I've never knowingly heard a Nickelback song, so have no opinion of their music one way or another. But I've noticed that a lot of people who trash-talk Nickelback also have never knowingly heard their music.
So I suspect that a large portion (certainly not all) of the "hate" is simply a social expression unrelated to the merits or demerits of their actual work.
For a while, about fifteen years ago they had a string of popular songs that were so formulaic in their songwriting that you can play them over top of each other (trimming off intro/outro) and it's the same song, here's the maskup "How you Remind Me, of Someday" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeqTvxXWwuY
So it's not that they're a bad band, or bad at writing songs, we just got tired of that one formula and they kept doing it as long as it made them money.
Alot of people, myself among them, hated the new sound that started to dominate rock the mid-to late 90s/early 2000s. Nickelback in many ways was the "flagbearer" given how popular they became, although they didn't start to become all that popular until 2001, and the "blame" if that makes any sense, can be laid at many other, albeit less popular, acts (e.g. Creed)
Also I can't find the quote at the moment, but I believe one of the band members basically straight up admitted they would copy whatever sound was popular at the time so it would sell more - i.e. they were basically businessmen first, musicians second.
> straight up admitted they would copy whatever sound was popular at the time so it would sell more - i.e. they were basically businessmen first, musicians second.
This is most pop music (which is by definition whatever style happens to be popular at the time), though, so why would that cause them hate when it doesn't cause the others the same?
1996 was when the fcc rules were changed on how many radio stations could be owned by a single entity. After that, instead of having local program directors, the big national radio companies started directing programming centrally, and radio changed drastically.
This. After Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Weezer, and Red Hot Chili Peppers we get ... 89 songs that all sound like 3 songs. (Note, not attempting to fight over 90's music upvote/downvote, just examples of popular "alternative" bands. Literally a Google search list.)
It's the formalization, homogenization, cookie cutter, autotuning, algo-music, enshitification that is almost all you can hear anymore. It's all business first, music second. Acquaintance I know plays in a touring band, and it's depressing talking to them.
"Well, Spotify changed they're algorithm, so we're gonna have to change our sound to get on the curated lists with the next single." 'Huh. Do you even enjoy being in band.' "Nah. Not really, touring sucks, and it's the only way to make money. Deal with egotistical headliners and then sit at a table and sell t-shirts."
The most I can say for Nickleback, is at least they don't sound like they're trying to have mean, hurtful sex on tape.
Go to breakfast, and they're playing barnyard sound "ugg, ugg, get your sugar bowl with my hot sauce" music while I'm trying to eat.
Edit: Also, why is Taylor Swift the only modern band that's "supposedly" quality on the list? Fleetwood Mac? They're over half a century old. Even Drake started a decade and a half ago.
These post-grunge bands of early 2000 presented a powerful combination of witless lyrics with the cheesiest riffs and hooks a guitar can produce. Nickelback is far from the worst of those, but they were the most popular.
The rock guys in my HS lab would sit at the only PCs with speakers and blast it loud to everyone else's misery. They did the same with Evanescence/Nightwish, bands for which I developed gratitude from sparing me of those guys same deep raspy voice.
The music would also play in malls, Starbucks, on the radio, on MTV all the time. So any retail worker may hear it 50 times per day. It didn’t have bad words like other songs at the time (eg eminem).
So it became kind of like a Christian rock band. Something parents would let their kids listen to
Here I thought the excuse in Canada was they played it to fulfill Canadian Content requirements that we still have for radio play.
Probably another nail in the coffin for radio, especially when stations can just play the same Canadian Content over and over instead of developing it like the regulators all hoped.
All self-reported measures are wrong. Some are useful.
My personal hypothesis is that Chad Kroeger looks weird and that’s it.
Every giant band has either a frontman, or a set of people who comprise the ethos that people attach to in a band
Everybody has their favorite beatle or they love the lead singer of band x or whatever.
I’ve literally never heard somebody say Chad Kroeger’s their favorite artist, Or he’s such a hunk, etc.
meanwhile, bands with smaller followings have rabid fans like my daughter and this obscure band with rabid following.
Nirvana wouldn’t have been shit if Kurt Cobain wasn’t such an icon.
So in my estimation, it comes down, purely to the fact that nobody in the band was worth emulating or being excited about given the size of their musical presence.
I hate Nickelback because they're music is whiney and has a complete lack of dynamic range.
And in the early 2000's, when I still listened to radio, it was as if every 4th song was Nickelback. Being forced to listen to music you dislike creates utter hatred and contempt.
Nickelback does have ONE song that I actually really like, and it sounds nothing like anything else they made: Animals
It may also be that they were one of the most prominent faces of Rock’s commercial and creative decline. One of the best YT interviews I’ve recently seen is Rick Beato sitting down with a music industry veteran to discuss why rock music declined so rapidly.
tldr - prior to the 90s radio stations were largely independent and had local DJs constantly searching out and playing new and original local music as that DJ was incentivized the find the “next big thing”, I.e. a DJ could say “I was the one” who broke Some Big Band on the national scene. However, in the 90s legislation was passed that allowed for the monopolization of radio stations. Many were bought out by large central corps. This resulted in the demise of the local DJ searching for new music, instead replaced by the DJ who is told by those “up top” what to play. Thus we witnessed the death of new and creative acts, replaced by bands that were “formulated” by corp minds.
I have no idea about their music and I don't know who they are as members of the group. But I dislike Nickelback (not hate, though) solely on the basis on the group's name. The name just rubs me the wrong way for some reason...
I think it stems from every one of their songs sounding like an imitation of “smells like teen spirit”. Except that Kurt cobain was- or at least is seen as- authentic, raw and vulnerable, whereas nickelback comes across as a pretentious imitation loaded with macho posturing. Kurt would have hated them, which is why many others do.
