Nickelback have long been viewed as threats to the very essence of good music. Lately, the world seems to be catching up to that one student's study and collectively wondering whether making the band music's foremost punching bags for decades was really fair.
Amid the cultural reappraisal of the most meme-able band of all time, and promoting their first new album in five years, Get Rollin', "the fuckin' boys" rolled up to Barstool Sports' KFC Radio (hasn't Kentucky Fried patented this?) and rolled back the tapes of their memories to pinpoint where the world vs. Nickelback truly began.
According to the Alberta-born hard rockers, the internet's crusade against them dates back to the early 2000s. At the time, cable channel Comedy Central was airing Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, a panel show hosted by American stand-up Colin Quinn that featured comedians discussing current affairs. One episode saw the panel discussing the debunking of music's inherent potential to inspire people to acts of violence.
"No one talks about the studies which show that bad music makes people violent," comedian and actor Brian Posehn quipped, "Like, Nickelback makes me wanna kill Nickelback. They're horrible, just trust me."
A clip of Posehn dropping that throwaway line ended up being used in a commercial for the show — and the rest is history.
Nickelback still aren't letting it get to them, though; Chad Kroeger says he's ready for the world to hate them again, but also can't be assed to know Posehn's name.
"There were these milestones that started this snowball rolling... Some comedian — I'm gonna have to go find the guy's name so I can go bomb his house — makes this shitty crack about us," he told the KFC Radio hosts, whose names I likewise refuse to look up (but are probably Hunter and Jake). "And he's on Comedy Central. They took that, they put it in a commercial for that one show."
Kroeger continued, "And that played on Comedy Central for six months straight, this Nickelback joke. That starts this whole thing going. That's where it really started, at that one moment. And then it started making its way into movies and we get all this stuff."
Drummer Daniel Adair chimed in that the frequency of jokes about the band seemed to socialize people into deciding they hated Nickelback on reflex.
"It was like an expectation," the musician explained, recalling Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante attending one of their shows five or six years ago. "I talked to him after and he was like, 'I thought I was supposed to hate Nickelback.' Like, he didn't even think about it; like it was pre-programmed," Adair elaborated. "And he's like, 'I know all these songs, you guys are fucking great.'"
"It kind of shook him out of his haze of, 'We just have to hate that band,'" Adair added of Benante. "I think the great reset has happened."
Below, you can watch the full interview — which notably exudes a sheer bro-ness that feels like drenching one's spirit in Axe body spray — as well as the Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn segment where Posehn makes his hallowed Nickelback joke.
Regardless of whether the switch has flipped, Nickelback are at least encouraging you to smoke enough weed at their shows to forget.
Amid the cultural reappraisal of the most meme-able band of all time, and promoting their first new album in five years, Get Rollin', "the fuckin' boys" rolled up to Barstool Sports' KFC Radio (hasn't Kentucky Fried patented this?) and rolled back the tapes of their memories to pinpoint where the world vs. Nickelback truly began.
According to the Alberta-born hard rockers, the internet's crusade against them dates back to the early 2000s. At the time, cable channel Comedy Central was airing Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, a panel show hosted by American stand-up Colin Quinn that featured comedians discussing current affairs. One episode saw the panel discussing the debunking of music's inherent potential to inspire people to acts of violence.
"No one talks about the studies which show that bad music makes people violent," comedian and actor Brian Posehn quipped, "Like, Nickelback makes me wanna kill Nickelback. They're horrible, just trust me."
A clip of Posehn dropping that throwaway line ended up being used in a commercial for the show — and the rest is history.
Nickelback still aren't letting it get to them, though; Chad Kroeger says he's ready for the world to hate them again, but also can't be assed to know Posehn's name.
"There were these milestones that started this snowball rolling... Some comedian — I'm gonna have to go find the guy's name so I can go bomb his house — makes this shitty crack about us," he told the KFC Radio hosts, whose names I likewise refuse to look up (but are probably Hunter and Jake). "And he's on Comedy Central. They took that, they put it in a commercial for that one show."
Kroeger continued, "And that played on Comedy Central for six months straight, this Nickelback joke. That starts this whole thing going. That's where it really started, at that one moment. And then it started making its way into movies and we get all this stuff."
Drummer Daniel Adair chimed in that the frequency of jokes about the band seemed to socialize people into deciding they hated Nickelback on reflex.
"It was like an expectation," the musician explained, recalling Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante attending one of their shows five or six years ago. "I talked to him after and he was like, 'I thought I was supposed to hate Nickelback.' Like, he didn't even think about it; like it was pre-programmed," Adair elaborated. "And he's like, 'I know all these songs, you guys are fucking great.'"
"It kind of shook him out of his haze of, 'We just have to hate that band,'" Adair added of Benante. "I think the great reset has happened."
Below, you can watch the full interview — which notably exudes a sheer bro-ness that feels like drenching one's spirit in Axe body spray — as well as the Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn segment where Posehn makes his hallowed Nickelback joke.
Regardless of whether the switch has flipped, Nickelback are at least encouraging you to smoke enough weed at their shows to forget.
