several years ago.
Well, I’m sure that this is supposed to be more of an academic style research paper. You know, none of this speaking in the first person or injecting your own opinion stuff. But guess what, I’m a professional writer, so I get to do what I want. Don’t worry, we’ll have the in-text citations, works cited page, the proper format and the exhaustive research, but there’s absolutely no way you’re getting an outline out of me, so you might as well deduct those 20 points right now. While I was trying to come up with a suitable villain (let’s face it, no one wants to write about heroes, villains are way more fun), I found myself with a few interesting options:
Scott Stapp it is.
Oh, I can hear the arguments now: “Creed was awesome, they’re my favorite band.” “Creed has had so many good songs; they’ve made so much money, made people happy, and contributed so much to our society.” Well, you COULD say those things… but you’d be wrong. What it comes down to is that Creed, well, sucked. This is not an opinion, this is fact. Here’s what Time Magazine said about Creed’s 2001 CD “Weathered.” “Creed may prove to be a lesson in Rock 101 for the Britney generation, a bland Big Mac to wean the kids off musical Gerber.” If you read the entire article, you’ll find that the reviewer was actually going out of his way to be nice. The nicest thing that he could say about Creed was that they were “generic.” Maybe he wasn’t trying to be nice; maybe he is actually at the point where he believes that this lowest common denominator form of music is acceptable… but, more on that in a minute. OK, so Creed sucked, at least in the eyes (or ears) of the critics. That doesn’t mean that their lead man was a villain, right?
Sort of.
Creed somehow became amazingly popular; they sold more than 30 million records. (No, that doesn’t make them good; just remember, in his heyday, Hitler was once Time’s man of the year and extremely popular.) 30 million people bought into this nonsense. That doesn’t even account for the hours and hours of radio bombardment the public has endured, and is STILL enduring four years after Creed’s break-up. It’s not much of jump from here to reason that Creed, and therefore front man Scott Stapp, played a major part in the dumbing down of our culture.
Jump back to the Time Magizine article mentioned earlier. Most people would say that Time is a reputable American publication that prides itself on good writing and legitimate, relevant opinions. Well, perhaps they’ve been subject to this “dumbing down.” “Rock has made against pop this year, three dudes who write their own songs and play their own instruments are outselling Britney Spears with their new CD,” it says in the article. “For many people over 14, that sounds like an answer to a fervent prayer.”
Answer to a prayer?! Why? Time says “Creed is certainly better than just about any teen-pop act.” Great, so that’s all that matters in our culture. As long as you’re not a teen pop act, you’ve got some sort of musical integrity? No. Time, congratulations, Scott Stapp has made you stupider. Do we need any more proof that we’ve been dumbed down? Yes? Ok, fine, here’s more proof: I went home for my mom’s birthday last weekend. Much to my chagrin, I found an article in my local newspaper that talked about bands from my hometown. It read, “If Bon Jovi and Nickelback spawned a child, it would probably sound like Eighteenth Hour, and that’s a good thing.” Now, being from my home town, I’ve read reviews by this guy before, and I happen to know he’s an idiot. But, who can say whether he’s always been an idiot, or if Scott Stapp made him that way? Schoof is probably just another innocent victim. This is precisely the problem. This is what makes Stapp such a vile villain. We now think this drivel is acceptable! 3 doors down, The Calling, Fuel, Daughtry, Nickelback and basically any other band that has that ridiculous false vibrato singing style that sounds like their mouths are full of cotton balls has cashed in on America’s absurdly low standards when it comes to modern-rock music. These bands are all un-imaginative and they all sound exactly the same. Stapp is the villain here because he’s the ringleader. He started this mess.
Now, you might be thinking: “Hey, Eric, didn’t Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam sound like Scott Stapp before Stapp himself? Wasn’t Vedder the first perpetrator of “mushroom mouth?” By your logic, shouldn’t he be the villain?
Ok, fine, you might have a valid point. Except, you need to consider that even though Vedder may have been the first, he certainly wasn’t the worst. Look at it this way. The Ford Model-T wasn’t the first car built, but it was the first to make cars affordable to the common man, thus changing the way we lived forever. That’s Scott Stapp: his raspy, off-key voice wasn’t the first of its kind, but it became more popular than anyone like him ever before. Also, Vedder should get the benefit of the doubt. At the time, he was doing something pretty original. Pearl Jam’s breakout record “Ten” was back in 1991. This is YEARS before Creed decided to rip them off. Even People Magazine realized that Stapp was nothing more than a rehashed, artless copy. “Despite selling 25 million albums, Creed was always considered the poor man's Pearl Jam, making frontman Scott Stapp the post-grunge answer to Eddie Vedder.”
All of that notwithstanding, Stapp displayed other villainous tendencies: He was arrested at the L.A. International Airport because he was acting drunk and belligerent. This was mere hours after he married a 25-year-old beauty queen in Miami. Stapp also “went spastic over the release of a '99 sex video on which he and Kid Rock beguile and inspire four exotic dancers.” This is not exactly role-model behavior.
