The Daily Spin II

Creed | Human Clay

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Higher (1999)

Artist: Creed

Link:

Listen. I can’t really defend liking ‘Higher’, but I do, so here we are.

Back in the lawless times of the late nineties, where butt rock was not only prevalent but loved, guys that comprised bands like Nickleback, Three Doors Down, and Creed had it made - Mountain Dew and Surge were everywhere, frosted tips were so in vogue, and everybody wanted to be a rockstar, to play on a certain track from a certain group.

Few bands emphasized this point the way Creed did - and even fewer ever reached the critical success that came with Human Clay - a RIAA Diamond-certified album (10 million sales, hardly 100 albums have ever reached this milestone) that moved nearly 300,000 units in the first weeks of production. This was the moment.

More than 25 years on, I’m left a little flummoxed at how poorly most of this aged. There are moments where things shine, sure - I’ve seen enough edits of Dale Earnhardt to ‘Higher’ to know that the hell yeah factor on this album is out of this world, but I’m left pretty disappointed by the rest - jingoistic in the way only the music of the post-Reagan, pre-9/11 America could be.

This is not an album to think critically about. It is an album to throw on while you pound beers with your friends, preferably at a bonfire, and sing-scream along to songs that sound like a poor man’s Pearl Jam and let the music pull you out of yourself, if only for a moment.

Rating: 5/10

Best Tracks: Higher

Worst Tracks: Never Die