Defend the Indefensible: Nickelback... (Can it be done)

noone's actually willing to do what the thread's asking for, so I'll go in:

as far as nu-grunge radio bands go, they're a solid singles act. I mean, seriously, compare them to someone completely irredeemable like Three Days Grace or Trapt, and they're pretty damn tolerable. my top 5 would be: 1. Photograph 2. Figured You Out 3. the Spiderman song w/ the Saliva dude 4. Leader Of Men 5. Animals

wait their first single's good.
they used to play that and "ugly" on mtv2 like no other vidoes existed.

I secretly like the Rock Star song

I could do without the Billy-Gibbons-as-hypeman though

"Animal"

I, I'm driving black on black
Just got my license back
I got this feeling in my veins this train is coming off the track
I'll ask polite if the devil needs a ride
Because the angel on my right ain't hanging out with me tonight
I'm driving past your house while you were sneaking out
I got the car door opened up so you can jump in on the run
Your mom don't know that you were missing
She'd be pissed if she could see the parts of you that I've been kissing
Screamin'

CHORUS
No, ain't never gonna quit
Ain't nothing wrong with it
Just acting like we're animals
No, no matter where we go
'Cause everybody knows
We're just a couple animals

So come on baby, get in
just get in, just get in
Check out the trouble we're in

You're beside me on the seat
Got your hand between my knees
And you control how fast we go by just how hard you wanna squeeze
It's hard to steer when you're breathing in my ear
But I got both hands on the wheel while you got both hands on my gears
By now, no doubt that we were heading south
I guess nobody ever taught her not to speak with a full mouth
'Cause this was it, like flicking on a switch
It felt so good I almost drove into the ditch
[Animals lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

I'm screamin'

CHORUS

So come on baby, get in
just get in, just get in
Check out the trouble we're in

We were parked out by the tracks
We're sitting in the back
And we just started getting busy
When she whispered "what was that?"
The wind, I think 'cause no one else knows where we are
And that was when she started screamin'
"That's my dad outside the car!"
Oh please, the keys, they're not in the ignition
Must have wound up on the floor while
we were switching our positions
I guess they knew that she was missing
As I tried to tell her dad it was her mouth that I was kissing
Screamin'

CHORUS

So come on baby, get in
We're just a couple animals
Get in, just get in
Ain't nothing wrong with it
Check out the trouble we're in
we're just a couple animals0
Get in, just get in

http://www.youporn.com/watch/9486

How did Roadrunner approve that video treatment?

From country and metal rolling threads, earlier this summer:

And yeah, I mentioned Nickelback. Somehow a copy of All The Right Reasons mysteriously fell into my lap this week -- an album which I believe has sold something like 5.9 million copies so far and is at something like #12 on Billboard's album chart after something like 93 weeks, and which an Internet search suggests has spawned something like seven hit singles (or "airplay tracks", or whatever -- "Photograph," "Animal," "Far Away," "Savin' Me," "If Everyone Cared," "Rockstar," "Side Of a Bullet" -- only a couple if which I remotely recognized, but then again I almost never listen to the radio these days, and even if I did I seriously doubt I'd ever brave putting on a commercial "active rock" station.) Anyway, out of curiosity and/or professional responsibilty, I decided to play the darn thing, having never consciously listened to Nickelback before in my life. And my verdict is: I don't totally hate it. Just most of it. Favorite cut is undoubtedly "Photograph," the power ballad, which is no Def Leppard but which is still about yearning for the small town arcade and high school the singer (whose old self would hate him now) says he never graduated from and wonders if they'd let him back in; really, a country-rock guy like Jack Ingram (who redid Hinder's "Lips Of An Angel" and made me like it) should cover this in a less plodding way, and it might sound really good. I also don't hate "Animals," which is probably the least plodding song on the album (actually kind of speedy), and also turns out to be about, uh, getting a blowjob while driving a car fast ("Got your head between your knees/Got both hands on the wheel," jeesh). And "Next Contestant," which I'm kind of surprised isn't a "hit" since it's pretty catchy in a Stabbing Westward bubblegum-Nine Inch Nails way, has the singer daring guys to hit on his girlfriend again so he can beat them up, what an asshole. "Rockstar," a very vaguely Southern rock midetempo, actually tries to have a sense of humor about wanting to be a rock star (with, you know, drug dealers on speed dail, getting washed up singers to write all the songs, staying skinny because you never eat) but of course Chad Kroeger moans it with no sense of humor at all -- maybe I'd like it okay if Joe Walsh sang it. (He could even get the Shop Boys to back him up, maybe). And "Someone That You're With" is clearly about being jealous of the guy she's with, duh. Honestly, in total, the topics of the songs are pretty easy to figure out most of the time, which does count for something. But most of the rest is the expected constipated bleh -- "loud mush," as Chris Cook once called Pearl Jam, but in a fifth or sixth generation version. (I was surprised to note on AMG that Nickelback have a bunch of albums, too -- Shows how much I've paid attention to them over the years; for all I knew, this could've been their debut record. As is, though, it almost counts as a Greatest Hits.)

