Keep seeing Nickelback comparisons in my timeline and I just get tired of it. Not because I like them; no, because it comes off as kind of lazy. It's a stock joke by now, a cheap pop line to endear yourself to the internet-bound masses. But I think it behooves us to dig deeper.
Cracking Nickelback jokes is something we all get behind, but why? Do we really think they're terrible, or is it something else? I think it comes down to two things.
First, of course, is that the general consensus is that they're horrible, and everyone will tell you so if asked.
But where does it come from? Certainly it had to start somewhere, right?
Hell if I know. But if you looked long enough, you'd probably find some source that first said it, and it got passed along like so many other opinions.
By now, it's just sort of accepted - they suck.
Everyone gets it from someone else, and going against it is considered trolling.
But I think there's something else there, a second reason that is far more reasonable, and far less used because it requires nuance.
It's not that they actively suck, it's that they are utterly flavorless. They're not the good kind of bad, the "Friday", "Chocolate Rain", "Brokencyde" kind of bad that elicits laughs merely by existing. They're not even corporate, because that would require a level of cynical artistry. No, they're simply without texture.
They're the Palmer "chocolate" of post-grunge: Utterly lacking in the basics of what makes rock listenable. They're not "vanilla" because proper vanilla, even cheap and nasty versions of it, have a level of art involved. They're the unflavored ice milk of music.
They have neither the grace of art, nor the skill of a science. They're the gruel of a Sustaining Spoon. They're a diet of white rice and navy beans without even the slightest seasoning.
And that's unforgivable. You must understand: People like things that are bad enough to be amusing. They will watch terrible movies and laugh at the awful pathos, the shoddy effects, the wooden or hammy acting. They like a cheap, greasy burger every now and then when they could have steak.
But Nickelback isn't that. They commit the greatest sin that one can commit when making something for an audience: They're mediocre.
Mediocrity isn't funny. We can't sympathize with it because we feel cheated, and we can't laugh at it because it gives nothing to laugh at. We actively hate it because it gives nothing.
That's why we really hate Nickelback. They take without giving. They're a nothing.
Roger Ebert reviewed the movie "Mad Dog Time" negatively by saying that it "didn't improve on the sight of a blank screen for the same length of time." That's what Nickelback's great sin is: they offer no improvement over the silence they fill. They are, as Ebert went on to say, "like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line."
"But Dee," I hear you asking because I can hear you right now, "IF that's the problem, why do they sell albums and fill concert venues?" And that's a fine question, one I ask over plenty of acts. The answer is simple: there's always someone.
Let me explain: there exists a small but vocal contingent out there who will gladly take the middle of the road and be content. They buy generic cola and store-brand products not for the price, but because there's something they don't care for in the name brands. They go to Applebee's or Olive Garden every couple weeks and think of it as the height of their sophistication. Their tastes bend toward mediocrity, not away from it.
And I'm about to say something that won't win me any friends: Their tastes are as valid as yours.
If you asked them about what you like, they'd look at you like you were the weird one here. To them, you're a weirdo with awful taste. That's how opinions work.
So don't just follow along blindly and repeat things because someone tells you their tastes aren't subjective and that something is "objectively bad". Even if it's mediocre, someone wants it. And that's just how people are.
