Inside Creed’s Mega-Selling Return: Why the Touring World Met Them With Arms Wide Open

Scott Stapp remembers feeling young and determined — an unknown singer, certain he wouldn’t be for long — when Creed started in the mid-’90s, more than half a lifetime ago. “We wanted to write timeless songs,” Stapp asserts to Billboard.

Practicing with his new band members in Florida’s panhandle roughly 30 years ago, Stapp would discuss his outsized dreams in drummer Scott Phillips’ living room. “That was an actual goal,” Stop continues, leaning forward in his chair, “that the band would write things that would stand the test of time. It was a lofty goal! And I don’t think we ever knew, during our run, if we really accomplished that.”

Indeed, the general longevity of Creed’s biggest hits was something of a question mark for a while. In their turn-of-the-century heyday, Creed’s burly post-grunge anthems were everywhere, as Stapp, guitarist Mark Tremonti, Phillips and bassist Brian Marshall scored multiple top 10 smashes on the Hot 100 and sold millions of albums behind them. Chest-thumping sing-alongs like “Higher,” “With Arms Wide Open” and “My Sacrifice” earned prime MTV plays and crossed over to pop radio; for years, the quartet was undoubtedly one of the most bankable rock bands in the world.

Then: a breakup, personal problems, haphazard reunion and prolonged hiatus. By the dawn of the streaming era in the early 2010s, post-grunge had receded from popular rock and Creed’s mainstream footprint had evaporated. Their biggest songs could have been shrugged off as relics of a bygone moment in music history — maybe, in spite of the towering initial success, they wouldn’t endure after all.

Yet as the four members of Creed sit together in midtown Manhattan on a Tuesday afternoon in June 2024, the mood is light, and the guys — all of whom have entered their fifties over the past year-plus — are clearly enjoying a sea change in how their catalog is being treated. They’re at the SiriusXM offices, prepping for an in-studio performance of songs like “Higher” and “My Sacrifice”; the day before, they played both hits on Good Morning America.

Earlier that month, a mariachi band made the Internet rounds for covering “Higher” at Globe Life Field, the same stadium that was blasting the song throughout the Texas Rangers’ run to a World Series victory last fall. And of course, the latest viral moments follow the Super Bowl commercial in February, the SZA shout-out last November, and plenty of TikTok remixes in between.

As they pal around ahead of a SiriusXM showcase and crack jokes about too-early call times (their GMA soundcheck was at 5:30 AM), Marshall slips in that his five-year-old daughter was singing their 2002 power ballad “One Last Breath” that morning, albeit with some misplaced lyrics. Stapp adds that he’s noticed a lot of the social media championing and TikTok trends engineered by younger listeners — proof positive that, even as the nostalgia cycle plays a major factor in the band’s reunion and resurgence, his decades-old goal for Creed’s music to persist was ultimately accomplished.

“To see that happening for Creed, with a whole new generation of fans and listeners? It’s just… very rewarding,” Stapp says, his voice catching. “I mean, we’ve been through a lot, man — individually, as a band. I mean, this,” he continues, gesturing toward his band mates, “it’s just so emotional. Your eyes water. You tear up. You’re just grateful, because it really could have gone in another direction.”

Creed’s catalog has not just endured — now, there’s real demand to experience its full power live. The band’s 2024 North American reunion trek, which kicked off last night (July 17) in Green Bay, has turned into one of the hottest rock tickets of the year. A pair of Creed cruises got the reunion started in April, and after announcing a summer 2024 amphitheater run last October, Creed added 20 fall arena shows to their itinerary in February, citing “overwhelming fan demand.”

During a topsy-turvy year in the touring industry, with other arena tours being downgraded or canceled as the market readjusts following a post-pandemic boom, Creed’s team expects most of the band’s upcoming dates — including the band’s first headlining show at New York’s Madison Square Garden since 2000, set for Nov. 29 — to sell out, and is already eyeing opportunities for 2025.