Besides that, their music is really boring- in the sense of being extremely predictable. Lots of other music you hear on the radio is boring too, of course. But it’s a double whammy.
> For example, we can compare variance in song energy and danceability for U2, ABBA, and Katy Perry, then rank these artists against each other. According to this subset of variables, ABBA's discography offers greater sonic variety than U2's or Katy Perry's.
My guess is that trying to measure music in these contrived metrics miss the whole point of why people like or dislike certain bands. At least that is how I took it.
I seriously doubt ABBA, who stuck with the Disco sound through most of their careers, has more "sonic variety" than Katy Perry's genre salad albuns like 'Prism'.
Fleetwood Mac changed their sound a couple of times and they are at the bottom of the ranking as well. Just shows how hard is to measure stuff like this
There was absolutely an internet trend about hating Nickleback, and I don't think you need a lot of people to start something of that sort.
I think much of the Musk hate is something similar. Here in Sweden we actually have a conflict with Musk-- the labour union network that almost all Swedes are part of are striking and Tesla are bringing in strikebreakers from outside Sweden to overcome this, something no company has done for a very long time and something which is a threat to the way we've ordered our society, but even we don't hate him. Rather, you see quite rabid Americans go on about him, who much less of a conflict with him than we do.
The irony is that Musk was a folk hero in many corners of the internet because he was viewed as a visionary. And rightly so, because Tesla revolutionized electric vehicles and especially the charging infrastructure, and SpaceX is revolutionizing rocketry.
But then he started to make it all about himself, with his atrocious stewardship of Twitter (and increasingly, Tesla), his loud foray into authoritarian politics, and generally being an erratic asshole. He's proven himself to be exactly the type of person that abuses their wealth and power to further enrich themselves without regard to who or how it affects others. He was the richest man in the world, and it wasn't enough.
> The irony is that Musk was a folk hero in many corners of the internet because he was viewed as a visionary. And rightly so, because Tesla revolutionized electric vehicles and especially the charging infrastructure, and SpaceX is revolutionizing rocketry.
> But then he started to make it all about himself, with his atrocious stewardship of Twitter (and increasingly, Tesla), his loud foray into authoritarian politics, and generally being an erratic asshole. He's proven himself to be exactly the type of person that abuses their wealth and power to further enrich themselves without regard to who or how it affects others. He was the richest man in the world, and it wasn't enough.
No, he was always "being erratic asshole". For instance: I disliked him before it was cool because of his constant lies about self-driving technology, how he treated his workers, etc.
He stopped getting a pass, and Musk-hate really got going when he entered the polarized political environment and started to annoy Democrats by not conforming to their ideological requirements. Only then did many people start paying attention.
"meh" to your narrative of basic partisan bickering. At least for me, it takes a long time to get to the point of actually condemning someone. I wait for unassailable happenings where indisputable facts themselves paint a bad picture, while giving endless benefit of the doubt for the hyper-sensationalized weekly two minute hates.
Lying about self driving capabilities? Common business hustling. "Pedo guy"? Message board squabbling. Worker treatment? Basically every business. Articles that his immediate reports' job is basically managing his ego? Hit piece. And so on. It's not that these situations definitely are these things, but rather that they can possibly be explained by them - thus they aren't really objective things to hang my judgement on.
But buying Twitter for $20B+, whether a regretful instance of "drunk" shopping or not, and then immediately going to work destroying the user base, its customers, and the company organization itself? That's midlife crisis buys a new red Dodge Viper and crashes it into a tree on the way home territory. I don't see a way to explain away any of that in nicer "4D chess" terms - any of these arguments about worthwhile changes could and should have been done gradually and behind the scenes, because those "soft assets" were all the business was. And so mismanaging Twitter into the Xitter sticks as a pretty poignant example that the guy isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, or at the very least has a debilitating social media addiction... which then damages this aura of being the lead visionary from whom all innovation flows at his other companies.
Since we're already in the political arena, I did the same thing with Trump. I was the one telling all my aghast friends in 2016 that there was a good chance he was going to win, because he was actually saying what a lot of people felt. I didn't believe his schtick and didn't vote for him nor the other team's talking head, but I was still hoping that any of the "4D chess" arguments would have some merit. Despite the endless barrage of "You'll never believe THIS bad thing Trump did", it took me until June 2020 to finally write the guy off as irredeemable - that's when Covid was solidly indisputable as capital-P Problem, yet he continued to deflect and equivocate. All the guy had to do was address the problem and lead, and he would have had the shoe-in second term of the war/crisis time president. But alas he kept on doubling down on his divisive reality distortion field, and we all know how that ended up.
You’re copping downvotes but that’s a significant reason (and discussed in the article). It was a joke that became a meme and then a default stance, independent of the actual band or their music.
The article even calls out the Colin Quinn episode above. But it's like 2/3 of the way down, and let's be real, no one on HN reads that articles.
But more broadly speaking it was overplayed mid-tier generic rock with a tinge of country and metal, aimed explicitly to get radio play. Posehn calls out Imagine Dragons and Kid Rock for the same reasons.
Why can't I dislike execrable music without being second guessed? I have heard many AI generated tracks made by Suno that are much more tolerable and even enjoyable than Nickleback. While I understand the hate for Imagine Dragons, particularly for their song Thunder, I often enjoy their histrionic anthems. In contrast, Nickleback is never redeeming -- their songs are either vapid or terribad.
So I suspect that a large portion (certainly not all) of the "hate" is simply a social expression unrelated to the merits or demerits of their actual work.