-- xhuxk, Sunday, 22 July 2007 13:25 (1 month ago)

Actually, her head is between Chad's knees, not her own.

-- xhuxk, Sunday, July 22, 2007 2:43 PM (1 month ago)

Favorite cut is undoubtedly "Photograph," the power ballad

Isn't that a bit meaningless? I don't think I've heard a Nickelback song that isn't a power ballad.

they also have "metal" songs about blowjobs

Oh, and I secretly like "Rockstar", too, but the Hey Dude! voiceovers are kind of essential, especially when he says "I'll have a quesadilla, HAHA!"

I guess I haven't heard the metal blowjobs.

they are probably the last band on earth i'd defend

I love this current cultural thread (Nickelback, Shop Boyz) of people joking about what people imagine rock stars live like because the rock stars on TV (Ozzy, Dave Navarro, Travis Barker) act like douchebags. Like neither one of those songs could exist without reality TV, I think...

Also, I'll have a quesadilla.

I'd defend Nickelback before I defended dozens of bands that operate on the hipster radar. Here's looking at you, Bright Eyes.

The weird thing about "Rockstar" is that it's pretty hard to tell where the layer of irony in the lyrics begins and where it ends. Like, is he mocking what average people think a rockstar lifestyle is life, or is he describing his own life fairly accurately? This is a guy who's kind of inordinately proud of his own songwriting, so the line about having washed up singers write all his songs is the big clue that there's an ironic distance, but I also think he wants to be seen as more badass and hedonistic than most people think of Nickelback as being.

I'm pretty sure Leonesque Kroeger doesn't actually expect anyone to believe that he has a bathroom big enough to host baseball games, so I don't think he's quite aiming for an accurate portrayal of the life of Nickelback, although there does seem to be a certain amount of wishful thinking mixed in with the ironic distance.

I dunno, dude, if anyone's going to have one gigantic house, it's a rich Canadian.

I think you couldn't be an incredibly rich cocksure arena rocker without having some amount of ironic distance and some amount of douchebag bravado. The part about "Rockstar" I love is--like a lot of rap songs--you can't tell where one begins and one ends.

I love the lyrics to "Rockstar," it really does add so much flesh to Kroeger's brand of unlistenable buttrock. I was kinda floored when he suggested that the music of his peers is ghostwritten and lipsynched too, that's some balls. But, alas, the song is crippled by Nickelback's crushing inability to rock. If you're going to make a parody of hairmetal-y party rock, it should like hairmetal party rock, dammit.

Basically, all this guy's songs should be about choking women during sex. His sound is just too fucking ugly to be about anything else. Hell, his FACE is too fucking ugly to be about anything else. I came to a realization the other day that Nickelback is turning into the '00s Journey, and that's so fucking not cool. Journey's sound is perfectly polished stuff, shiny and wonderful. Nickelback just sounds like someone vomiting. They need to quit with the constant power-ballads and just try to be as nasty as possible.

