If you google the most hated band, you will see many Nickelback-related results. The audience offered many different reasons for this, but let’s listen to it from the band members. According to Chad Kroeger, it was because of the ‘fake attitudes’ imposed on them by their PRs, as he disclosed during a recent interview with NME.
“I’ve been saying this for a while,” the frontman explained. “The four of us will do a photoshoot, and we’ll take pictures for hours goofing off with big smiles, and it’s nothing but levity. Then right at the end, they go, ‘Alright guys, give us a little attitude.’ We tighten up our faces, go a little stoic, and bang, that’s the one they use every single time.” According to him, that’s what causes people to say, “look at these sh*theads, they’re just taking themselves so seriously.”
He continued, “We’ve got songs that start off with, ‘I like your pants around your feet,’ and songs where the hook is, ‘You look so much cuter with something in your mouth.’ We’re laughing to ourselves, going, ‘Could you imagine if they play this on the radio?’ And both those songs went to number 1 in the US. That’s hilarious.”
The frontman thinks the whole problem is a misrepresentation. When you combine what Kroeger said with the reasons from the audience, it makes sense. Because the main reason why many listeners call Nickelback the most hated band is that they think they are too commercial and too mediocre. According to them, it becomes really annoying when they try to appear to be too rebellious and angry while enjoying a huge commercial success.
Moreover, the listeners think that once they catch a pattern that works, they try to achieve the same success by repeating it constantly. As this goes entirely against the rebellious nature of rock music, there’s no reason why real rockers shouldn’t hate them.
Anyway, this contradiction is probably one of the oldest in rock music. The genre was a contra-culture in its origins, so it should take a position against the mainstream. However, on the other hand, they have to ‘sell’ in order to convey this counter-position and their troubles to more people. This conflict will probably never be resolved, and Nickelback will continue to be an industry scapegoat.
