Admit it. You feel like you have to hate Nickelback. You’re scared that if you say, “I think Nickelback is cool,” your Ryan Adams, Of Monsters and Men, and Matt Nathanson listening friends will launch some diatribe about how mainstream power ballads aren’t really music.
Really?
I challenge you, yes you Nickelback hater, to listen to “Photograph” and not get a goose-bump. That’s a good song. The words rhyme for the most part, and it tells a story. Hell, I believe that if you listen to that song just once, you’ll catch yourself singing or humming that tune later today. It’s got what folks in the biz call “a hook.”
So what if the singer has a haircut that only a Labradoodle would love. It’s about the music. If you check YouTube, almost 30 million people have viewed the video for “Photograph.” Now, you might say, 30 million people could be wrong. But in this case they are not. And they’re not any more right than the 4 million viewers of “Come On Get Higher” from the aforementioned Nathanson.
Music is subjective, emotional and truly personal. So the next time you’re going to tell someone how much Taylor Swift sucks or how The Police phoned it in after Zenyatta Mondatta, or how you won’t listen to any R.E.M. album after Murmur, take a moment and ask yourself: Do you want to be that guy? Well, do you?