No one's mentioned "If Everyone Cared" yet. It's Nickelback's "Imagine," and I can't think of anything less suited for them. I mean, Kroeger is suggesting that how if everyone just dropped their weapon and started carrying flowers and cared and shared and loved and gave each other a big group hug, PEOPLE WOULD STOP DYING. That's actually in that song. I wouldn't tolerate that shit from Marvin Fucking Gaye, I'm certainly not going to take it from the shit-covered cretins of Nickelback.

Singers be using platitudes.

If you're going to make a parody of hairmetal-y party rock, it should like hairmetal party rock, dammit.

Please, there's already one Andrew W.K.

Songs from this year that are worse than "Rockstar": "Thou Shalt Always Kill", "Beautiful Girls", "D.A.N.C.E.", that's it.

Chad Kroeger looks like a lion, which is quite a cool thing to look like.

hahaehghhahhh

but he looks more like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz than a real lion

Songs from this year that are worse than "Rockstar": "D.A.N.C.E."

OTMFM

This makes me like Nickelback a teeny bit more, but i'm not sure I ought to admit that in public...

Hero, the song wot Chad Kroeger did for Spider-Man, is a real guilty pleasure of mine. I particularly like the ultracheesy bit where all the instruments drop out and the vocal harmonies come in after the second chorus. Don't spurn me.

I've just noticed how hard it is to tell that the first word of my last post on this thread is a link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp88K1TjN5w

After hearing their sappy new single, I've come to realize that I can't think of a single sung by Chad Kroger that I've actively hated. Some I've ignored and some I've really, really liked, but I can't remember disliking any of them.

That song will be a titty-bar standard for the rest of any of our lives.

I don't like listening to their songs, but I admire them in a Brill Building way.

if the Brill Building was a titty-bar.

Only a band like Nickelback could write a song title as funny as "Something In Your Mouth" and find a way to make it pretentious. I can almost hear a Ween song in there somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKCMGGN1HFo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFEEKGikG4E

Chad Kroeger has had a serious makeover, to the point of me seeing him in the video and wondering why the dubbed the real Chad Kroeger's voice over Cy Curnin from The Fixx.

serious disconnect

I like doing karaoke of Nickelback, because you can just yell the lyrics as loud as you can and it'll sound pretty good

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/Tg0ddJ65Sqc/hqdefault.jpg

http://www-movieline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/daxshepard300.jpg

bwaha!

Who knew MotoGP rider Nicky Hayden was moonlighting as Nickelback's lead singer??

http://i.imgur.com/qmzTA.jpg

so the local sports talk station's "Power Trip Morning Show" has a recurring guest, this dude from the band Motion City Sountrack, a sort a b-level pop punk/emo type major label band, seems like they do ok, the are from mpls....anyway, they do that thing where they run ads for their shows with funny highlights from a recent show, etc....

anyway, i only heard the soundbite in the ad, but i take it that one of the dudes in the band (or maybe some other guy they know) is a songwriter as well for bigger rock bands....

and scene:

He's supposed to meet Chad Kroger of Nickelback at a restaurant. The meeting is about how this guy might sell some songs to Nickelback for an upcoming album. So they are talking and he gives Kroger the demo CD, etc, and Kroger is like, "Well, are you going to sing them?".....the guy says, "Well, I'd prefer if you just listen to the stuff, we're in a crowded restaurant not really comfortable doing that".....Kroger interrupts and is like "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE IN YOUR SONGS IF YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE THE BALLS TO SING THEM RIGHT NOW??"

then, Kroger stands up, kicks over his chair and belts out LOOOOOOK AT THIS PHOOOOTOGRAAAPH/EVERYTIME I DO IT MAKES ME LAAAAUGH like LOUD AS FUCK and the whole restaurant is obviously looking at him and Kroger just struts out of the restaurant and leaves the dude sitting at the table.

I have a new favorite band

dude walks it like he talks it

god i hope it was actually butch walker at the other end of that table

tbh if i was butch walker i'd be embarrassed to sing my shit too

Bold way to dodge a check.