“It’s a pretty unbelievable comeback, as comebacks go,” says Ken Fermaglich, the band’s longtime agent at UTA. “The consumers are out there and want to connect with the music, whether it’s on the nostalgia side for the fan that was aware of it from years ago, or the newer fan that’s never gotten to see them.”

Although it’s been over a decade since Creed last toured together in 2012, plenty of rock fans remember their commercial apex, which began with singles like “My Own Prison,” “One” and “What’s This Life For” garnering airplay in the band’s local Tallahassee scene before debut album My Own Prison was scooped up by Wind-up Records in 1997 and spread across the nation. Commanding the post-grunge strain of popular rock that sprouted up from the alternative explosion of the mid-‘90s, Creed turned My Own Prison into a smash debut, with 6.5 million copies sold to date, according to Luminate. Their 1999 follow-up Human Clay turned even bigger singles — “Higher” was an uptempo anthem ripe for stadium halftime shows, and “With Arms Wide Open” actually topped the Hot 100 for a week in November 2000 — into RIAA-certified diamond status: a whopping 11.7 million copies sold.

When Creed became a mega-selling act, “We were kids, really — 24 or 25, as things went through the roof,” Marshall recalls. “Having to navigate that at that time in your life is really tough. And I turned to substances.”

Marshall departed the group due to substance abuse issues in 2000, and Stapp also struggled with personal issues, including depression and problems with self-medicating, in the following years. Creed’s third album, 2001’s Weathered, sold another 6.5 million copies, but a rocky tour in support of the album led to prolonged inactivity, then a 2004 breakup.

Creed reunited for 2009’s Full Circle, but the industry had changed, the hits had dried up and the mainstream had moved on. The album sold less than one-tenth the copies (455,000) of their previous three. By Creed’s 2012 tour, the arena shows were a distant memory, and theaters were filled only with the most diehard supporters. That run grossed $2.3 million and sold 49,000 tickets over 20 reported shows, according to Billboard Boxscore — compared to a $39.5 million gross and 932,000 tickets sold over 86 shows for their 2002 tour.

All four members stayed busy after Creed went back on hiatus after the 2012 tour: Stapp has released three solo albums since 2013, including this year’s Higher Power, while the other three members performed with singer Myles Kennedy in Alter Bridge, in addition to Tremonti leading his own band, Tremonti. Meanwhile, Marshall got sober in 2012, and Stapp’s well-documented road to recovery commenced in the mid-2010s. And while their other musical projects earned live followings, none of them scored hits of the stature of “Higher” or “With Wide Arms Open.” Plus, as Stapp puts it, “There’s a chemistry and synergy that we have when we play together — that only we have when we play together.”

According to Fermaglich, discussions of a Creed reunion began in 2021, when the touring industry was still working through COVID-related uncertainty. “The time wasn’t quite right yet,” he says, “but it got everybody talking, to a point of, ‘Oh, maybe this is a good idea.’”

Conversations picked up last year, and all four members concluded that 2024 would be a strong window for a reunion tour, in between side projects and personal commitments. Meanwhile, the band members came back in touch last fall during the Rangers’ World Series run, after the eventual champs had adopted “Higher” as their unofficial anthem at home games. “The four of us were on a text thread together, watching the game and cheering on the team, celebrating a win or lamenting a loss,” Phillips recalls. “It was a nice bond to have again, where it was just the four of us communicating with each other, reconnecting as friends — not only as band mates, but as people.”

The band tested the waters for ticket demand with the July 2023 announcement of the Summer of ’99 Cruise — setting sail in April 2024, featuring post-grunge contemporaries like 3 Doors Down, Tonic, Buckcherry and Fuel, and boasting a reunited Creed as the main draw. Tremonti was responsible for the Summer of ’99’ idea, and the band partnered with immersive festival producers Sixthman on the cruise, which Fermaglich says “sold out very, very fast. We started to realize, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of demand here,’” so they added a second cruise for the following week.

