I was on Facebook recently and I came across a meme that said "in protest of the North Carolina LGBT bill, Nickelback has threatened to play a series of concerts throughout the state." Though I like the band and many of the post-grunge bands of the early and mid-2000s, I understand that there is this need (for some reason) for everyone to hate Nickelback. I get that. What I don’t get is why. When I ask most people who hate Nickelback, most of them cannot give a legitimate reason. They just hate Nickelback because it is cool to hate Nickelback.
One answer that I seem to get on occasion, though, is because they take themselves too seriously. The problem with that theory is that I don’t believe it to be true. You can listen to the lyrical content of many of their songs and see that they are very over-the-top and they have a tongue-in-cheek quality to them (“Rockstar," “S.E.X.," “Animals," and “This Afternoon” are just a few). In the video for “This Afternoon,” the band even takes a shot at themselves and their own legitimacy. So the claim that the band takes themselves too seriously doesn’t seem to have a lot of merit to it.
Another answer I get is that the band is too massively produced and they have a “loud” sound. While that might be a more legitimate answer (I understand that not everyone has the same taste in music), it still doesn’t explain why Nickelback exclusively gets so much more hate than other post-grunge bands. Think about it: Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman, Breaking Benjamin, Saliva, Hinder, Shinedown, 3 Doors Down, Daughtry (their early stuff, before they completely sold out to electronic pop), all of these band use the same formulas for their sound and the production on their music is massive. However, none of these bands get the amount of hate that Nickelback gets. So, that reason doesn’t really work for me either.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are legitimate reasons as to why people hate the band so much, but to say that this particular band is worse than the others listed above is ridiculous, since they all have the same post-grunge sound. Also, some of those other bands take themselves far more seriously than Nickelback (3 Doors Down and Shinedown) but get none of the hate. The truth is that people hate Nickelback because it is cool to hate Nickelback. It makes you cool on the internet, so why not hate them? Wouldn’t want to be left out, would you?