Hating Nickelback, Is It Too Inexplicable?

In the first nine years of the 21st century, we as humans have been surrounded by many things and mostly responded to what our fellow man has made popular. In around 2001, as America more or less became a nation that needed the solace of someone else, there was one band that so daftly answered all the fears Americans needed to quell. Almost ironically, that band was from Canada. Their lead singer kind of looked like the typical portrait of Jesus Christ, which makes even little sense seeing that this man seemed to have a more schizophrenic songwriting style of writing about sex and then writing about caring. And unless we're going by the Last Temptation of Christ depiction of Jesus, this is nowhere near the beliefs of a savior.

Yet in the sales sense, Nickelback kind of did become a savior to rock radio and its incessant need to play one "hit song" an hour. Since Coldplay wasn't there to annoy the nation quite yet (Parachutes was a minor success, their annoyance didn't crank in until A Rush of Blood to the Head and its double shot of annoyance in "Clocks" and "The Scientist".), it had to be this mediocre post-grunge band from the Great White North instead. It also saved Roadrunner Records, which had roughly one band with any sales before 2000 in some nine-piece group with masks called Slipknot.

Then of course, the backlash came. And there was an understandable reason for this backlash. After all, "Someday" sounds exactly like "How You Remind Me" and "Photograph" is a half written song about memories on an album where the lead singer often raves about silly sex. The band was so intent on sounding macho for the men with songs about mad sex that means nothing and has no consequences other than fun and then doing tender ballads that are to show your average middle aged housewife that these men aren't as perverted as they seem. They were the perfect music mogul's band. And they appealed to people that secretly hate music that speaks to roughly one person.

In seven years, Nickelback has become the one band on earth that being a fan or a hater of was almost a show of what you wanted to represent as a person. If you enjoyed the band, you clearly represented the class of the "unintelligible" people, which apparently represents around however many people bought 16 million albums, piracy not withstanding. And if you hated this band, you represented the cultured people that find enjoyment in things, mostly talking about how much they hate Nickelback.

I'll get this out of the way, I hate Nickelback. I don't find any pleasure in the music at all, though this is more out of personal dislike. Before, I thought it was related to their music sounding the same, until I realized that many amazing rock acts are guilty of sounding the same. Famously in the mid 1980s, John Fogerty of the classic band Creedence Clearwater Revival was sued because his own "The Old Man Down The Road" sounded a lot like "Run Through The Jungle". And you know what? Both songs are still amazingly awesome in their own right. Did Fogerty get criticism for basically doing what he does best? No. Mind you, I'm hardly comparing the talents of Nickelback to CCR or Fogerty because Fogerty was truly biting about his generation, about warfare, and about just writing great American stories through song. Nickelback wrote a number that asked "Why doesn't everyone in the world make peace?" after just saying that they'd punch out any guy who thought their girlfriend was sexy and that they wanted to put a bullet into the guy who killed Dimebag Darrell.

And yet, any tired criticisms have often to do with the fact that their songs sound the same, are about things like sex (which rock music has never ever talked about, not never), and that Chad Kroeger writes like he's working on 7th grade poetry. The third claim is sort of accurate, but the first two are constants in rock music anyway. And as much as fans of any sort hate to admit it, whenever a band sounds different, that's when the fans stray away quickly.

This is even a guilt association in indie music, as I remember Death Cab for Cutie fans hating that "I Will Possess Your Heart" lasted nine minutes, complete with a four and a half-minute bass solo presumably because vocalist Ben Gibbard's supposed to say something profound throughout all of their songs, despite the fact that the music behind Gibbard is oftentimes much better than anything he's actually saying. (Anybody that needs a good example for this should remember that it was The Postal Service's version of "Such Great Heights" that people find incredible, partly for the message but mostly for the fact that the musical accompaniment is awesome.)

But I digress, this is about the silliness of hating Nickelback in the trendy "I hate the mainstream" sense. I'm always curious why there's so much vitriol for this band from Canada. I've even been totally guilty of it a lot of the time, although, I never really figured out why I hated them so much other than maybe hearing my family play their music constantly. But there's no irony to hating Nickelback anymore. Maybe around 2002 after "How You Remind Me" became the most played song of ever, there was some bite to people being like "this music really sucks". But in 2008, when YouTube fans have posted tons of videos on their personal dislike for Nickelback and any person who digs into a little bit of any genre of music hates them, where is the irony in saying that you hate Nickelback? There's more fresh bite in people saying they hate Katy Perry for being a tease, and there's not nearly enough people giving that massive piece of insight to anyone. The point is that saying you hate Nickelback is about like saying you hate Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. It's a common causality of living in America at this point.

