Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open” is all about the lyrics. Yes, it’s Butt Rock. Yes, it has a three-note melody. But I can’t deny the words’ sheer power.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this is the song that propelled me into my second serious relationship. I wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted to pursue; it was rife with risk. I was doing some serious soul searching on a December 2000 morning while getting new tires for my car. I had my Walkman with me, and left the store, to, well, walk for a bit, and I heard “With Arms Wide Open” play.

Sure, I’d heard it probably a hundred times by this point – it was ubiquitous in the Autumn of 2000. But as I’m contemplating a major life change, it struck me in a particular way. It’s about impending parenthood, but it’s also about new relationships, not only with the child-to-be, but also with your partner/loved one, and that’s how it hit me: If I choose to pursue this, my life’s gonna change, and for the better, and it’s joyous, and worthy of celebration.

And the chorus really spoke to me, because it was my partner’s first same-sex relationship:

“With arms wide open/under the sunlight/welcome to this place/I’ll show you everything”

Yes, the melody and vocals themselves are droning and monotonous. The remix fixes lots of problems with the original version: the strings add some balanced treble, and the new drums fix the jittery rhythm, which previously didn’t work in the slightest. But listen to the lyrics: this is about love, openness, and acceptance. It’s hopeful and optimistic. It’s the best thing they’ve ever done, in my humble opinion, and it’s not even close.

TLDR; Young BigPapi found the love of his life because of fucking Creed.

On the Alternative Side…

Let’s discuss the #1 song(s) from the Billboard Alternative chart.  I’ll align these (virtual date-wise) to Tom’s Hot 100 #1 column as best I can.  

Song:  Hanging By A Moment

Artist(s):  Lifehouse

Time at #1:  Three weeks

Today’s entry (#125!) is dedicated to @Brigit – our friend and TNOCS cornerstone, as I know she has a soft spot for this one.

Lifehouse was formed in 1996, as “Blyss”, by Jason Wade, Sergio Andrade, and Jon “Diff” Palmer.  Collin Hayden and Aaron Lord were added to the band, and they changed their name to Lifehouse before their major label release (because… Blyss?  Really?).  An EP called “Diff’s Lucky Day” was sold at live shows and distributed among friends and industry contacts.  Good word-of-mouth reached producer Ron Aniello, who introduced Wade to Jude Cole, who in turn introduced him to DreamWorks Records’ Michael Ostin.  

“Hanging By A Moment” is the lead single from the band’s debut album, “No Name Face”.  Besides the Modern Rock #1, this got to #1 in Australia, #2 on the Hot 100, #6 in New Zealand, #16 in Scotland, #25 in the UK, and #31 in the Netherlands. 

This was the third song to be named the “No. 1 Song of the Year” on the Hot 100 despite not having reached No. 1 on any weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart (after Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs’ “Wooly Bully” in 1965 and Faith Hill’s “Breathe” in 2000).  Jason Wade says he wrote the song in five minutes, and he had zero expectations that it would end up a hit.  It was produced by Ron Aniello and mixed by Brendan O’Brien.

If I may inject myself into the story… I was working at DreamWorks when this album came out (still do), and acts from the music side of the house were persuaded to give concerts for other parts of the company, so I got to see one of the first live performances of this song with maybe 300 other people on the DreamWorks Animation campus.  This song ABSOLUTELY RULED then, and I still love it to this day.  

Yes, one could be reductive and lump this into the whole “post-grunge” / “minivan-rock” movement, but this one is really terrific.  It’s structured like a Swiss clock, has great flow and is performed with precision and passion.  I listened to this one A LOT back in the day and it always makes me happy to hear today (my kids even like it, and they’re jaded tweens / teens who care for nothing).  10/10, without hesitation.  I expect some trash slinging, but will die on this hill.

https://youtu.be/tPnK39ax_AM

get out of here with your realistic and sensible interpretations. 

I generally believe in acceptance regardless of race, color, or Creed, but this song is an exception.