Phillips felt the nerves return during Creed’s first performance in over a decade on the inaugural cruise — but after the first few songs, he witnessed how locked-in the crowd was, exhaled, and could “sit back and enjoy the moment,” he says. Tremonti chimes in that the energy provided by Stapp, who has circled in and out of the lives of the other members over the years, gave him the boost he needed during the band’s first performance back.

“The most nerve-racking thing about it was that you knew every cell phone in the boat is going to be out, filming those first few songs,” Tremonti says. “Those first performances are gonna live forever on YouTube! But Scott stepped on stage like this was just another day, confident as can be, which makes us go, ‘All right, we’re good.’”

When the amphitheater tour dates that would follow the cruises went on sale last fall, Fermaglich says that Creed’s team was “blown away by the initial sales,” and that the feedback received about ticket buyer demographics encouraged them to consider adding arena dates to follow the summer run. “Some of the ticketing data made us understand that younger ticket buyers were out there,” Fermaglich explains, “and that got everyone pretty pumped, because it meant that we were turning it over to some extent. We would have the fans who remembered the band from the late 90s and early 2000s, but also a new fan who is learning the catalog, potentially via social media.”

The current numbers back up that theory: radio stations, primarily at rock and alternative formats, are still playing Creed’s hits, with 31,000 plays of their songs on U.S. terrestrial and satellite radio over the first six months of 2024, according to Luminate. But over that same time period (Dec. 29, 2023 – June 27, 2024), the band’s catalog earned a robust 263 million official on-demand song streams, with the Spotify generation either returning to or uncovering Creed’s discography.

“They had big songs, and those records crossed over to pop radio,” says Brad Hardin, COO of national programming at iHeartMedia. “And when you see the show, it’s hit after hit after hit.” (Indeed, at last night’s tour opener at Green Bay’s Resch Center, the band rolled out all of their biggest songs, and often accompanied them with flame-spitting pyrotechnics.)

Creed’s 2024 return is a perfect storm of a touring proposition: longtime fans haven’t seen them live in over a decade, and the hits hold up well enough to attract new listeners. Although the bands that made up the macho-leaning post-grunge movement of a quarter-century ago made for a critical punching bag at the time, Creed’s wide-reaching sing-alongs “have aged in a way that we hoped they would back in the day,” says Fermaglich. “The production really stands the test of time, and the songs, the melodies, still work well right now, and don’t sound out of place with contemporary rock.”

With that in mind, Creed and their team are already mapping out a future following this year’s big reunion: The Summer of ’99 Cruise will return and set sail on Apr. 9, 2025, and beyond that, Fermaglich says the plan is “take a look at different opportunities that are out there.” Although nothing is yet confirmed, those possibilities could include international dates following this year’s focus on North American markets, and that could also mean more North American gigs — including festivals and “bigger shows in bigger buildings with other bands,” he says. “We’ll see! I think the short answer is, we’re open for business.”

Will the Creed revival eventually extend to new music, and potentially the band’s first album together in over 15 years? “We haven’t written anything or thrown anything out there, but I think it’s definitely something that’s on our minds,” says Stapp. Phillips points out that a lot of Creed’s early music resulted from soundcheck sessions — kernels of ideas that were drawn out by the quartet’s natural chemistry, then fashioned into global hits. Maybe that same connection can spring back to life all these years later. 

Stapp nods in agreement. “We’ve always been a band that functions better just being in the moment, instead of making a decision and then having to force it,” he says. “Let’s just let it happen. That’ll be where the best material comes from.”

For now, the response to the band’s live return — watching one cruise turn into two, then amphitheater shows beget arena gigs — has been humbling for the members. “We were hopeful — but, you never know,” Phillips says of fan interest ahead of the reunion launch. Creed is thankful to be in a position where more shows need to be added, and venue sizes need to increase. It’s a professional moment that was never promised, and the band is savoring it.

“We’re sort of listening to the universe,” Phillips continues. “If you tell us ‘Don’t do it,’ we won’t do it. But everybody’s saying, ‘Go for it.’”