Notorious rock group Nickelback revealed how they dealt with nearly two decades of mockery Friday after the band debuted their tell-all documentary “Hate to Love: Nickelback” at the Toronto Film Festival
Every comment was walking out the front door.
Alt-rock group Nickelback discussed how they dealt with nearly two decades of mockery in their tell-all documentary “Hate to Love: Nickelback,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend, reports Entertainment Weekly.
“Nobody picks up a guitar to be the most hated band in the world,” said vocalist Ryan Peake, 50, in the new film. “It doesn’t feel great.”
Peake’s children, who also make a brief cameo, echoed their father’s statement adding, “Everyone hated the band, so everyone hated us.”
Bassist Mike Kroeger, brother to frontman Chad Kroeger, claimed the backlash to the Canadian band “really sucked in the beginning” while noting the toll it took on his sibling’s mental health.
The film chronicles the band’s rise to fame as well as several emotionally charged moments throughout their career, including the 2005 departure of ex-drummer Ryan Vikedal, Mike’s nearly fatal heart attack and replacement drummer Daniel Adair’s struggle to overcome a frightening neurological condition.
One such event in the film comes when Adair, 48, revealed that Chad reportedly “blew up” in his dressing room due to pushback the band had received while on tour.
Adair states that the outburst was also due to several people shouting “f–k you” out of car windows while Chad walked by.
Later in the documentary, Mike hypothesizes that a lot of the hate toward the group comes from their seeming shallow lyrics
“Sometimes people want to hear vacuous, dumb s–t,” said Mike in defense of the lyrics.
“I play Nickelback songs for Nickelback fans,” concluded frontman Chad Kroeger. ” “I don’t have to try to win anybody over.”
The Post reached out to Nickelback for comment.
Nickelback’s heart-wrenching documentary is not currently set to appear in theaters, however, the film is set to play through the remainder of the festival.
Despite facing years of mockery, the group announced that they would be going on tour this year starting in June.
I always thought hating on the band was some sort of meme, I didn’t think people trash talking them actually took it seriously.
My thoughts exactly. I was on the “hate” wagon for years, but it was always in a meme-y way. Theyre not at all the worst band, or even a BAD band in my honest opinion. The worst I’d say is it’s just mainstream normie rock, or “corporate” rock. That’s no reason to actually make anyone’s life hell or anything
It was the same “hard rock/metalheads” who spearheaded the hate against disco.
I actually like Nickelback… always have. I even plotted how much I like them.
Look at this graph:
https://youtu.be/9NkkZJHova4?si=gyHbPFi2g2ePZ_MX
Seriously though, I never understood all the hatred. Yes the lyrics weren’t deep and meaningful or the music complex or technical, but it was fun and catchy. And it reminds me of a time in my life that was pretty good, when my son was first born. So yeah I like it.
I think the hatred came from people believing that there is only “x” amount of attention/notoriety that the public and record labels can give to the arts, and they saw Nickelback as taking away a portion of that from what they deemed as more deserving artists.
For the record, I don’t like Nickelback. I do think there are artists more deserving of the spotlight, but I don’t think Nickleback deserved the cruelty that came their way.
I liked them as a dumb teen. My impression of Nickelback is similar to Creed, they were products of an era when FM radio was collapsing and small stations were getting bought out by larger corporations. The same music was so overplayed that it just became annoying to hear. The constant long ads segments in radio were disenfranchising. For me, that experience tainted all of the music from that era.
I’ve felt much the same with streaming now. I just keep a few playlists with a few hours of content each and play them when I want to listen to anything. It is more variety than streaming plays and I don’t have any stalkerware app mining me and playing ads 3 orders of magnitude louder than their content because the assholes don’t implement a LUFS equaliser.
