Acts like Nickelback, Black
Eyed Peas highlight split between cool, popular
NEW YORK - Few bands inspire such intense hatred as
Nickelback.
The post-grunge Canadian quartet has been trashed, bashed and hated
on by countless critics, music snobs and other like-minded souls.
So have much-maligned acts like Hinder, a rock band from Oklahoma;
the Grammy-winning Black Eyed Peas, who have spawned infectious rap
hits My Humps and Dont Phunk With My Heart; and Britney
Spears, who in her heyday ruled radio but was condemned for
everything from her voice to not writing her own songs.
Yet these acts have sold millions upon millions of albums. So are
the critics wrong? Do music buyers have bad taste? Is this karmic
payback to all the haters?
There are some bands that, lets face it, are critic-proof, said
Nathan Brackett, a senior editor at Rolling Stone. Just like there
are some movies that are critic-proof. Nobody is really reading the
reviews for Norbit, you know? And nobodys reading Nickelback
reviews either.
"Heroes" cheerleader tastes the Cup, birthday girl Eva Longoria,
and more.
That might be a good thing. Nickelbacks All the Right Reasons,
which debuted at No. 1 on the charts in fall 2005 and was still No.
16 this week, was called hard-rock ridiculousness by The New York
Times and unspeakably awful by Allmusic.com. Even the late
Nirvana frontman and grunge icon Kurt Cobain would disapprove,
suggested Rolling Stone, which called the disc so depressing,
youre almost glad Kurts not around to hear it.
Young people who are introduced to these bands on the radio, they
dont have a lot of baggage, Brackett said. A lot of kids dont
care if an act, you know, kind of took their guitar sound from some
other band.
Post-grunge outfits like Nickelback and Hinder continue to be
popular or wreak havoc, whatever your opinion in part because
they appeal to the estrogen set, said Craig Marks, editor in chief
of Blender magazine. A slightly hipper band will sell more albums
to guys than girls, he said.
Theyre selling a lot of records to very casual music fans who
dont buy a lot of CDs, Marks said. When youre selling 5 million
albums like Nickelback or 2½ million like Hinder, and especially
when youre making your mark with big ballads that are kind of
wedding songs, then youre selling records to both males and
females. And thats often how you get from selling 1½
million records to selling 4 or 5 million records.
When teenage girls or tween girls like an artist, thats often a
sign that ... the artist isnt cool, said Marks, who also gives
Spears as an example. You know, My little sister likes them.
Advertisements, music reviews and fashion trends tell us that
cool is an edgy rapper, an up-and-coming hipster band or a
British chanteuse like Amy Winehouse. Cool is not Nickelback or the
Black Eyed Peas. Theyre not so uncool that theyre cool, like
Fountains of Wayne.
Theyre just, in a word, uncool.
Chris St. Peter, 26, of New York, witnessed this hatred years ago
at a concert in Boston, where Nickelback was opening for another
band in front of an indie-rock crowd.
They threw batteries at them, which is also terrible but also
really funny, St. Peter said. Nickelback represented everything I
think they hated.
Though he didnt hurl any batteries, St. Peter gives the band a
thumbs-down. I hope they go the same way as, like, Creed, and they
just sort of disappear.
But for every hater theres a lover like Jaclyn Hafenstein, 30,
from Madison, Wis. Dont they trash them because their music is
considered simple, not unique? she wrote in an e-mail to The
Associated Press. Why is that bad? Whatever it (is) theyre doing,
it makes me bob my head and sing along! I cant say that for every
band, whether I like them or not.
Often, bands that are popular in places like Wisconsin get dissed
by snobs on the coasts. Theres a real danger with ... writers
being in their kind of music-critic clique, you know, in either New
York or L.A. or San Francisco, and kind of ignoring these bands
just because all the critics they know and all the kind of
so-called cool kids are ignoring these bands, Brackett
said.