Thursday 21 March 2013

How You Remind Me


“Never made it as a wise man
I couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing
Tired of living like a blind man
I'm sick of sight without a sense of feeling
And this is how you remind me

This is how you remind me
Of what I really am
This is how you remind me
Of what I really am”

How You Remind Me – Nickelback

Ahh, Nickelback. The band everyone hates, loves to hates, or loves but pretend to hates because everyone else hates them. This is the band with the lead singer described as the ugliest man in rock music, and this is the band ridiculed over and over again in movies and on television and all over the internet.

So how does such a band manage to hold the number one most played song on the radio in the 2000’s? Yes, you read that right – How You Remind Me topped the charts for weeks in 2001 and was the only rock song to take the number one spot on the Billboard charts between then and 2008, when Coldplay’s Viva La Vida was released. How You Remind Me was also named the number 4 song of the 2000’s in the USA, playing more than 1.2 million times between 2001 and 2009, and was nominated for a Grammy - record of the year. To top it all off, in the 2000’s they managed to be the second best-selling act in the USA. Number one was The Beatles. Not bad for a band everyone hates.

So … how does this happen? Sure, it may have been one of their first hits, and certainly their break out hit, but there’s no way this has carried them for most of the 2000’s. They had the rest of Silver Side Up and two more albums during that time – surely someone would have realised Nickelback’s generic rock song and stopped playing How You Remind Me, like, immediately.

To get some answers I googled “why is Nickelback so terrible but How You Remind Me a number one song?” This generated some interesting views but there was one which really caught my eye*. It talked about how Nickelback is the most popular unpopular band there ever was – and he’s right, there is no other band like Nickelback. No one else is this terrible but this popular. Nickelback know they suck – but they don’t care what society thinks because they make so much fucking money.

This blog was neither to stick up for and slam Nickelback – I like a bit of their music and enjoyed their concert a few years ago, but they are far from a favourite band. No, this blog was to get you thinking and see if you can answer the question I am puzzled over: why is this band so hated yet so successful?




*This article was the rather interesting one on this topic http://www.chelsey.co.nz/entertainment/music/defending-nickelback

1 comment:

  1. For want of a better term - maybe to blasting. Toned down, the item would quite enjoyable.

    ReplyDelete