Nickel… back? I bet we’re going to love this!
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[2.89]
Doug Robertson: In which Nickelback sing about drinking, because they are RAWK, and RAWK people drink, and droning on and on about how much you had to drink to anyone who might be listening, regardless of how believable the quantities you claim to have imbibed are, in an attempt to convince people you do actually have a personality, is also RAWK. As, presumably, is alcoholism, making the tramp who I often see wandering the streets where I live the most RAWK person in the world. He must be proud. This is the better of the two songs they’re releasing — in much the same way that discovering a dead mouse in your living room is better than finding a dead elephant — being just a tad less derivative and a tad more anthemic, but this is all relative as, overall, it’s still anathema.
[3]
Jer Fairall: Crunchy, surprisingly metallic and proudly boneheaded, this might be the closest I’ve ever come to understanding how some people might actually enjoy listening to Nickelback, albeit only in that way that some people apparently enjoy seal clubbing or watching the Transformers movies. Yet at the core of it all is still Chad Kroeger barking at us in his trademark constipated moan, wretchedly humourless even in the event of a straight-up drinking anthem, like a drill sergeant commanding us all to have a good time. Getting hammered should never feel this mandated.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: This was commissioned as a new intermediate step for AA. It was their second try; the first was the instrumental without Chad Kroeger and not deemed enough of a deterrent.
[3]
Iain Mew: A grimly perfect encapsulation of a night out with people who you don’t like and who do nothing other than roar at you about how drunk they’ve got/are getting/are going to get.
[1]
Brad Shoup: Whenever Nickelback releases a party song, there’s the constant threat of dourness: the worst of ’em sound tailor-made for strip clubs and nowhere else. Once in a while they hand over a stomper like “Burn It to the Ground” or a self-loathing, hateful pop gem like “S.E.X.” or “Figured You Out.” Lamentably, “Bottoms Up” comes with the blackout included; Kroeger’s monochrome croak orders rounds and dispenses instruction in the same puzzling rage. Shitty solo, but a wicked rhythm during the bridge; they shoulda built the song around that.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Since we’ve lost Metallica to that former fag Lou Reed, we need other brontosauri to churn power chords and spit Jimmy Buffett sex jive between a woman’s breasts. They mean it too!
[3]
Anthony Easton: Why, if Eric Church or Blake Shelton or Justin Moore or even Billy Currington sang this, I would like it — not love it, but appreciate its pleasure for pleasure’s sake — but with Kroeger singing, I hate it? (Bonus question: If the Pistol Annies sang it, I would be first on the dance floor?)
[2]
Jake Cleland: Look let’s be real, this is music for gormless, testosteriffic apeboys, and as a dandy sophisticate, of course I’m going to rail against it. Not so much because it sounds like shit but because it’s so painfully acute in the way it stimulates the gormless, testosteriffic apeboy mentality I’ve tried so hard to squash but settled for merely repressing. I’ve seen many a smart, sensitive, emasculated young man fall to the brute appeal; it’s the musical equivalent of the worst parts of Sons of Anarchy and Entourage and it’s totally obvious why it’s so popular. Fuck Nickelback and the thoughtless perpetrators of the masculine ideal, but fuck the haters just as much. Yeehaw.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: Nickelback is essentially the result of supply-side market failure. Mainstream rock music has long relinquished its claim to innovation, critical attention, and quality, but there’s still a large number of listeners who want records that revolve around pounding drums, loud slabs of guitar, and an assertive and powerful expression of normative white masculinity. Those can all be exciting things for a song to revolve around, but Nickelback is unable to tap into the qualities that make those elements exciting. I think even the band’s fans would agree with that on some level; as much as they might enjoy the crisp simplicity of the riff in “Bottoms Up,” the spat staccato of the lyric, or the unyielding pound of the drumming, I strongly suspect they enjoy better past and more proficient examples of the same. Nickelback, surely, is not anyone’s favorite band. Even for fans, they must be a substitute for albums that are no longer being made by, say, Led Zeppelin or AC/DC or Soundgarden. Not everyone can love Jay-Z, Bon Iver, or Ke$ha. Appreciators of rock traditionalism deserve a better Nickelback.
[3]