Why does Nickelback suck so bad?

I was only the final drummer in a family of drummers..My two older brothers played in their college drumlines and their highschool instructor took alot of our highschool bands to places like the Calgary Stampede and we took top honors when each of my brothers were in band (we were spaced apart 5-6 years each)..That instructor told me in 5th grade that I had the smoothest buzz-roll he'd ever heard, so I retired 3 years later.

By "only", I mean I usually felt like drummers were the least talented of any real musicians, and still carry this around sometimes.

But some posts in this thread really did bring up some mighty fond memories..Of Saturday afternoons cleaning our house as a family with a stack of Beatles albums on the old record player that was the size of an old console TV and had a penny or three taped to the tonearm to help play through the skips.

And my oldest Brother who was 11 years and 3 days older than me would point out every instrument in any song and have me concentrate on each one and their special nuances...Especially on his Yes and Led Zeppelin albums..Laying on my back with a pair of 4' speakers laying on top of me...one over each ear..Before he invented headphones...OK someone else invented Headphones.

If I hadn't been so homophobic at the time, and hadn't lost two family members so soon after highschool, I probably would have gone to school in Greenwich Village to study Recording Engineering..

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I sometimes wonder the same thing about Creed.

"With Arms Wide Open" became the theme song of my own Son when he was born..to his Mom and me anyway..But they got so much airplay, I even started disliking Pearl Jam a little.

I don't think Simplicity of a song is always a bad thing..How else do you explain the Kingsmen' "Louie Louie" having such staying power?

I actually liked NickelBack's song "Never Again" probably as a duty? to like the message..But the Lead Singer always sounded to me like he should be doing Country Muzak ...

I know I was always just a drummer, but I seem to have pretty fair voice recognition and can usually identify bands by a couple of notes from their lead singers and even their background singers..These guys and their clones (which also seem to get way too much airplay) remind me of the "New Country" that all the purists were complaining about the last couple of decades.

I'm not sure why, but the people that really seem to like NickleBack are the same ones who request "Stairway To Heaven" to be played on the Classic Rock stations whenever they have an "all request weekend" which really pisses me off.

I Loved the song. but there seems to be a limited number of times you can hear any song..The best songs might be good for the first 300,000 listens, but after that, you want to google "Hari Kari" if you hear it more than once or twice a year.

And Classic Rock stations around here at least still play the same 3 "hits" by even the best artists on a daily basis they were 30 years ago.

I usually only listen to those stations durring "All Request Weekends" to hear deeper album cuts that other "audiophiles" request so I don't have to blow the dust off my Bang and Olufsen ...Like I did this weekend after hearing Earth Wind and Fire's "In The Stone" in a movie, and wanted to play the whole album for my young son.

Nickelback might sound better in 20 years, but like a previous poster said..Mainly because of the power of music to bring back fond memories.

 
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I had the misfortune of seeing them once.

The only reason I went, the girl I was dating at the time loved them, so I caved. But, I was rewarded when I found out Jerry Cantrell was opening for them. Jerry Cantrell played for 45 minutes, and did what Nicklecrap couldn't accomplish in almost 2 hours...

 
Nickleback, is a better representation of, right place, right time. People were listening to Matchbox 20, and bands like that, and wanted something that was "heavier" but still commercial. This is were Nickleback came in. It was almost as if Loverboy was put in a time machine, and released back into the wild 20 years later. The formula they use is the same as the hair metal bands back in the late 80's. Write a catchy tune that will be the first single, release the ballad, and then maybe with any luck, squeeze another single out of it, tour for about 9 months, then go record another crap album to torture the masses with.

In the absence of good music, bands like Nickleback thrive. It's the same thing with Creed. They were equally as awful.

 
AR Husker Fan said:
Nickelback has developed a niche, and hasn't varied from it. Given how popular they were - meaning, how much airplay they got - their music probably does seem repetitive. But in reality, how many bands evolve their sounds much? With one notable exception (The Beatles), any band that is successful and tries to change their "formula" fails. If you like a band, it's for their signature sound, and you want them to continue in that vein. If they change, you don't like it.
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I think this is a very true thing. Case in point - Pearl Jam. Ten was a fantastic album, edgy, fun, eminently listenable. But it seems that as soon as they had success, they decided to change things up, and each subsequent album was a deviation from anything they had done previously. I hate everything they've done since 1991 with the same passion that I love Ten to this day.

