Torn

While Creed was putting together their debut album, the band members were still going to school and working day jobs to support themselves. Guitarist Mark Tremonti was frustrated with his lot in life as a cook at Chili's with an uncertain future ahead of him. He poured his feelings into "Torn," which became the album's second single. "One day, I came home from work at about 3 in the morning," he told The Buffalo News. "I was all dirty and stinky and hating my life, so I just wrote a song about what it's like being a kid in between 18 and 23, when you haven't graduated from school yet and you don't know what you're doing with your life." Tremonti continued: "It's about how hard that period of time is, when you're broke, you have to work two jobs to go to school. I was at a hard point in my life, so I wrote a song about it."

My Own Prison was first released in April 1997 through Blue Collar Records, an independent label based in the band's native Florida. Its local success attracted the attention of Wind-Up Records, a subsidiary of BMG, who signed the band and reissued a remixed version of the album in August 1997. By the time the album made its US chart debut at #174 a month later, its title track was already a Top 10 hit on the Mainstream Rock tally and "Torn" swiftly followed at #3. The singles weren't eligible for the Hot 100 chart, however, because they weren't released in the US (a common ploy at the time to boost album sales). But the band continued their run on the Mainstream Rock chart, with "What's This Life For" hitting #1. Eager to hear their favorite tracks but unable to purchase the singles, American fans flocked to buy the album, leading to sales of 6 million copies.