They’ve made mistakes, they’ve fallen, they’ve hit the bottom of every bottle. But after more than 25 years, are they having fun now? In From hate to love: NickelbackWe find out where Canadian rockers come from, what they think about being a perennial target of cancel culture, and whether the haters matter when fans who like their shit still come to shows. I hate love features extensive interviews with Nickelback members Chad Kroeger, Mike Kroeger, Ryan Peake and Daniel Adair, their families, and the occasional musical companion. (Billy Corgan, anyone?) Directed by Leigh Brooks, the documentary made its debut at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.
I HATE LOVE – NICKELBACKSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: One doesn’t just “like Nickelback.” On the one hand, becoming a main character in the Boromir Meme It means that social networks found you and are widely accepted. But on the other hand, isn’t that kind of a badge of honor? For the members of Nickelback (singer, guitarist and main songwriter Chad Kroeger, rhythm guitarist Ryan Peake, bassist (and Chad’s brother) Mike Kroeger and drummer Daniel Adair), the hate hasn’t diminished their ability to sell 50 million of albums, being nominated for a Grammy and being inducted by Ryan Reynolds into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. And how From hate to love As it unfolds, being canceled by YouTubers and dismissed by music critics becomes just one part of Nickelback’s ongoing story, which is otherwise a pretty straightforward rock ‘n’ roll ride.
Hanna, Alberta, Canada. It was the early 1980s and Chad Kroeger was in his bad boy phase. (“He was on his way to this or from there,” says mother Debbie Sullivan.) But Chad and his brother Mike found music, recruited local guitarist Ryan Peake, borrowed money to make a demo, and started playing. series of horrible rooms wherever people booked them. Grainy live VHS footage from this era reveals a band that had already coalesced around Chad Kroeger’s talent for big vocals and a mix of Metallica-style aggression with the melodic reach of Alice in Chains, and soon built a following and got a record deal. In I hate loveThe guy who hired them says it was precisely because their songs sounded ready for stadium rock. And in 2001, “How You Remind Me” went global.
Nickelback became a thing when radio play and music videos still mattered as avenues for creating new music. So in the 2010s and with the rise of social media, they could be seen as an anachronism and too big for their britches. Where did this group come from that played populist rock with lyrics that dismissed female agency while trying to stay relevant? I hate love decompress this a little and there are acknowledgments that it reaches them. (“Nobody picks up a guitar to be in the most hated band in the world,” Peake says.) But Nickelback also credits its core fans, “who don’t give a shit what anyone thinks.” and some of these Nickel-stans appear in first-person accounts. Add in some health scares within the band, the COVID era, and a hiatus, and they’re back to releasing records and playing shows. “We’re in a strange situation where not many bands find themselves. The Nickelback lifetime achievement award for not disappearing.” Take that, haters.
What movies will it remind you of? While addressing their position as a band that is easy to hate, I hate to love: Nickelback Otherwise, it’s a fairly conventional rock documentary, tracing the rise of the group, the adversity they’ve faced, and their next chapter. (A recent example of this format is Hulu Thanks good nightabout rock veterans Bon Jovi). But as a touchstone for Nickelback as a pop culture laughingstock, one could also point to something like the stoner comedy series. Chad and JT go deeperComedian and actor Tom Allen: He is the owner of Mitch’s Beignets in Barry – he took “Chad Kroeger” as his stage name because it kind of writes itself.
Performance worth seeing: Shout out to the wives and children of married Nickelback members, who are here in the streets defending their husbands and fathers from continued hostility. It seems like something they shouldn’t have to do, but social media will become social media.
Memorable dialogue: “‘Cause we all want to be big rock stars/And live in houses on top of a hill driving 15 cars/Girls are easy and drugs are cheap/We’ll all stay skinny ’cause we just win.” eat.” It’s strange to hear a song you completely forgot about, and Nickelback’s “Rockstar” is that song. Released in 2005, “Rockstar” seemed trite then, like a thin veneer of Offspring’s 1998 hit, “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy),” and it’s very likely that today’s culture has even less bandwidth for this guy. new is a success.
Sex and skin: “I’m not the first person to say something a little sassy in a song,” says Chad Kroeger in I hate love, and he is not wrong. Then again, this is also his way of justifying lowest common denominator lyrics like “You’re so much cooler when you never take it out/’Cause you look so much cuter with something in your mouth.”
Our opinion: With its title, I hate to love: Nickelback is positioned as a documentary about a band that has existed within some sort of decades-long identity crisis. But in the grand Nickelbackian scheme of things, the cheap laugh memes and shouted debates on YouTube that fueled this supposed crisis are not relevant, and are actually too ephemeral to build an entire documentary around. probably because of that I hate love it doesn’t. Sure, that’s here: Ryan Peake says the empty criticism is unfair, and other members note how they always beat Chad Kroeger more because he’s the face and voice of the band. But it’s basically a blip and really has more to do with the reality of Nickelback’s life cycle. They were part of a crop of post-grunge bands that made it big in the early 2000s, a wave of acts signed to major labels in the wake of alternative and grunge that often competed to sound louder but exactly the same. Nickelback took that huge guitar sound, added hooks, and simplified the rage to appeal to audiences who wanted to high-five at stadium shows without having to think too much about what they were hearing. Once the memes started flying, much of it was because Nickelback was the only band of their vintage still standing. The true story in I hate love It’s not that you just don’t like Nickelback. It’s about how these guys are still around and playing stadiums instead of local rib festivals and nostalgia tours.
Our call: STREAM IT, especially if you’re one of the die-hard nickel fans out there. But for everyone else, these are not superficial attacks on social media. This documentary is how Nickelback reminds you who they really are.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
