Creed’s set was one last breath of Wisconsin air. It was also a change of pace from Nickelback’s headline set the night before, which played like an irony-free take on Creed’s iconic halftime show, full of strobe lights, fog machines, pyrotechnic explosions, “Guitar Hero” graphics and even a T-shirt gun. But there was no nostalgic joy to be found during the Canadian act’s set, just charmless frat-boy banter, riffs ready-made for “Monday Night Football” and lyrics that make Motley Crue sound like Andrea Dworkin.
The low point of both the band’s set and the history of recorded music was “Figured You Out,” a song about a sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll fling that goes sideways. Lyrics about pants around feet and white stains on dresses — “I love your lack of self-respect/ While you’re passed out on the deck/ I love my hands around your neck” — are as gross and stupid now as they were then.
Not that the crowd took offense; most people knew “Figured You Out” — thanks to its 13 weeks at the top of the mainstream rock charts back in the day — and were happy to sing along. But the crowd also started a “Let’s go, Brandon” chant when the band pulled a same-name fan onstage to sing “Rockstar” (a song that presaged Post Malone’s whole country rock shtick by a decade) and stayed until the encore closed with “Burn It to the Ground.” With the hook, “Take anything we want/ Drink everything in sight/ We’re going till the world stops turning/ While we burn it to the ground tonight,” the latter sounds like a kleptocrat’s anthem.
I listened to Nickelback when “How You Remind Me” took over rock radio in 2001, eventually becoming the most played song on U.S. radio of the 2000s. I almost certainly had a burned CD of “Silver Side Up,” an album whose release was the second-worst thing to happen on Sept. 11, 2001. But for the fans who stayed on the bandwagon over the next seven albums, it’s time to admit the folly of youth instead of embracing it. It’s time to acknowledge the truth, with arms, eyes and ears wide open. This month’s festival had plenty of “Summer of ’99” but was short on the “beyond.” I think the bands involved know that, too. As Nickleback’s oft-memed “Photograph” goes, “It’s hard to say it, time to say it, goodbye, goodbye.”
= new reply since forum marked as read