fan here,” he says. I can sense a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“Well, it was my idea to listen to them in the first place, since I’m the one who’s researching them,” I say back. He flips through my Spotify app and opens up Nickelback’s page.
“You’ll appreciate this one,” he says. He shoots me a smirk.
Oh god.
“Look at this photograph. Every time I do, it makes me laugh,” Chad Kroeger, the singer belts out over a strummed acoustic guitar. Chad embodies “buttrock” and everything that people hate about it. He stands tall, has long, curly, blond hair down to his shoulders, a soul patch, and a face that only a mother could love. Somehow he managed to marry Avril Lavinge.
His voice has the same sound that reminds me of rubbing two rocks together. He voluntarily makes this gritty sound to juxtapose the mellow acoustic guitar that copies a cliché soft-rock chord progression.
The electric guitars come in and they mimic 1980s Megadeth-wannabe guitar riffs with way too much distortion. The kind of distortion where it drowns out the sound of actual notes being strummed on the guitar; it just sounds like feedback. The combination of that mixed with Kroeger’s horrendous vocals provides a comedic touch to the song.
***
The wave of Nickelback backlash has grown throughout the mid-to- late 2000s, right as songs like “Photograph” and “Burn It to the Ground” peaked on charts around the world.