Nickelback have been embracing their negative position in some music listeners’ eyes for a long time now. When the topic arose again in an interview with Whiplash, Chad Kroeger talked about the band’s haters. The vocalist also recalled a moment he had with Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott and Phil Collen regarding the matter.
The band has been together and actively making music for 28 years despite the amount of hate they’ve received from the public, which gave them the title of ‘the most hated band.’ Going between the love and hate cycle, the members of the band, especially the frontman Chad Kroeger, had commented on the attention they drew from their audience before. The Canadian act released their tenth album ‘Get Rollin,” in late 2022.
In a new interview with Whiplash for the promotion of their new record, Kroeger once again expressed his opinion on the hate they have been receiving since their early days. The musician stated that what kept the band alive for all these years was the attention they were getting from the haters.
He explained that many bands that came out with them disappeared because nobody talked about them. So, according to him, what provides them recognition and success is their haters’ interaction with them through their opinions and attendance at the Nickelback shows.
Kroeger’s words on the issue:
“All the detractors, all the haters, all the keyboard heroes, they have no idea how much they keep us in the press loop. It’s hilarious. Those people that would love to see us go away, if they really wanted to see us go away, they would just shut up. Because all those bands that came out with us at the same time are all gone because nobody said anything about them. They all just sort of disappeared. But we’ve really kind of spun this whole negative thing into a positive thing. And here we are.”
Moreover, the vocalist, who apparently acknowledged the band’s status in the public eye, remembered a funny intercourse they had with the Def Leppard members Phil Collen and Joe Elliott. Kroeger said that, at the American Music Awards backstage, Elliott and Collen came up and thanked them for taking Def Leppard’s place as ‘the most hated band.’
He recalled the memory as follows:
“It’s funny because we were at the American Music Awards, and we were presenting, and we presented to Def Leppard. And when we walked backstage afterward, Joe Elliott and Phil Collen turned to me, and they were just, like, ‘Dude, thank you so much.’ I’m, like, ‘For what?’ They were, like, ‘For taking the trophy. We get to pass the baton to you for being the most hated band in the world now.’ And I was just, like, ‘Oh, yeah. Because I want that.’”
After years of hate, Nickelback still manages to preserve their place in the music industry. As he expressed before, Chad Kroeger believes that the attention they receive from the haters helps them with their success. Jokingly claiming that Def Leppard passed the baton of hate to them, Kroeger seems to embrace their position as ‘the most hated band in the world.’ At this point, he apparently sees it as beneficial.
