Who Likes Nickelback? Nobody, Except for Millions
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/who-likes-nickelback-nobody-except-for-millions-1452894762
By SARA GERMANO and NICOLE HONG
Jan. 15, 2016 4:52 p.m. ET
Lately, Republican presidential hopefuls Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have each been met on the campaign trail by hecklers accusing them of something many view as utterly unforgivable.
“Ted Cruz Likes Nickelback,” read one placard; “Trump Likes Nickelback,” taunted another.
The band may be one of the most successful rock acts ever, with more than 50 million albums sold and a dozen fully booked international tours under its belt. Billboard in 2009 named it Rock Group of the Decade. And yet it has been unable to shake a crowd of caviling catcallers—and a global chorus of haters.
Start typing “why does everybody…” into Google, for example, and the search giant often suggests completing the query with “…hate Nickelback.”
In 2011, more than 55,000 people signed an online petition to try to get the Detroit Lions to change their Thanksgiving Day halftime show, which was scheduled to feature Nickelback. Their efforts fell flat.
With the band now planning to return to the stage after its “No Fixed Address” tour was abruptly canceled last summer due to a member’s illness, fans are lining up, once more, to defend the maligned musicians.
Tony Pizza, a 53-year-old newspaper advertising salesman and a Nickelback fan, says the vitriol might be a byproduct of the band’s variety of heavy, but not very original, rock. He laughed dismissively at the recent protesters of Messrs. Cruz and Trump. “I think it’s just a new kind of way of saying they [the politicians] are uncool. Time will show that Nickelback is a fine working band of this age,” Mr. Pizza says.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Cruz said he is more of a country music fan. A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump declined to comment.
Thomas Nell, a 27-year-old pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, isn’t hiding his affection. He says he fought the haters in college by blasting Nickelback at the gym, on party buses and even at his fraternity’s chapter meetings—where he says he was met with screams and boos from his frat brothers.
“I’d just be like, statistically, at least 30% of you are enjoying this right now,” he says.
Through a spokeswoman, Nickelback declined to comment. The band keeps a sense of humor about its critics, however, posting a photo of the Ted Cruz protester on its official Facebook and Twitter pages with the caption, “NICKELBACK Employee of the Month. January 2016.”
Nickelback formed in Alberta in 1995 and takes its name from the change that bass player Michael Kroeger used to dole out in his former job as a Starbucks cashier. The band scored its first major hit in 2001 with “How You Remind Me,” a rock anthem that catapulted the group to international fame.
Since then, the band has gone on to headline shows around the world. Fans were cheered on New Year’s Day, when Mr. Kroeger posted a video on the band’s Facebook page saying he “can’t wait to get back on the road and we’ll see you soon.” The post garnered more than 37,000 “likes” and thousands of adoring comments sprinkled with hearts and smiley-faces.
Still, many Nickelback aficionados are forced to hide in the shadows. Zack Bradley, a 19-year-old sophomore at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., says he has never been to a Nickelback concert because his friends refuse to go with him.
Too bad, because defenders say the band’s fun-loving rock ’n’ roll attitude makes for a winning show that can convert even the staunchest of detractors.
Jemma Rivera, a community-housing coordinator in Alberta, has been to at least four concerts and compares them to campfire singalongs where everyone knows the words to every song. The 36-year-old isn’t embarrassed to be a Nickelback fan. But just in case, she keeps it on the down-low.
“Nickelback is like the boyfriend you don’t ever want people to know you have,” Ms. Rivera says.
Quentin Fourt, a 23-year-old high-school teacher in La Tremblade, France, says he can’t understand the Nickelback backlash. He likes that the band plays a variety of music, ranging from introspective tunes to numbers that make people want to get up and move. “Whatever you want, they have a song for,” he said in an email.
Gripes against Nickelback have become so commonplace that the band has been used as a barometer for measuring the unpopularity of others. A 2013 survey by Public Policy Polling measuring attitudes toward Congress found the band was more popular than America’s lawmakers, though less so than either root canals or colonoscopies.
