Source: http://www.crazydaysandnights.net

Reader Blind Item

People love to hate on this band, although they must be doing something right, as they’ve been widely successful for over 2 decades now.

We were working their third album when a call came in from the lead singer.

A scathing article about them had just been published by a top rock critic.

Our front man was completely gutted.

Did America really hate them?

I tried to explain how we build you up to tear you down, and that nobody listens to rock critics anyway. I spent about 20 minutes trying to cheer him up.

I hope I helped a bit.

Like I said, people love to hate them, but they were never anything but kind, charming, and professional when I worked with them, if a little self deprecating.

They even made it a point to meet everyone at the label when they came in.

I worked with “baby” bands who were total assholes, so I’ll always have a soft spot for them.

Nickelback

Chad Kroeger

Ex-wife: Avril Lavigne

How Nickelback became the most hated band in the music industry

As noted by the New Yorker, Nickelback started out as a ’90s cover band in Alberta, Canada. Lead singer Chad Kroeger’s growling voice and metal-influenced sound stood out at the time, but instead of evolving their songwriting chops through the years, Nickelback constructed tune after generic tune that followed the same simple and obvious formulation. Kroeger yoked his deep voice to basically one guitar tonality and song structure, creating monotonous crowd-pleasers that lacked originality.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, Exhibit A. The video above demonstrates how two of their most popular songs, “How You Remind Me” and “Someday,” follow the same vocal cadence and instrumental background, and it’s really pretty astonishing. Their content is good for the radio masses, but it doesn’t offer much depth or creativity. Good luck playing an album straight through.

Because Nickelback’s generic and formulaic music is well suited for the radio, it’s not surprising that their songs are tremendously successful from a commercial perspective. “How You Remind Me” became the most played radio song of the 2000s (per Nielsen), with over 1.2 million plays between 2001 and 2009.

Hearing the same song over and over again gets on anybody’s nerves, so that likely helped turn public opinion against Nickelback. But Canadian citizens may bear the brunt of this angst: The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications requires Canadian radio stations to play a certain amount of music that’s produced in Canada. If you’re already tired of hearing their songs, definitely don’t move to Canada.

Downfalls of Nickelbackian proportions usually rely on a perfect storm, where elements beyond the band’s control come together to form a maelstrom of discontent. One such element came over the TV airwaves back in 2003, prepping everyone for the horror that was to come. Comedy Central was running a well-advertised panel show called Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. The show involved four comedians who discussed topical news stories. On one episode, comedian Brian Posehn brought up a study that tied violent lyrics to violent behavior. He quipped, “No one talks about the studies that show that bad music makes people violent, like [listening to] Nickelback makes me want to kill Nickelback.”

A clip of the joke turned into a promo that ran during commercial breaks for months. Everyone who watched Comedy Central during that time was bound to see it at some point, and Nickelback’s awfulness was cemented early on for a good number of people.- Source


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