OK, let me stress this now: I do not consider myself a Nickelback fan. That said, I'm not like pretty much the entirety of the internet and hold them on a level of contempt that cannot be measured. If you despise them and don't think anything will ever change your mind on them, I urge you to go read something else, because this post is going into detail about the hatred for Nickelback and why I find it very extreme.
...To anyone still here expecting me to praise Nickelback to the heavens, you're also reading the wrong post. Sorry, I don't think they are the saviours of rock and roll or whatever you guys think they are. You can stay if you want, but don't be too surprised if I have to say stuff you don't like. I'm preaching to the minority of people out there who either haven't heard of Nickelback or don't get the hatred behind them.
OK, now that the biggest haters and fanboys of Nickelback have left the page, let me start by saying the obvious point that needs to be made.
Nickelback are not that bad.
Are they worthy of all of the hatred that so many people are determined to give them? No way!
Are they under-appreciated geniuses that history will look upon as a music revolution? Nope!
Are they a decent band? If you pushed me to answer that...yes.
OK, maybe decent isn't the best word: in their genre, let alone the music landscape, they are an average band. They can write catchy songs, Chad's vocals aren't that bad, their music is not so complicated you couldn't learn to play it with a few years of practice, their music is probably a little on the overproduced side and they have fun with their music. But those do not make them a great band. If you pardon the potential insult, they are somewhat like the Flo Rida (or Poison) of the post-grunge scene: they are big, but not necessarily because they are the best in the style.
Which immediately begs the question: WHY are they big? To which I have to give a somewhat controversial answer and a bit of a theory of mine: it's not the best bands in the style who help people realise they are fans of the style, it's the middle grade bands who help them.
Let me give you an example from thrash metal: just about everyone with even a passing interest in metal will know about Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, as they are the biggest thrash metal bands out there at the minute. To just about every thrash metal fan, you cannot call yourself a thrash metal fan if you have not listened to all of their 80's material (plus the records released in 1990: most thrash diehards count them as 80's releases, which seems a bit suspicious to me considering they all were released more than halfway through the year, but I'll let the thrash diehards believe what they want to there...). But these thrash fans will also be able to name quite a few thrash bands who haven't broken into the mainstream or made it to the top of the thrash ladder, like Exodus, Testament, Death Angel and Heathen (and that's just from the Bay Area thrash scene: there's the Teutonic scene from Germany, to name another one, which gave us the Teutonic Trio of Kreator, Destruction and Sodom (some throw in Tankard and call it a Teutonic Big 4, but I personally think Teutonic Trio sounds cooler)). Many of them broke up before the 90's really begun and returned in the 2000's producing some amazing records (some of which, I would not be afraid to admit, are far better than anything the Big 4 (the casual name for the group of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) have produced in that time, although, admittedly, it's not too difficult to beat Metallica's stuff, as they've released two bad albums and one album which was decent...). To say these bands have a lot of respect from thrash fans would be an understatement, to say the least! But, without them, thrash pretty much floundered when the 90's hit: there weren't new releases of the style for people to check out and, gradually, the style pretty much died in the eyes of the mainstream (as did just about all metal, come to think of it...). People who liked what they heard of the Big 4 in the 90's couldn't find new stuff by other, well respected bands in the style to compare it with because there pretty much wasn't any other stuff. Throw in the fact this was before the internet really happened and you would literally have to find a fanzine about the style or know someone who was a huge thrash fan to have a chance to keeping up to date with it. Some amazing thrash albums from the 90's (believe me, there were a few) slipped through the cracks because there was nobody who was waving the banner for it in the mainstream. So, if you will, it's not the best bands holding the banner high that helps keep the scene together: it's the bands who aren't cut out to lead the charge who help keep it together, because they help the interested people stay there when their interest in the bigger bands dries up.
And that's where Nickelback are shining: they aren't the best post-grunge band out there by any measure, but people who like them are usually huge fans of the style. Without them and the many bands out there doing the same kind of thing, post-grunge would die out because they don't have the numbers necessary to keep the scene alive. Them being big...I guess they're just an example of a middle tier band who got big somehow. I don't really have an answer to that one...but, really, did you expect an answer? At the end of the day, Nickelback are big. They don't deserve their fame (if you want it in tier terms, they are a middle tier band who produce middle tier music, but are somehow in the upper tier), but I certainly think people calling for their heads (metaphorically: I don't think it's happened literally yet) are getting worked up for no reason. At the end of the day, Nickelback are just a band doing what they are doing. They haven't done anything that's dangerous to mankind as a whole and, from the little I've read about them, they are a bunch of nice guys who don't take themselves too seriously.
Plus, no matter how bad people claim their stuff is, they never descended to the level of releasing pure crap like Lulu or Dedicated to Chaos...
No comments:
Post a Comment