It's no secret that a lot of people hate Nickelback. There have been amazing reviews written, people detained by cops for shouting "Nickelback" and even a browser extention to ban any mentions of the band.
But why does Nickelback get so much hate? One Finnish student by the name of Salli Anttonen at the University of Eastern Finland wrote a paper trying to analyze where the hate is coming from, analyzing Finnish reviews of the band from 2000 to 2014.
The essay, titled "Hypocritical Bullshit Performed Through Gritted Teeth: Authenticity Discourses In Nickelback's Album Reviews In Finnish Media" noted that as the band gained popularity, the feedback against them became harsher and harsher, as people could not explain the band's success.
Anttonen eventually concluded that it was the band's safe approach that ultimately got them all that criticism:
"Nickelback is too much of everything to be enough of something. They follow genre expectations too well, which is seen as empty imitation, but also not well enough, which is read as commercial tactics and as a lack of a stable and sincere identity."
Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger once commented on all the negative feedback they receive saying:
"I think we actually used to pay a little bit of attention to that, and we just kind of accepted it's, like, nope, we are never going to be one of those bands, we are never going to be the critic's darlings, and we're okay with that. Even a lot of critics are kind of, like, 'We've done our best to try and get the word out there that as many people as possible should hate this band because we hate this band.' And they've just sort of gone, 'You know what? We can't do it. We cannot convince anybody else to hate this band as much as we do.'"
Then again, these dudes think they're less hated than Metallica's James Hetfield.
[via Blabbermouth]