Months earlier, after announcing his engagement to his fiancée’s family, Stapp got into a fistfight with members of the band 311. Rolling Stone Magazine said that, “According to 311's frontman SA Martinez, Stapp was doing shots, being ‘loud and obnoxious’ and made ‘a disrespectful comment to my wife that I'd rather not repeat.’ When drummer Chad Sexton asked Stapp to settle down, the members of 311 claim Stapp sucker-punched him and, in the follow-through, struck Martinez's wife.” A few days later, an obviously drunk Stapp taped an episode of the Spike TV celebrity poker show Casino Cinema. During the taping, “Stapp slurs his words, curses incessantly, claims Dave Grohl [of foo fighters] has ‘a little (expletive deleted because this is a 10-grade paper)."
Ok, let’s recount. Stapp has an alcohol problem, stars in sex tapes, starts fistfights, hits women and is guilty of brainwashing the American public into thinking that lazy, unthoughtful music is not only acceptable, but preferred. Plus, like all good villains, Stapp is a bit disillusioned. Remember, Hitler thought he was saving the world. He believed he was doing the right thing. It’s as though Stapp honesty believes that he can do no wrong, that he’s infallible. That’s what makes him such a heinous villain. After all the negative ways he affected our society, he’ll never be able to wrap his mind around the possibility that he had any fault in it at all.
Well, that was the end of my paper until, no lie, about four hours ago, my intern, Ashley, starts laughing and sends me a link to an article that was just written yesterday on yahoo.com’s music page. Ashley knew I was writing this paper, and didn’t know why I hated Creed so much. (Ashley seems like a pretty cool girl otherwise.) Anyhow, this article is about the ten most annoying singers and it has Stapp at number two. Only Michael Bolton is rated as more annoying. That’s probably not even true, but, it’s not the point. Point is…this is what the article said:
“We could probably start laying the blame on Bono, Eddie Vedder, Jim Morrison and that guy from Blood, Sweat and Tears, but in the end it's Scott Stapp who epitomizes that macho bellow that sounds like a man who's gone overboard at the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and has just received spiritual orders to let everyone know they're going to hell if they don't save themselves somehow. His spiritual torment becomes your problem. Thanks, pal.”
Well, that pretty sums up my entire paper in one paragraph. He changed music forever, and not for the better. He made garbage rock acceptable to the masses. Need I say more?
Well, I’m sure that this is supposed to be more of an academic style research paper. You know, none of this speaking in the first person or injecting your own opinion stuff. But guess what, I’m a professional writer, so I get to do what I want. Don’t worry, we’ll have the in-text citations, works cited page, the proper format and the exhaustive research, but there’s absolutely no way you’re getting an outline out of me, so you might as well deduct those 20 points right now. While I was trying to come up with a suitable villain (let’s face it, no one wants to write about heroes, villains are way more fun), I found myself with a few interesting options:
- Hitler and Bin Laden, but they’re probably popular choices among your class. Our current president, but that’d be a lot of work and research, plus I’d only piss people off (including myself)
- The New York Yankees, for ruining baseball’s economy and forcing teams to overpay for average players, making it impossible for lower revenue clubs to compete. Also, they’re villains because they’re arrogant bastards whom I hate. (If any of your students write this paper, they should automatically get an ‘A.’) But, I don’t feel like writing a baseball paper, plus, plenty of sportswriters have already tackled this subject.
- Scott Stapp of the band “Creed.”
Scott Stapp it is.
Oh, I can hear the arguments now: “Creed was awesome, they’re my favorite band.” “Creed has had so many good songs; they’ve made so much money, made people happy, and contributed so much to our society.” Well, you COULD say those things… but you’d be wrong. What it comes down to is that Creed, well, sucked. This is not an opinion, this is fact. Here’s what Time Magazine said about Creed’s 2001 CD “Weathered.” “Creed may prove to be a lesson in Rock 101 for the Britney generation, a bland Big Mac to wean the kids off musical Gerber.” If you read the entire article, you’ll find that the reviewer was actually going out of his way to be nice. The nicest thing that he could say about Creed was that they were “generic.” Maybe he wasn’t trying to be nice; maybe he is actually at the point where he believes that this lowest common denominator form of music is acceptable… but, more on that in a minute. OK, so Creed sucked, at least in the eyes (or ears) of the critics. That doesn’t mean that their lead man was a villain, right?
Sort of.
Creed somehow became amazingly popular; they sold more than 30 million records. (No, that doesn’t make them good; just remember, in his heyday, Hitler was once Time’s man of the year and extremely popular.) 30 million people bought into this nonsense. That doesn’t even account for the hours and hours of radio bombardment the public has endured, and is STILL enduring four years after Creed’s break-up. It’s not much of jump from here to reason that Creed, and therefore front man Scott Stapp, played a major part in the dumbing down of our culture.
Jump back to the Time Magizine article mentioned earlier. Most people would say that Time is a reputable American publication that prides itself on good writing and legitimate, relevant opinions. Well, perhaps they’ve been subject to this “dumbing down.” “Rock has made against pop this year, three dudes who write their own songs and play their own instruments are outselling Britney Spears with their new CD,” it says in the article. “For many people over 14, that sounds like an answer to a fervent prayer.”
