A student at the University of Eastern Finland has conducted a study to ask one of life’s great unanswered (yet sort of obvious) questions. Why does everyone hate Nickleback?
Analysing Finish reviews of the band between 2000 and 2014, Salli Anttonen’s paper – titled ‘Hypocritical Bullshit Performed Through Gritted Teeth: Authenticity Discourses In Nickelback’s Album Reviews In Finnish Media’ – found the critiques got harsher as their popularity rose.
“It became a phenomenon where the journalists were using the same [reasons] to bash them, and almost making an art out of ridiculing them,” she said. “Nickelback is too much of everything to be enough of something. They follow genre expectations too well, which is seen as empty imitation, but also not well enough, which is read as commercial tactics and as a lack of a stable and sincere identity.”
Or, alternatively, they were rubbish at the start, and got progressively more rubbish as time went on. One or the other.