Today, topping the list of whining little shits from Canada who just won’t go away is, of course, Justin Bieber. A decade ago, however, Nickelback would have been on the top of most self- respecting music fans’ hit lists.
A scourge on the ugly face of hard rock music formed from the skid marks of 1990s’ grunge, it is a challenge to isolate a song by them that doesn’t use the same riffs and recount the profound themes of sex, substances and stardom. This is evident in 2001’s gold-certified ‘This is How You Remind Me’ and culminated in the ultimate douchebag manual ‘Rockstar’.
Lead singer Chad Kroeger’s lack of cool has rubbed off on his wife Avril Lavigne, whose recent single ‘Hello Kitty’ both single-handedly massacred an entire nation’s pop culture and probably reserved her a spot on a future edition of this column. Having released nothing since 2011, the next stop is a multi-volume greatest hits compilation. Because more than one album is needed to count for the collective legacy of two songs and tragically bad taste.