Answer to a prayer?! Why? Time says “Creed is certainly better than just about any teen-pop act.” Great, so that’s all that matters in our culture. As long as you’re not a teen pop act, you’ve got some sort of musical integrity? No. Time, congratulations, Scott Stapp has made you stupider. Do we need any more proof that we’ve been dumbed down? Yes? Ok, fine, here’s more proof: I went home for my mom’s birthday last weekend. Much to my chagrin, I found an article in my local newspaper that talked about bands from my hometown. It read, “If Bon Jovi and Nickelback spawned a child, it would probably sound like Eighteenth Hour, and that’s a good thing.” Now, being from my home town, I’ve read reviews by this guy before, and I happen to know he’s an idiot. But, who can say whether he’s always been an idiot, or if Scott Stapp made him that way? Schoof is probably just another innocent victim. This is precisely the problem. This is what makes Stapp such a vile villain. We now think this drivel is acceptable! 3 doors down, The Calling, Fuel, Daughtry, Nickelback and basically any other band that has that ridiculous false vibrato singing style that sounds like their mouths are full of cotton balls has cashed in on America’s absurdly low standards when it comes to modern-rock music. These bands are all un-imaginative and they all sound exactly the same. Stapp is the villain here because he’s the ringleader. He started this mess.
Now, you might be thinking: “Hey, Eric, didn’t Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam sound like Scott Stapp before Stapp himself? Wasn’t Vedder the first perpetrator of “mushroom mouth?” By your logic, shouldn’t he be the villain?
Ok, fine, you might have a valid point. Except, you need to consider that even though Vedder may have been the first, he certainly wasn’t the worst. Look at it this way. The Ford Model-T wasn’t the first car built, but it was the first to make cars affordable to the common man, thus changing the way we lived forever. That’s Scott Stapp: his raspy, off-key voice wasn’t the first of its kind, but it became more popular than anyone like him ever before. Also, Vedder should get the benefit of the doubt. At the time, he was doing something pretty original. Pearl Jam’s breakout record “Ten” was back in 1991. This is YEARS before Creed decided to rip them off. Even People Magazine realized that Stapp was nothing more than a rehashed, artless copy. “Despite selling 25 million albums, Creed was always considered the poor man's Pearl Jam, making frontman Scott Stapp the post-grunge answer to Eddie Vedder.”
All of that notwithstanding, Stapp displayed other villainous tendencies: He was arrested at the L.A. International Airport because he was acting drunk and belligerent. This was mere hours after he married a 25-year-old beauty queen in Miami. Stapp also “went spastic over the release of a '99 sex video on which he and Kid Rock beguile and inspire four exotic dancers.” This is not exactly role-model behavior.
Months earlier, after announcing his engagement to his fiancée’s family, Stapp got into a fistfight with members of the band 311. Rolling Stone Magazine said that, “According to 311's frontman SA Martinez, Stapp was doing shots, being ‘loud and obnoxious’ and made ‘a disrespectful comment to my wife that I'd rather not repeat.’ When drummer Chad Sexton asked Stapp to settle down, the members of 311 claim Stapp sucker-punched him and, in the follow-through, struck Martinez's wife.” A few days later, an obviously drunk Stapp taped an episode of the Spike TV celebrity poker show Casino Cinema. During the taping, “Stapp slurs his words, curses incessantly, claims Dave Grohl [of foo fighters] has ‘a little (expletive deleted because this is a 10-grade paper)."
Ok, let’s recount. Stapp has an alcohol problem, stars in sex tapes, starts fistfights, hits women and is guilty of brainwashing the American public into thinking that lazy, unthoughtful music is not only acceptable, but preferred. Plus, like all good villains, Stapp is a bit disillusioned. Remember, Hitler thought he was saving the world. He believed he was doing the right thing. It’s as though Stapp honesty believes that he can do no wrong, that he’s infallible. That’s what makes him such a heinous villain. After all the negative ways he affected our society, he’ll never be able to wrap his mind around the possibility that he had any fault in it at all.
Well, that was the end of my paper until, no lie, about four hours ago, my intern, Ashley, starts laughing and sends me a link to an article that was just written yesterday on yahoo.com’s music page. Ashley knew I was writing this paper, and didn’t know why I hated Creed so much. (Ashley seems like a pretty cool girl otherwise.) Anyhow, this article is about the ten most annoying singers and it has Stapp at number two. Only Michael Bolton is rated as more annoying. That’s probably not even true, but, it’s not the point. Point is…this is what the article said:
“We could probably start laying the blame on Bono, Eddie Vedder, Jim Morrison and that guy from Blood, Sweat and Tears, but in the end it's Scott Stapp who epitomizes that macho bellow that sounds like a man who's gone overboard at the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and has just received spiritual orders to let everyone know they're going to hell if they don't save themselves somehow. His spiritual torment becomes your problem. Thanks, pal.”
Well, that pretty sums up my entire paper in one paragraph. He changed music forever, and not for the better. He made garbage rock acceptable to the masses. Need I say more?
Humans are not rational beings, they are rationalizing
Practice safe sex, do it in a Volvo ___________ "Shut up", he explained.