Episode 5: Nickelback - 'All the Right Reasons'

Via Youtube user Euphemism for Magic

Programming Note: Because my time and internet access was relatively scarce last week, I decided to skip last week's album, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynold's Live at Radio City. I didn't have a ton to say about it anyway. I was going to do some bonus content that week by reviewing some Top Alternative Songs along with the Dave Matthews album, but it just didn't work out. So I've decided to skip ahead a week in the charts to a topic with plenty of material.

In only a handful of columns, I've already reviewed some absolutely rough albums. I've covered perhaps the lowest points of Sum 41, The Smashing Pumpkins and KoRn's careers. But none of those artists are as universally hated as the monster of a band that is being reviewed this week. This band is such a punching bag that it's almost hard to remember just how popular they were in the early-mid 2000's. So let's just do it. Let's talk about Nickelback.

Nickelback - All the Right Reasons (Roadrunner Records, 2005)

Genres: Hard rock, post-grunge, pop rock

Producer(s): Nickelback, Joey Moi

Metacritic Score: 41/100

RYM Rating: 1.90/5 (ranked 7/9 in the band's catalog)

Sputnik Rating: 2.2/5 (ranked 3/9 in the band's catalog)

Weeks at #1: Two (Weeks of September 8, 2007 and September 29, 2007)

Other Accomplishments: Certified Diamond by the RIAA and multi-platinum in various other countries, multiple mainstream hits including "Photograph," "Rockstar" and "Savin' Me"

Nickelback might be the most-hated band... ever? I'm trying not to be hyperbolic but there aren't a ton of bands I can name that have received the same amount of vitriol that Nickelback has. There are plenty of bands that are close: Creed, Train, Black Eyed Peas, Insane Clown Posse, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit. But none of those bands really capture the pure, seething hatred that a lot of people have towards Nickelback.

I think part of it is longevity. Nickelback has been making music since 1996, and they've had mainstream hits since 2001. They've slowed down a bit and none of their singles from their past few albums have really caught on in the United States, but they were unavoidable for a solid decade. They outlasted a lot of those bands named above, especially when it comes to mainstream popularity.

I don't know if Nickelback is quite deserving of the moniker of "The Most Hated Band in the World," but I see why. Chad Kroeger's voice is atrocious. It's not the worst voice even in the rock subgenre most closely associated with the band, post-grunge (that would be the distinctive baritone yarl of Creed's Scott Stapp), but it's grating. Kroeger's gruff, somewhat slurred delivery is hard to have patience for (2003's "Someday" might be one of my least favorite vocal performances ever, something about the way he sings "paperback novel"). There's not a lot that puts him that far ahead of the guy singing at your local bar band on a random Tuesday night who maybe had one too many complimentary beers.

There's also the fact that Nickelback tends to use the same song structures a lot. This comparison of "Someday" and "How You Remind Me" has been around the internet for years, and it's one of the biggest things that comes up with criticism of the band. The comparisons don't end there. I'd definitely throw "Savin' Me" and "Photograph" to the similar song structure thing just off the top of my head. This has led to the common criticism, "All Nickelback songs sound the same." That's a bit disingenuous, but there's a bit of truth there. Saying all songs sound the same is obvious hyperbole, but they do have a tendency to (literally) hit the same notes in their music. There's not a ton of variety, which gives the band a reputation of being one trick ponies and hacks.

That's the big criticism. Nickelback is a band that has never really been seen as anything more than a mainstream band designed to sell millions upon millions of records. Curb and The State, Nickelback's two records released before they got really big, don't really have a ton of artistic merit. There are catchy songs, but Kroeger's always been a pretty bad lyricist. Even without the millions of fans backing them, they still sound like a band that's here for radio spins. I think those two albums are slightly better than what the band would release when they were fully mainstream, but it's not by much. So there's a perception that the band has always been a corporate entity. They're shills, they're hacks, they're corporate sell-outs that didn't even have integrity to sell out to begin with.

So let's get to Nickelback's smash hit All the Right Reasons, by-far the band's most successful album. Despite being released in late 2005, it still managed to top the Billboard Top Alternative Albums chart nearly two full years later. Last year, it was certified Diamond by the RIAA. Only four other albums have that distinction since All the Right Reasons was released: Taylor Swift's Fearless, Garth Brooks' The Ultimate Hits, and Adele's 21 and 25. This was an album released while online piracy was starting to thrive and albums were selling less and less. That didn't matter to Nickelback. They were a band made to sell records, and they did it. This band put five different singles in the top 20 and rode that success to one of the best-selling albums ever. Not just of its time - ever! Even the cultural milestone American Idiot that was released a year earlier and keeps being brought up in this column didn't even sniff this kind of success.

