NICKELBACK’s Chad Kroeger: ‘Why People Are Afraid to Admit They Like NICKELBACK’

NICKELBACK frontman Chad Kroeger talked about all the hate directed towards  NICKELBACK, telling CBC (transcribed by UG):

We’re not a cool indie band, we’re not Arcade Fire or some other cool indie band.“, said Chad: “They’re critics’ darlings. You’re supposed to like those bands because they’re hip, they’re indie and cool. You’re supposed to like them as a critic. I don’t think you’re supposed to like us. We’re that, kind of a blue-collar band.

Guitarist Ryan Peake chimed in:
We were also an indie band at one point. We started that way. We made connection live with people, that’s where everything started. That’s where it started to snowball.

Chad also noted:

Honestly, I even think the critics like Nickelback. I honestly do… It’s not like it’s bad music, it’s just music… We’re that guilty pleasure. I was in New York this one time, a guy came up to me in this club and said: ‘Hey, aren’t you Chad from Nickelback?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said: ‘Hey, I did an interview with you years and years and years ago for Rolling Stone magazine. I brought in the article and the editor said I had to change it. He said, ‘No no no, this is to favorable, you have to change this article and make it negative.’ And he didn’t understand that. The agenda was there. I asked him, ‘So, what do you do now?’ He was like, ‘Oh, I sell cars. I didn’t like that job, it didn’t pay.’

Ryan said during the chat:

People perceive us as an international overnight success with ‘How You Remind Me,’ but for us, that was like four albums in. Every band slugs it out to a degree, but we definitely paid our dues of playing Chinese food restaurants and nobody showing up and playing pubs and nobody showing up and playing other places and nobody showing up… [Chuckles]

Recently Chad Kroeger called STONE SOUR ‘NICKELBACK Lite’ and challenges Corey Taylor to ‘write a hit song’.  You can check out the full interview with Chad Kroeger here.

Corey Taylor responded to Chad Kroeger saying he’s ‘an idiot’ who’s got ‘a face like a foot’. Check out the full interview with Corey Taylor here.