Saying you like Nickelback at this time is no more effective at evoking a negative response from people than stating Hilter wasn’t all that horrible. It’s not even that Nickelback offends people. It’s because it’s commonly assumed that appreciating Nickelback diminishes one’s musical taste and is frequently viewed as a flaw in one’s character.
An additional degree of ridiculousness surrounding the subject is that Nickelback was a very popular band in the 2000s, selling over 50 million albums, with singles consistently charting until 2014 and six Grammy nominations.
Mike Kroeger plays bass, Daniel Adair plays drums, Ryan Peake plays guitar and supporting vocals, and Kroeger plays lead vocals and lead guitar in the band. Mike and Chad Kroeger, brothers, were instrumental in starting the band and setting the stage for their eventual success.
Frontman Chad Kroeger thinks he knows why fans of his band have been so outspoken about how much they dislike the Canadian rock group. Nickleback is arguably the most hated band in America. Their actions have caused such bitterness that it’s difficult to understand what they did to deserve such a deep wound in society. The point has been reached where fans of Nickelback are hiding their CDs like stolen goods and denying their fandom.
When asked by Jorge Botas of “Metal Global” if he knows why Nickleback is hated by so many people, Chad said, “I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp of where things kind of went off the rails for us. I think that because we write so many different kinds of music, I think that if you were listening to a radio station any time between 2000 and 2010, ’11, ’12 even, we were kind of tough to get away from. Cause if you didn’t wanna hear it and you changed to a different radio station, you’d probably hear it on there, and then changed to a different radio station, you probably were gonna hear it in so many different places. And we were really tough to get away from.
“And that’s not my fault. [Laughs] We just write the songs. And so with that comes backlash. And then what happens is then comedians start making jokes, and then it starts making it on to TV, and then it makes it into movies and stuff like that. And then it just turns into this wave of, it’s fun to pick on and it’s an easy joke. And I get it. I understand. There are bands that when I hear them on the radio, I… And they’re very popular bands… I mean, we all have those. No one is exempt from that. There are certain bands where you just hear them and you just don’t like ’em. And other people may — half the world may love them, and I’ll just be, like, ‘No. I just cannot hear this band one more [time].’ And just like everyone else does, I just change the channel.”
“But we became the whipping boy of the music industry for a while there. But whatever. It’s just part of the history of the band.”
The most widely accepted explanation for Nickelback’s extreme dislike is that they are too mediocre and commercial. Every blog post, Reddit thread, and music article We read on the issue mentioned this. Pop-rock artist Nickelback followed in the footsteps of 90s acts like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. They belong in the same category as other 2000s rock bands like Counting Crows and Smashmouth. They were all rock that was more palatable to a larger audience, almost like grunge’s offspring. The master of creating hits for a broad audience was Nickelback. Their primary goal was to produce hits rather than songs with great artistic merit. They were not sincere; they were formulaic. Their failure to stretch their artistic boundaries truly infuriated reviewers and music enthusiasts.
They were signed to Roadrunner Records, a mostly metal company, in 1999, therefore in a manner, they were doomed to fail. Nickelback was nothing compared to the metal acts that fans were familiar with from the label.
Unsurprisingly, this mindset has permeated Kroeger’s music as well. Over the years, the vocalist has been rightfully accused of misogyny and has drawn comparisons between Mötley Crüe and Nickelback’s sound. For instance, the lyrics of the song “Something in Your Mouth” read, “You look so much cuter with something in your mouth / You’re so much cooler when you never pull it out.” It’s sufficient to give one a chill.
Outside of their music, Kroeger is largely to blame for the animosity that Nickelback encounters. Adopting disgusting alpha male behavior, he said one of the funniest and least self-aware things a well-known musician has ever said in 2012. In a conversation with Playboy, he said, “I drank 13 Coronas in a row once, in Cabo San Lucas. The little flap that seals off your stomach and keeps the food from coming back up in your throat, I f****** that up. I can get a Corona down in five or six seconds.”
But the general public was also conditioned to despise Nickelback, so it wasn’t just metalheads. Comedy Central ran a commercial for their program “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn” from 2002 to 2004. The commercial featured the punchline, “No one talks about the studies that show that bad music makes people violent, but listening to Nickelback makes me want to kill Nickelback.”
In conclusion, Nickelback is despised purely for the purpose of mocking. They aren’t extremely offensive, nor are they any worse than a lot of radio songs. They were basically easy pickings, and everyone could join in on the fun of resenting Nickelback as a group. Despite their undeniable musical success and large fan following, Nickelback’s musical achievements are overshadowed by the numerous reasons that contribute to their bad reputation.