Nickelback is Okay?

A review of “Hate to Love: Nickelback ” a NETFLIX Documentary

I just finished watching the NETFLIX documentary entitled “Hate to Love: Nickelback”, because, well, I felt I had to. I indulge in just about every music documentary that I can find streaming. I love to learn about obscure record studios and humble beginnings of artists from nowhere. I enjoy the history and the recantation of these legendary tales and Nickelback’s story is just that. I think I am supposed to hate Nickelback, but I am not exactly sure why. It’s just that society has kind of steered me that way. But why do some of us hate Nickelback so much?  

At one point did we became the bullies? Online we started calling them ‘Nickelhack’, ‘Nickelbomb’ and ‘NickelCreed’ (which I hadn’t heard until watching). The documentary touches on the idea that their songs are programmed and vacuous. Maybe they just got too big, and we feel like we are better than them, and need to knock them down a peg or two. We tend to do that with celebrity. Hate Kim Kardashian, hate Tom Brady, hate Nicholas Cage or love Kim, Tom and Nick. There is not a lot of middle ground. 

Listen, here are some facts. They have had 10 albums and one greatest hits compilation, ranging from 1996’s Curb to 2022’s Get Rollin’. Throughout that time, Nickelback has sold more than 50 million albums across the globe. Two of their best works, 2001’s Silver Side Up, featuring the breakthrough hit “How You Remind Me,” and subsequent chart-toppers “Too Bad” and “Never Again,” and 2005’s All The Right Reasons, which included the No. 1 chart toppers “Photograph,” “Animals” and the Top 10 hits “Far Away,” “Savin’ Me” and “Rockstar”, those selling over half of that total, 10 million and 18 million albums respectively. 

Boasting more than 10 billion streams with over 13 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, Nickelback has also secured its status as a touring favorite with 12 sold out world tours. Maybe their music seems unendearingly droll to some, the fact remains, that this is not the case for their fans. Lead singer and songwriter, Chad Kroeger, makes a great observation in this documentary saying “I make great spaghetti. Not everyone is going to agree with me, but I think it’s great.” 

I think it’s bold that they agreed to make this film. I also get that it’s their narrative that gets to be told, but I really liked the narrative. These are four hard working guys from Hanna, Alberta in Canada who got out of this small town and eventually started selling out stadiums and arenas. They played their own instruments and wrote their own songs and became legitimate rockstars and then we turned on them and made them the butt of our jokes and internet memes. To me personally, I do find their music to be formulative and simple. However, I feel that way about a lot of bands and those bands I tend to enjoy more than I like to admit. More times than not I want to just forget about life and sing a simple song at the top of my lungs. I reserve complex lyrical works to when I am alone and engaged in deep thought. However, when I am in a “fun atmosphere” I’m probably not blaring out my emo playlist. It’s going to be an uninvolved and elementary jam that has a good hook and that’s what Nickelback gave us.  

They never wavered from the path that they set forth on. They certainly stayed in their lane and simply churned out the hits and at some point-in-time, it was us that changed. Maybe we did want something more from our music. Maybe, some people started joking about Nickelback and we all just went with it because it was easy. The documentary never nails down the exact moment that things changed for the biggest artists on the planet at that point.  

One theory in the film for their “dislike”, is when they were signed to a primarily metal label in 1999 called Roadrunner Records. Since fans knew the label for producing heavy metal bands, Nickelback really failed to meet that mark and didn’t resemble anything else in their catalogue. Roadrunner had just signed Slipknot at around the same time. Then the label put a lot of effort and resources into Nickelback as opposed to their other metal bands because they were so commercially successful and therefore much more profitable. As a result, a lot of metal fans resented Nickelback for taking funding and attention away from the metal bands that they supported at the label. This is where the campaign to take down Nickelback may have started. Nickelback was being thought of as a product rather than good music. 

Whatever the reason, we piled on. In this film you can see the hurt that it caused, even to the children of the band members which is certainly unfortunate and uncool. Maybe you are one of the haters or maybe you are one of the lovers, or you’re more like me and indifferent. I’m not a fan, but I don’t like to use the word hate unless it is necessary, as in the case of Hitler or tomatoes (I know one of those is disagreeable). 

The documentary is good. We often look past the human element of our celebrities and say things along the lines of, “Well, that’s what they get for being famous.” The money and the fame that they receive is the payment for us to tear them down. They are still people, and we should be spreading unity and love and not spouting off nonsensical animosity at people we don’t even really know. This NETFLIX special allows us to get closer to this band and see them for the human beings that they are. It’s okay to dislike the music but remember that we are all on the planet together, trying to do our best. I’ll let you decide whether you hate Nickelback, the documentary, or even this article. This is just me, doing my best.