Okay now I'll write about something that's been bothering me for a while. The Nickelback problem. Nickelback has been tapped to do the Lions Thanksgiving halftime show and people are sort of freaking out about it. In all honesty I don't watch sports so I don't care. But As a guy whose interested in music I do have to listen to a lot of Nickleback hate.
Half of it, hell most of it, I don't think they deserve. It goes beyond hey I don't like this band to rabid burn the damned (no literally damned) heretic territory.
A lot of it turns into just plain old duchebaggery. Like that time some jackass threw rocks at them on stage and people in the tube verse applauded that shit.
There are reasons not to like them, but at some point it changed from a mediocre band who got way too much radio airtime to the band people love to loathe. Heck often time people bash them because they became the band popular to bash. I swear it's worse than Limp Bizkit.
I... I... I... somewhat don't entirely dislike... alright I like them. I thought "Rockstar" was funny.
I thought "How You Remind Me" was a decent ballad, and that Dark Horse overall was a pretty solid album.
All that said I still hate what they represent. I'll get to that in a bit, but I recognize that it's not their fault. They're doing exactly what they should; trying to put out the best music they can and see where the dice fall. This is their job and they're going to do it. I wouldn't have it any other way.
However, Nickelback is the niggling reminder of how far radio has fallen. See in the late 90's at least where I'm from you had the classic rock station and the contemporary rock station.
They were run by the same company, but they each had their own feel, and they were awesome. No more commercial free rock block for you though. Now they're just mirrors of each other. It's getting rarer and rarer to hear new cuts on them and when they do play a song from the last 5 years it's almost always, Disturbed, The White Stripes or you guessed it Nickelback.
And to make it worse it's not even really the station's, well at least the programming director's fault either. A confluence of events has gotten us to this point.
The rise of the internet, rise of the active rock format, the possibility of the performing rights act, the consolidation of media outlets, all got us to this point.
These are things Nickelback had nothing to do with. I can't and shouldn't blame them for that.
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