It’s time we were all reminded of what Nickelback really are

Nickelback are just a band. My understanding is they’ve never murdered anyone. They don’t have a known history of mistreating animals, nor have they ever participated in a multi-level marketing scheme.

And yet, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Nickelback were sent by Satan himself to disrupt the natural order of civil society, and for operating under the belief that Chad Kroeger must be a drug-smuggling, weapons-dealing, loud-chewing real estate agent.

Nickelback are a far better band than we like to admit.Credit:

Such is the hatred, the unadulterated loathing and unrelenting vitriol that Nickelback inspires in music fans everywhere. They routinely top lists of the worst bands in music history, ahead of all sorts of garbage: the horrendous rap-rock of Limp Bizkit, the strangled pseudo-Christian rock of Creed, the gratingly saccharine pop of Coldplay, the obnoxiously horny teenage boy vibes of Fall Out Boy.

Nickelback are just a rock band. Sure, they’re hardly Led Zeppelin, but they’re not bad. They might even be, dare I say, good. What, exactly, did they do to attract this ire?

Perhaps first we need to ask a different question: Why do so many people feel the need to lie about liking Nickelback? Because many people love Nickelback. They must do. How else could they have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide? They were the most popular rock band of the 2000s, according to Billboard, and their signature song, How You Remind Me, was the most successful rock song of the decade. They have released 10 studio albums, and six of them have gone multi-times platinum on the ARIA charts.

So Nickelback are somehow both absurdly popular and the most hated band in the world. Curious. One major issue seems to be that, early on in their career, Nickelback were written off as a superficial attempt at riding the coattails of the ’90s favourite musical sub-genre – grunge. They were considered inauthentic posers, trying to manufacture a rock-star fantasy with a sub-par Pearl Jam impression.

And those people were right, in a way: Nickelback weren’t grunge. But any comparison to grunge was a projection by critics and fanboys too busy living in the ’90s to see beyond the flannel and remember that rock music didn’t start with Bleach and end with Vitalogy.

What Nickelback are is a hard-rock band with a pop sensibility. It’s not grunge, or metal. It’s glam rock. Poison, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi – all subject to the same criticisms aimed at Nickelback, all reviled by a loud segment of music fans, all insanely successful, with their hits continuing to endure on radio and in karaoke bars the world over. There’s an infectious swagger to songs such as Feelin’ Way Too Damn Good and Rockstar that rivals Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive or Poison’s Talk Dirty to Me.

And credit where it’s due – Nickelback can write the hell out of a rock ballad. No band in the 21st century has put together the kind of lighters-in-the-air moment that comes from a belter such as Someday, Saving Me or Far Away. There’s a power in Kroeger’s voice that makes you want to bellow along, an obvious kind of macho charisma that works in the context of goofy rock music.

Nickelback weren’t innovative musicians. Nor were they poets. It’s true that their lyrics can be derivative, cheesy and self-indulgent. But welcome to rock music. Can Kroeger’s lyrics be simplistic and crude? For sure, but so was Kiss. A mixed metaphor or two? Hello, Oasis. Hedonistic and braggadocious? Try AC/DC, Motley Crue, Van Halen … take your pick.

When it comes to their contemporaries, they don’t have the cool factor of the Strokes or the mythology of the White Stripes. They have a lot more in common with fellow stadium-filling bands such as the Killers, Kings of Leon and Jet than any of us would like to admit. They all write the sort of catchy rock bangers that pack out arenas and get a crowd roaring, but for some reason those bands are “alternative rock” and Nickelback are “mainstream trash”. You can’t sing along to Sex on Fire and also claim to hate Nickelback – they’re the same. The band has been praised and cited as an influence by artists as diverse as country superstar Zach Bryant, alt-folk hero Noah Kahan, super producer Timbaland and even R&B queen SZA.

Nickelback aren’t the best rock band to come out of the 2000s. But they aren’t even close to the worst of that decade, let alone all time. Next time you catch yourself singing along to How You Remind Me, don’t be embarrassed – at least it’s not Creed.

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