Dunking on Nickelback is a time-honored tradition of being a music fan, even though the band really isn't bad and they've sold millions of records. So y'know – everyone pretends to hate, but clearly someone's buying the records.
But why does everyone hate Nickelback so much, anyway? Frontman Chad Kroeger explained in an interview with Metal Global that it's likely due to the fact that you couldn't escape the band's music for a good 10-plus years. And he's cool with the hate at this point too, especially considering it's all a big joke.
"I think I've got a pretty good grasp of where things kind of went off the rails for us.I think that because we write so many different kinds of music, I think that if you were listening to a radio station any time between 2000 and 2010, '11, '12 even, we were kind of tough to get away from. 'Cause if you didn't wanna hear it and you changed to a different radio station, you'd probably hear it on there, and then changed to a different radio station, you probably were gonna hear it in so many different places. And we were really tough to get away from. And that's not my fault. We just write the songs.
"And so with that comes backlash. And then what happens is then comedians start making jokes, and then it starts making it on to TV, and then it makes it into movies and stuff like that. And then it just turns into this wave of, it's fun to pick on and it's an easy joke. And I get it. I understand. There are bands that when I hear them on the radio, I… And they're very popular bands… I mean, we all have those. No one is exempt from that.
"There are certain bands where you just hear them and you just don't like 'em. And other people may — half the world may love them, and I'll just be, like, 'No. I just cannot hear this band one more [time].' And just like everyone else does, I just change the channel. But we became the whipping boy of the music industry for a while there. But whatever. It's just part of the history of the band."
