I’ve been thinking about Nickelback in the shower lately.
I’m not a Nickelback fan, but lately a few of their songs have gotten stuck in my head, and I end up singing them absentmindedly while I bathe.
This is a pretty weird thing to happen in 2016, because Nickelback is the least relevant they’ve ever been. However, after all these shower renditions, I think it’s important to consider Chad Kroeger and company’s place in music history.
To understand Nickelback, we need to break it down into the two distinct cultural roles the band filled for me.
The first has to do with the music, seeing as they are a band and whatnot. As I mentioned previously, I am not an active fan of the group. I know a handful of tunes from their days on the radio, but I would struggle to come up with another album title besides “All The Right Reasons.”
It strung a couple hits and then went the way of 3 Doors Down. At least this is what my memory tells me.
The second cultural role the band has filled is the role of “Worst Band Ever.” Sometime in the late 00s, it was decided the Canadian group’s brand of anthemic, everyman rock was the worst thing that ever existed, and they ascended the ranks to punch line.
Nickelback had the opposite of cultural capital. Even mentioning the name would receive an involuntary reaction (always negative, oftentimes dramatized). It was universally despised, and it’s unclear why.
I want to clarify first and foremost, while I don’t love the music, I definitely don’t hate it.
Revisiting the band in modern day is a vanilla experience. Its lyrics aren’t painfully bad like Train, and its music isn’t boringly simple like Black Eyed Peas. Those groups are actively bad, much worse than Nickelback, which is mostly just dull.
So where did the legitimate animosity for something so unassertive come from?
The hatred probably evolved from a natural place: the band looks terrible. Even by 2005 standards, Kroeger’s bleached locks and trash goatee were already recognized as something bad.
I think the reinvention of Nickelback as something despicable came with our own aging. We all heard the songs on Top 40 stations when we were becoming real-life adults during the first half of our education.
We all grew up (slightly) and felt the need to separate this from our fledgling adulthood. The quantity of young adults separating themselves so violently from such a middle-of-the-road thing is how we got here.
This is why we hate Nickelback. It made adolescent nu-metal music that everyone eventually grew out of except the band itself. Watching the band try to keep it up later into the 00s and the early 10s, we were embarrassed for them and had to hate them by default.
I don’t really think anyone hates them anymore. If you say the name someone might roll his or her eyes, but the pantomimed spewing would not happen. Overall, we just don’t care anymore. They’re not something we actively interact with, so why waste the mental space?
This is a demonstration of the changing landscape in the modern age. Everything eventually fades into obscurity, but in viral culture, if the right series of motions occur, then you can be absolutely hated on your way out. There’s always a chance you can turn into a punchline.
And who knows? If you play your cards right, maybe I’ll be singing your music in the shower 10 years later too.
Mcjack@indiana.edu
@jackmcgrew