Musically, All the Right Reasons is... a Nickelback album. There's not much I can do to differentiate it from everything else they've done. Anyone who's heard a Nickelback song knows what they sound like. The hooks are catchy, the lyrics are iffy, the riffs chug along fine. The album rocks hard enough to be considered "hard rock," but not too hard to alienate a commercial audience.

Anyone listening to the album thinking that maybe there's greater depth beyond the massive singles in it will be disappointed. Most of the album is more or less filler, and diving deeper into Nickelback's catalog leads listeners to hear more of the band's weaknesses. People who only have heard the singles might not know that Chad Kroeger really likes singing about sex in very stilted, awkward, creepy lyrics. It's a big thing. The first song on the album is called "Follow You Home," and it's about how nothing that Kroeger's lover(?) does can prevent him from following her because, "You're my Mississippi Princess, you're my California Queen/Like the Duchess of Detroit and every city in between." Possessive, creepy lyrics about women are nothing new in rock music or music in general, but nothing in Kroeger's voice or in the context of the song does it show that he's really anything more than a creepy dude.

"Animals" is a Nickelback single that is generally considered one of the better Nickelback songs. It's easy to see why. It's different. It moves faster, there's more energy and immediacy in Kroeger's performance, it's got maybe the catchiest Nickelback riff ever. It gets praise at least for exceeding expectations and showing the band can do more than just one note. The lyrics are about doin' it in a car because Kroeger and the girl he's with are a couple animals, because no amount of switching the formula can force Kroeger to be subtle, but it's still different and makes you feel that the band could actually be capable of being more than generic corporate rockers.

Of course, that song is sandwiched between "Photograph" and "Savin' Me," the two most by-the-numbers Nickelback songs on the album. "Photograph" has been ridiculed to death for its saccharine attempts at nostalgia. Awkward verses like "Kim's the first girl I kissed/I was so nervous that I nearly missed/She's had a couple of kids since then/I haven't seen her since God knows when," and "Remember the old arcade?/Blew every dollar that we ever made/The cops hated us hangin' out/They said somebody went and burned it down," speak for themselves. 

"Savin' Me" is less ridiculous than "Photograph," but it very much falls into the "How You Remind Me"/"Someday" song structure formula. Of the five songs that cracked the top 20, it had the lowest peak at No. 19. I think even the audiences who liked Nickelback were starting to see the familiar territory they were treading.

There are two big ballads on the album. "Far Away" is essentially a Creed song, while "If Everyone Cared" is essentially a three-minute long rendition of this line from The Room. The song is such obvious pandering "if people love each other, maybe things won't suck so bad!" without really going into depth about how people can actually help each other outside of caring a whole lot. It's a dime store version of John Lennon's "Imagine," and I don't even like "Imagine." 

The album ends with "Rockstar," another one of Nickelback's biggest smash hits. I think the song is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and a bit of a parody of rockstar life, but it doesn't work with this band. This is a band that's essentially always been successful in the mainstream. They craft songs specifically to get on the radio and make millions of dollars. Chad Kroeger regularly sings about having sex with beautiful women. Yet somehow now we're supposed to buy into some ironic presentation of rockstar life from Nickelback of all bands? There's something to be said about self-parody but I don't think the band even knows it's parodying itself. That's if the song is meant to be ironic of course. If it's sincere, it's even worse because it essentially becomes Nickelback flaunting their stardom and fame in audience's faces. Even Weezer's atrocious "Beverly Hills" released in the same year did a better job at doing this kind of song. The song might be one of the worst Weezer songs in a catalog filled with bad ideas, but at least Weezer seem in on their bad jokes. Nickelback just doesn't work.

I try to give every album and artist a fair enough shake while doing these columns. Listening to Nickelback's first few albums, I thought the band wasn't that bad. It was incredibly mediocre music, sure, but it wasn't on the level of the Creeds and the Limp Bizkits of the world. But the more one listens to Nickelback, the more tiring it gets. There's just such a dearth of any originality. Early on in their careers, they found a formula that worked and got complacent. All the Right Reasons is maybe their most complacent album of all. It's not their worst effort (we're going to get to their worst efforts down the line, and it's going to make me wish I was listening to "Photograph" and "Rockstar" instead), but it very well exemplifies why this band is so hated. It's 41 minutes and 33 seconds of nothing particularly interesting outside of a catchy hook here and there. But even those catchy hooks are reminiscent of other catchy hooks the band was doing years before.

Chris' Official Nickelback Ranking

1. The State (2000)

2. Feed the Machine (2017)

3. Silver Side Up (2001)

4. Curb (1996)

5. All the Right Reasons (2005)

6. The Long Road (2003)

7. No Fixed Address (2014)

8. Here and Now (2011)

9. Dark Horse (2008)

Next Week: The quality of this column is "Falling Down" with Atreyu's Lead Sails Paper Anchors