Nickelback is one of the most commercially successful Canadian rock bands for several reasons, the first being their best-selling albums and the second being their hit songs. Undoubtedly, one of those songs is ‘How You Remind Me’ since the track became their biggest with higher chart rankings and a considerable amount of sales. In a new conversation with Radioacktiva, the band’s bassist, Mike Kroeger, detailed how his brother and band member Chad Kroeger wrote the hit song.
“My brother really likes to write,” Mike initially said. He then revealed that Chad Kroeger has staple themes in his songwriting, “He has a few topics that he goes to, but one of them is nostalgia, our youth, and sometimes it’s our childhood. He’s really good at writing from that perspective of reflecting back to when we were younger.”
The Nickelback bassist then said Chad Kroeger’s travel to his past reflected itself on the band’s songs, “It has happened with the song ‘Photograph,’ it’s of that sort of theme or that kind of topic, and ‘Rockstar’ and ‘How You Remind Me.’ These are all reflected songs about what was life like before all this. He’s really good at pulling out those memories and writing about them.”
It was the Kroeger brothers who first formed the band with the name Village Idiot in the early 1990s. They were joined by their cousin, Brandon Kroeger and Ryan Peake. Moreover, Mike played a massive role in their now worldwide-known name since he was working at Starbucks and drew inspiration from saying, ‘Here’s your nickel back’ to the customers.
Since the beginning, Mike Kroeger immensely contributed to the band’s success and was involved in every step of Nickelback’s career. Hence, he knows almost every detail about his brother’s songwriting methods, which includes the time he wrote ‘How You Remind Me.’ Though the song was written after an argument with his then-girlfriend, the base of the track, the first four lines, already existed before that fight, which must be the ability to pull out memories and moments Mike mentioned in the interview.
