Nickelhack

***NEWS FLASH***

Nickelback sucks.

I'm not just talking about musically, I'm talking about Nickelback as people. For evidence, let's talk about the last three singles released off their hit album, All the Right Reasons, and revel in their total descent into douchebaggery:

1. Far Away

We start off with my favorite video to describe to people. The song itself is fine, typical Nickelcrap, but the kind that gets stuck in my head and I find humming as I buy my coffee, and then burning my ears off with said coffee as punishment.

What makes them bad as people is this:

The video is about the relationship between a Forest Fire Fighter (I know there's a phrase for this, which I want to say is Flame Jumper, but that's almost definitely wrong), and his girlfriend-wife. They love each other very much, and of course, she's worried about him going to fight a Forest Fire. But go he does, and at the climax of the song, as the fire rages out of control, one his buddies is trapped in a circle of fire. So our hero jumps back in to save him, and a giant flaming tree falls right on him.

Back at home, his sister-mother-wife-girlfriend is watching the 24 hour Forest Fire coverage on TV (is this something that happens that I'm not aware of, living in an urban area?), when she gets a call on the phone. Hearing that her boyfriend-father-brother is dead, she collapses, hysterically crying.

One scene later, the charred and broken fire fighters have gathered in front of the Hero's house. His lady comes outside, her eyes red with tears. Seeing their grim faces, she starts to cry again... But wait, what's that? Why it's our hero, hiding behind the car! He wasn't dead after all! Hooray!

All it needs is Chad Kroeger jumping out and yelling, "You got Nickelback'd!" to make the scene complete. But that can't happen, because the entire video, Nickelback is safely tucked away recording their song in a studio.



2. Rockstar

I'm not going to spend too much time on this one as there's no video, but Nickelback, a band that's most likely origin story is...

Nameless Guitar Player: Hey, we're not getting any chicks.
Chad Kroeger: What if we formed a band?

...has no right to be doing a lamely sarcastic song about how stupid and vapid rock stars are.

Here's the chorus, which, when contextualized as a Nickelback song, reads less like a joke, and more like a manifesto:

'Cause we all just wanna be a big rockstars and
Live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
in the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blonde hair
And well...

I think hands down, though, my favorite lyric is:

Sign a couple autographs
So I can eat my meals for free
--(I'll have the quesadilla, ha-ha)--

Quesadillas? Only a ROCK STAR would order quesadillas. Priceless, Mr. Kroeger. Somebody get this guy a Mark Twain award.

3. If Everyone Cared

The latest video from Craplesuck is "If Everyone Cared:"



I'm almost speechless with the sheer waves of brilliant retardation flowing off this video:

Wave #1: The sheer earnestness of the whole thing, when most of it is entirely unrelated to anything that's happening in the video.

Wave #2: The awkward transitions between the studio "set" and the scenes depicting human rights movements around the world.

Wave #3: Nickelback shows that they really care by filming a video of them recording their song in a studio. Again. Come on guys, even Bon Jovi let his band build a house.

Wave #4: The overwhelming feeling that they recorded this video as simply the studio set, and then Chad Kroeger accidentally found out about Apartheid on Wikipedia while searching for the definition of the word "apart." And then he turned to the rest of the band, and asked them if they'd ever heard of human rights before. And then they questioned whether they weren't, perhaps, violating everyone's human rights by continuing to record music and release videos.

I'm probably giving them too much credit with that last part.