Meanwhile down at The Club… WE’RE GONNA CELEBRATE! OH YEAH! ALRIGHT! DON’T STOP THE DANCING!… “ONE MORE TIME”!

When Daft Punk release an album, people get excited. “Discovery” landed and was instantly deemed a classic. “Homework” had established them as the definition of underground cool, and now they were going dayglo-pop… all that genius that was previously put to work creating the hookiest of minimalist beats, was now being used to great a non-stop entertainment spectacular and “One More Time” was the most perfect Track One, Side One for a non-stop entertainment spectacular since… maybe ever!

“One More Time” united the denizens of an entire galaxy, and it could have been basis for a utopian future society a la Bill & Ted…

And then there’s that moment when the music drops away, and robot-Romanthony shares that y’know he’s just feeling… a celebration… toniiiiggghhhtt… I don’t think there’s a person in the solar system who doesn’t feel exactly the same way, who isn’t feeling some weird tingly sensation.

HMMMMM!

“One More Time” is a 10. It’s also a surprising excellent karaoke song, particularly if it’s your job to kick off proceedings, and it gets TEN MICROPHONES!🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGBhQbmPwH8

You don’t create a fictional anime band for nothing, even if the fact they were blue did trigger traumatic memories of… you know what.

So they kept on making more anime videos, and each video for each single added a little more narrative… sadly it would take three years before they got around to creating an entire movie – “Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem” – and it’s just as gloriously ridiculous as we could have hoped, involving an evil Earl de Darkwood who is kidnapping bands across the galaxy until he collects 5,555 gold records and can consequently rule the universe… or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qxe-QOp_-s

As much as I hate to keep giving transphobes the attention they don’t deserve… “Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie” made me _cackle_. Good for you, Maren. I feel like the country music demographic is one that needs to have more people fighting the good fight on their side, so I very much appreciate this. Also saw on Twitter that the sales have already raised more than $100k, which is amazing.

https://twitter.com/MarenMorris/status/1566079404173889536

When was the world better? It was better before trump. Before Covid. When Bloc dominated SUD

Is this week the sign that good times are ahead? I dunno. But I’m awesome

Other than the ignorant false equivalencies, the thing that made me cringe the most was that her kids are named Memphis and Navy.

As I have freely admitted more than once, I was a minivanless fan of minivan rock. So I don’t loathe Creed as much as Tom or the general consensus seems to. But nothing they did ever grabbed me the way “Slide” or “Real World” or “Hanging by a Moment” did. They just weren’t jangly or hooky enough, perhaps- they droned too much for a band that didn’t have the harsh pain and power of Pearl Jam or Nirvana. They were a kind of dead zone in the middle. I mildly liked “Higher,” and I never minded hearing them in the background, but yeah, Stapp’s singing was just too much for the music and lyrics to carry.

And yet. A virtual decade from this #1 I’ll be in one of the lowest periods of my life, at the worst job I hope ever to have. I had a coworker whose life had been hell. She was a pretty, tired woman in her fifties with a cigarette voice; she had been sexually abused by family as a child, physically and mentally abused by two husbands, and left the third husband after he slept with her sister, and that’s just the major plot points. She lived with her two early-20s kids in a small condo and worked overnights at this job, and she had a few passions that kept her going- certain TV shows, reading about the animals and landscape of Africa, and Creed. She absolutely adored Creed. Her daughter got tickets for their reunion tour right around the time my sister got tickets for Bruce, and I don’t know which of us was more ecstatic. I will always marvel at the way music can keep people afloat, even music you or I think is worthless.

you read that proceeds go to GLAAD transgender support programs, right? Oh wait, no, you didn’t, because reading the article isn’t edgy.

“…what we couldn’t yet understand at the time…”

Came here just to make sure the 10-year old meme, “…but we need to accept the possibility of a record so excellent we don’t understand it yet…” got its proper recognition.

Well done Natalie!