To come up with entries to include in the survey, a group of PPP analysts sat in a conference room and brainstormed universally unpopular things. Suggestions included everything from cockroaches to traffic jams, says Jim Williams, an analyst at the Raleigh, N.C.-based polling agency. Mr. Williams then suggested including “a band that everyone hates or finds annoying.” The group settled on Nickelback.
“A lot of people felt antipathy towards Nickelback,” he says. “You almost can’t even explain it. It’s just like, ugh Nickelback.”
Even law enforcement can’t resist busting a few jokes. Back in May, before the band was forced to cancel its remaining tour dates, the police department in Queensland, Australia, posted an alert to its official Twitter account.
“Urgent police warning,” it said. “Men matching this description expected to be committing musical crimes in Boondall tonight.”
One constituency, though, has found a certain brainy virtue in Nickelback’s music. A study entitled “Lyric Intelligence in Popular Music: A Ten-Year Analysis,” published by the online ticket marketplace SeatSmart, found that Nickelback had the most intelligent and sophisticated lyrics of any rock band between 2005 and 2014. One reason: more so than other artists’ songs, Nickelback’s are written in clear, full sentences.
Andrew Powell-Morse, 26, the marketing director for SeatSmart who performed the study, explains that Nickelback’s ranking atop the rock intelligence charts was boosted by their 2008 hit “Something In Your Mouth.” The song registered with a 4.2 grade reading level, better than the second- to third-grade rock average. Mr. Powell-Morse says the content of the lyrics didn’t figure into the analysis, which only evaluated word count and sentence construction.
None of the outside noise, meanwhile, seems to move fans who would be thrilled to see the band return to the stage after lead singer Chad Kroeger’s recovery from surgery for a vocal-cord cyst.
“People still buy their albums, and they can still sell out arenas,” says Lucas Hannon, a 33-year-old control operator at a local TV station in Charleston, W.Va. “That’s a rare thing.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/who-likes-nickelback-nobody-except-for-millions-1452894762
By SARA GERMANO and NICOLE HONG
Jan. 15, 2016 4:52 p.m. ET
Lately, Republican presidential hopefuls Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have each been met on the campaign trail by hecklers accusing them of something many view as utterly unforgivable.
“Ted Cruz Likes Nickelback,” read one placard; “Trump Likes Nickelback,” taunted another.
The band may be one of the most successful rock acts ever, with more than 50 million albums sold and a dozen fully booked international tours under its belt. Billboard in 2009 named it Rock Group of the Decade. And yet it has been unable to shake a crowd of caviling catcallers—and a global chorus of haters.
Start typing “why does everybody…” into Google, for example, and the search giant often suggests completing the query with “…hate Nickelback.”
In 2011, more than 55,000 people signed an online petition to try to get the Detroit Lions to change their Thanksgiving Day halftime show, which was scheduled to feature Nickelback. Their efforts fell flat.
With the band now planning to return to the stage after its “No Fixed Address” tour was abruptly canceled last summer due to a member’s illness, fans are lining up, once more, to defend the maligned musicians.
Tony Pizza, a 53-year-old newspaper advertising salesman and a Nickelback fan, says the vitriol might be a byproduct of the band’s variety of heavy, but not very original, rock. He laughed dismissively at the recent protesters of Messrs. Cruz and Trump. “I think it’s just a new kind of way of saying they [the politicians] are uncool. Time will show that Nickelback is a fine working band of this age,” Mr. Pizza says.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Cruz said he is more of a country music fan. A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump declined to comment.
Thomas Nell, a 27-year-old pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, isn’t hiding his affection. He says he fought the haters in college by blasting Nickelback at the gym, on party buses and even at his fraternity’s chapter meetings—where he says he was met with screams and boos from his frat brothers.
“I’d just be like, statistically, at least 30% of you are enjoying this right now,” he says.
Through a spokeswoman, Nickelback declined to comment. The band keeps a sense of humor about its critics, however, posting a photo of the Ted Cruz protester on its official Facebook and Twitter pages with the caption, “NICKELBACK Employee of the Month. January 2016.”