R.E.M. is an example of a band, like the Beatles, whose music matured and evolved throughout their life, but didn't change entirely. R.E.M. started out as a grainy, almost pop-like college rock band, and evolved into a more mature sound from album to album.

U2 has pretty much entirely changed their sound and style since their early days. The band that made All That You Can't Leave Behind barely resembles the band that made October. Might as well be two different bands. I think it's a somewhat selfish thing on the part of the audience to want/expect the bands they like not to evolve, but I'm guilty of that.

 
Leader of men is the only song I like from Nickelback, their 1st hit. I have heard they put on a good show, but still not enough to get me interested to go. They fell victim to being overexposed, I would bet money that on every modern/hard rock radio station in the country you will hear it least 1 if not 2 Nickleback songs in an hour, every hour. Getting a band shoved in your face becuase they seem to put an album out every year or so, is an easy way to turn most fans away.

 
In continuation of bands coming out with disappointing albums, throw Linkin Park in there. Hybrid Theory and Meteora are two of my favorite albums. And then, at the peak of their popularity, they drastically altered their sound. I remember seeing them perform a new single on SNL in the Spring of 2011, and all I could think to myself was "This isn't Linkin Park."

 
Changing and/or evolving sounds for a band tends to be a damned if you do damned if you don't. Other than AC/DC, and really Nickleback, bands don't have success making what amounts to the same album over and over. Critics hate Nickleback, but as long as they are packing arenas and selling millions of albums, that is success.

Some bands change up the sound a bit and get killed, other can change it up and be more successful. But for the most part, being stagnant in a band's sound tends to end careers.

Metallica got killed for changing things up for the Black Album and Load and reLoad, but I found those all to be very good albums. And the Black Album is one of the top selling albums ever.

Avenged Sevenfold was an unknown until they changed things up a bit and cleaned up the vocals, and big success followed.

Distrubed sounds almost like a different band now than off thier first CD The Sickness. Thier evolution has certainly helped them sell more CDs.

 
strigori said:
Metallica got killed for changing things up for the Black Album and Load and reLoad, but I found those all to be very good albums. And the Black Album is one of the top selling albums ever.

Avenged Sevenfold was an unknown until they changed things up a bit and cleaned up the vocals, and big success followed.

Distrubed sounds almost like a different band now than off thier first CD The Sickness. Thier evolution has certainly helped them sell more CDs.
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Those are three bands I enjoyed a lot more before they changed to pander to a larger audience.

 
I enjoy pretty much all nickleback songs. damn catchy and fun songs.

now as for the reason that people hate nickleback, its really pretty simple, CHICKS DIG NICKLEBACK! Dudes (whom are insecure with their manhood) dont like things that chicks like and there are countless exapmples throughout history and in the present: the beetles, ryan gosling, john cena, bieber, and countless others!

seriously, thats what it is. its psychological and its that simple.

 
husker B-rent said:
I enjoy pretty much all nickleback songs. damn catchy and fun songs.

now as for the reason that people hate nickleback, its really pretty simple, CHICKS DIG NICKLEBACK! Dudes (whom are insecure with their manhood) dont like things that chicks like and there are countless exapmples throughout history and in the present: the beetles, ryan gosling, john cena, bieber, and countless others!

seriously, thats what it is. its psychological and its that simple.
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Thanks for clearing that up, Sigmund Fraud

 
strigori said:
Changing and/or evolving sounds for a band tends to be a damned if you do damned if you don't. Other than AC/DC, and really Nickleback, bands don't have success making what amounts to the same album over and over. Critics hate Nickleback, but as long as they are packing arenas and selling millions of albums, that is success.

Some bands change up the sound a bit and get killed, other can change it up and be more successful. But for the most part, being stagnant in a band's sound tends to end careers.

Metallica got killed for changing things up for the Black Album and Load and reLoad, but I found those all to be very good albums. And the Black Album is one of the top selling albums ever.

Avenged Sevenfold was an unknown until they changed things up a bit and cleaned up the vocals, and big success followed.

Distrubed sounds almost like a different band now than off thier first CD The Sickness. Thier evolution has certainly helped them sell more CDs.
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Metallica got killed, for changing to crap. Load, Reload are horrific albums. The Black Album and Bob Rock were the death knell for that band. Had Cliff Burton not died, the Black Album would have never been made

 
I'm starting to dislike 5FingerFruitPunch for the same reasons as I dislike 5cBack...

And I dig chickflicks

 
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