As the last living U2 fan under the age of 35 I'm duty bound to report to you all that Creed have covered U2 during last Sunday's show in Memphis. And... pretty good! You can hear Scott Stapp working to suppress the yarl in favor of Bono's direct emoting and he pulls it off better than I expected. Maybe it would have been more interesting if Creed had Creed-ed it up a little, the band does a near note perfect replication of the original instrumental, but it could have also been much worse so I'm giving 'em this one.
While Scott Stapp may have wanted to be Jim Morrison he had to settle for Bono, the frontman of possibly the most successful Christian rock band of all time; U2. Yes, U2 got quite naughty during the 90s but I cannot explain to you the stranglehold their sound had on midwestern protestant churches. My church in particular would just drop the "And you give yourself away" refrain from "With or Without You" into standard CCM worship songs. Creed sought to marry this white gospel ecstasy to the grunge howl of other U2 acolyte Pearl Jam and succeeded commercially if not artistically. Yeah, sorry, I really want to go to bat for this band but we're talking single digit classics. I can enjoy some "Higher" but if I never have to listen to "Wash Away Those Years" again I'll be relieved.
The only weird bit is that Scott is reading some of the lyrics off a monitor. Scott, really?? You don't have this one memorized?? I would have bet you could do the song backwards standing on your head.
I haven't been to church in years so I don't know if U2 still has the same influence or it's Spotify-core country now. I'm hoping for the former, the last thing God's people need are Morgan Wallen-type beats.
