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Chad Kroeger on Nickelback hate: “I think there’s been a softening”

“It’s really nice to not be public enemy number one.”

Nickelback

Credit: Buda Mendes / Getty

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Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger has opened up about the reasons behind the widespread hatred of his band in a recent interview.

Speaking to KFMA-FM radio, the Canadian rocker said that he has noticed a “softening” in people’s negative opinions of Nickelback lately, and he thinks it could be because they have received “a ton of love on TikTok” or other social media platforms.

He said: “That kind of used to be a thing. I shouldn’t say ‘that kind of used to be’ – that was definitely a thing for a long time. And I think there’s been a softening – there really has, thankfully. I’m not sure if it’s because we receive a ton of love on TikTok or whatever the hell it is, but for whatever reason the teeth have kind of been removed. It’s really nice, it’s really nice to not be public enemy number one.”

Kroeger admitted that he never understood why so many people felt the need to bash his band online, but he speculated that it could be because of their musical diversity and popularity.

He said: “I think that with the range of songs that we write – from rock to all the softer, melodic stuff, all the way down to … well, I know that ‘Far Away’ got played on country stations even and I know that ‘Rockstar’ – the heavily redacted version – got played on CMT. So when you’re going that far and the scope is that wide, it makes it tough to get away from the band if you’re not into the band. And if you’re trying to switch the radio station three times, and it’s just, like, ‘Ah, there they are. There’s their rock song on the rock station. There’s their pop song on the pop station. And oh my God, I can’t even go to the country station and get away from these guys.’ That type of oversaturation could piss people off. But at the end of the day, we’re just a band that makes music.”

Nickelback are currently working on their tenth studio album, which will be their first since 2017’s Feed the Machine.

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