Understanding why Def Leppard and AC/DC loved Nickelback
Being lauded as the worst band in history is a joke that has sent Nickelback laughing all the way to the bank. Since smearing themselves onto the airways in 1996, they’ve managed to sell over 50 million albums. That’s ten million more than both Steely Dan and Oasis; it’s almost five times the figure that Talking Heads have mustered, and they’ve even got a diamond-certified album in their ranks for over 11 million sales of their 2017 record, All the Right Reasons. Weirdly, and somewhat thankfully, I haven’t met a single soul who has bought a copy.
Alas, the figures prove that Nickelback lovers are out there in their droves, and it would seem that they are blissfully unaware that the band they love is thought of in similar terms to scabies by the rest of the world. However, this oddity is not a new one. They are far from the first band to be simultaneously beloved by a silent majority and loathed by those seemingly more engaged with the cultural discussion.
Def Leppard were also once labelled the schmucks of the music world while lapping up platinum crowns and selling out stadiums. Nevertheless, they were comically delighted to pass the baton of the press-tarnished burden onto their Canadian counterparts when they met backstage at an awards event a few years back.
“We presented to Def Leppard,” Chad Kroeger told Blabbermouth, “And when we walked backstage afterwards, Joe Elliott and Phil Collen turned to me, and they were just, like, ‘Dude, thank you so much’. I’m, like, ‘For what?’ They were, like, ‘For taking the trophy. We get to pass the baton to you for being the most hated band in the world now‘. And I was just, like, ‘Oh, yeah. ‘Cause I want that’.” Nevertheless, Kroeger could take stock of the fact that it didn’t do Def Leppard much harm. As it happens, the glam rockers from Sheffield are actually undergoing a bit of a hipster reappraisal by a coterie of post-ironic youth today.
The same can be said for one of the best-selling acts of all time who were also once tarred with the shitty brush: AC/DC. “It’s funny — we went for dinner with AC/DC in Chicago years and years and years ago,” Kroeger continued. “And this whole thing came up. And Brian Johnson said when they released ‘Back In Black’, they were the most hated band on the planet. So I feel like we’re in good company.”
While much of the heat AC/DC were experiencing was a hangover from their unfortunate embroilment in the Satanic Panic after the serial killer Richard Ramirez went on the lam sporting one of the band’s branded caps, the fact that a group that can count themselves in the top 20 best-selling artists of all time were also loathed shows the value of hatred. And I mean that in both senses: there is an inherent currency in being crowned the worst in an ‘any publicity is good publicity’ capacity, but there is also a grain of truth to the fact that popular opinion doesn’t matter once you are popular.
And Nickelback are most certainly popular. That’s not just amongst their relieved contemporaries either. Beyond laughing their corny asses to the bank, perhaps that’s where the horrid band can also take comfort; in order to be the most hated, you have to have a degree of esteem and quality for critics to rally against. It would be pointless to scout through the millions of bands in the world to find the one who are truly the most reprehensible outfit in every way if they’re a bunch of kids for Kent who play four gigs a year to fifty beleaguered people.
You have to have something about you that enough people clearly think is very worthwhile to make the hate stick. In this regard, culture is very close to politics, where the virtue of veracity pales in comparison to the currency of opinions. “No one is exempt from that,” Kroeger somewhat hopefully concludes.