Nickelback formed in Alberta in 1995 and takes its name from the change that bass player Michael Kroeger used to dole out in his former job as a Starbucks cashier. The band scored its first major hit in 2001 with “How You Remind Me,” a rock anthem that catapulted the group to international fame.
Since then, the band has gone on to headline shows around the world. Fans were cheered on New Year’s Day, when Mr. Kroeger posted a video on the band’s Facebook page saying he “can’t wait to get back on the road and we’ll see you soon.” The post garnered more than 37,000 “likes” and thousands of adoring comments sprinkled with hearts and smiley-faces.
Still, many Nickelback aficionados are forced to hide in the shadows. Zack Bradley, a 19-year-old sophomore at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., says he has never been to a Nickelback concert because his friends refuse to go with him.
Too bad, because defenders say the band’s fun-loving rock ’n’ roll attitude makes for a winning show that can convert even the staunchest of detractors.
Jemma Rivera, a community-housing coordinator in Alberta, has been to at least four concerts and compares them to campfire singalongs where everyone knows the words to every song. The 36-year-old isn’t embarrassed to be a Nickelback fan. But just in case, she keeps it on the down-low.
“Nickelback is like the boyfriend you don’t ever want people to know you have,” Ms. Rivera says.
Quentin Fourt, a 23-year-old high-school teacher in La Tremblade, France, says he can’t understand the Nickelback backlash. He likes that the band plays a variety of music, ranging from introspective tunes to numbers that make people want to get up and move. “Whatever you want, they have a song for,” he said in an email.
Gripes against Nickelback have become so commonplace that the band has been used as a barometer for measuring the unpopularity of others. A 2013 survey by Public Policy Polling measuring attitudes toward Congress found the band was more popular than America’s lawmakers, though less so than either root canals or colonoscopies.
To come up with entries to include in the survey, a group of PPP analysts sat in a conference room and brainstormed universally unpopular things. Suggestions included everything from cockroaches to traffic jams, says Jim Williams, an analyst at the Raleigh, N.C.-based polling agency. Mr. Williams then suggested including “a band that everyone hates or finds annoying.” The group settled on Nickelback.
“A lot of people felt antipathy towards Nickelback,” he says. “You almost can’t even explain it. It’s just like, ugh Nickelback.”
Even law enforcement can’t resist busting a few jokes. Back in May, before the band was forced to cancel its remaining tour dates, the police department in Queensland, Australia, posted an alert to its official Twitter account.
“Urgent police warning,” it said. “Men matching this description expected to be committing musical crimes in Boondall tonight.”
One constituency, though, has found a certain brainy virtue in Nickelback’s music. A study entitled “Lyric Intelligence in Popular Music: A Ten-Year Analysis,” published by the online ticket marketplace SeatSmart, found that Nickelback had the most intelligent and sophisticated lyrics of any rock band between 2005 and 2014. One reason: more so than other artists’ songs, Nickelback’s are written in clear, full sentences.
Andrew Powell-Morse, 26, the marketing director for SeatSmart who performed the study, explains that Nickelback’s ranking atop the rock intelligence charts was boosted by their 2008 hit “Something In Your Mouth.” The song registered with a 4.2 grade reading level, better than the second- to third-grade rock average. Mr. Powell-Morse says the content of the lyrics didn’t figure into the analysis, which only evaluated word count and sentence construction.
None of the outside noise, meanwhile, seems to move fans who would be thrilled to see the band return to the stage after lead singer Chad Kroeger’s recovery from surgery for a vocal-cord cyst.
“People still buy their albums, and they can still sell out arenas,” says Lucas Hannon, a 33-year-old control operator at a local TV station in Charleston, W.Va. “That’s a rare thing.”
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http://grantland.com/features/taking-concert-doubleheader-creed-nickelback-world-most-hated-bands/
any band/musical act that caters to the masses/casual music fan is going to have loads of fans. but they are also going to have an equal number of haters as well.
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