To throw in an indie example, if I said I hated the Arcade Fire for being too ridiculously showy in its performance style by throwing tons of instruments that probably show have no place in the songs, openly admitting making mistakes in instrumentation in the performance of their music, and growing in their attempts to "be deep" in terms of a lyrical message. Now I love the Arcade Fire, so this isn't me saying these things to get a "he's trying to be cool by hating everything else that's cool" reaction. This is a mere example that there would be a sense of the "divisive cool" that people think they get by admitting hating Nickelback and a dig on the fact that to be ironic, people will even hate the trendy bands of the indie scene. Case in point, the sudden dislike of Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers, specifically their 2007 album Challengers, and the inexplicable liking of electronic vomit like Flying Lotus. (I'm only using Pitchfork Media-based examples here.)

Two things rule us these days, and that is inexplicable love (like a lot of people tend to get any time Lil' Wayne craps out a mix tape some Sunday afternoon in June) and inexplicable hate (like the fact that people will outright hate The Hills, hate MTV, hate Nickelback, and hate mainstream media, despite how much of it they still consume). I kind of rest on some sort of chain of apathy, honestly, even though I border the line of inexplicable hate. I dislike a lot of things, but unless they're horrible actions that attempt to destroy humanity (i.e. not anything entertainment-related), I don't wish them dead. I don't really have an interest in The Hills or Heidi Montag's singing career or Kristen Cavalleri's attempts to act. But at the same time, the show doesn't affect me for the worse. I wouldn't be affected if the cast suddenly died, but I wouldn't dance on their graves while singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah" either.

Of course, I'm not going to act like I'm not repulsed by the Jonas Brothers, in which that's a perfect example of inexplicable hate. I hate these three brothers because they make music I don't like and in turn are everywhere on my television, despite the fact that I have ownership of a remote control and can tune these three kids out of my life. So I'm not saying that inexplicable hate still won't happen. I'm just noticing it a bit too much. And everyone's guilty of that moment. I hate Brett Favre for the fact that he turned into a diva for the past few seasons. He's a great quarterback, but I don't ever think the Jets or the Raiders or whatever team gets him next season after he fakes another retirement will ever be a solid team solely because I don't like him. This is completely inexplicable, almost as inexplicable as hating Tom Cruise movies because he's kind of freaky, or Michael Jackson's music because...same reason, or Neil Patrick Harris' acting because he's gay. It's all inexplicable, and I think we should stop that sort of silly judgment, even though, we never really quite will because we're moralistic.

To drag this back to Nickelback, we as the "cultured people" hate them because of what they represent. And ostensibly, it's that a severe lack of human accomplishment has bred success. This is why "cultured people", especially people who idealize themselves as music enthusiasts, can't stand Nickelback. They don't accomplish the musical feats of The Arcade Fire or the experimentalism of Radiohead or even the slight bit of irony of Sufjan Stevens. With a straight face, Nickelback plays music they essentially already made, write songs about things they already love, and never talk about anything different unless a famous rock guitarist gets shot during a performance. They are the exact depiction of the conventional rock band. They're always consistent in the fact that they sound the same. And guess what? Their last album sold seven million copies in the United States, even when all three of those groups combined can't do half of those numbers, And that's including Radiohead's whole pay-if-you-want model for In Rainbows, which kind of proves the point that they couldn't sell seven million copies without charging nothing for it.

And yet Nickelback has not only found success, but they're one of the only major musical groups whose sales have actually grown during the file-sharing era. While people would big up groups like The Shins as for groups that have grown in sales during the file-sharing era, The Shins basically only got this success from Natalie Portman claiming their music would change everyone's life. Nickelback got it from doing the same general thing for seven years, and people somehow keep enjoying it.

So ultimately, I still don't like Nickelback. However, like all inexplicable hate (like people hating people who like Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Wild Hogs and Norbit) I'll try to keep that more closed in next time because this ultimately affects nothing in my life. When someone likes Jeff Dunham or North Face jackets or Ace of Base, my real reaction should be "That's cool, want some soda?" or something like that. Taste is supposed to affect the populace's view of themselves, but really, it's a distance creating device. One that I won't stop with, of course, but one that maybe a tad bit more tolerance is something I should operate with next time.

That is, unless you just like crap inexplicably.

(Writer's Note: I'll be back on Tuesday, but I'm probably not doing the Overrated, Correctly Rated thing after all because...come on, it's Dead Week. I gotta study sometime or another.)