"Why do hated bands top the charts?"

NEW YORK (AP) -- Few bands inspire such intense hatred as Nickelback.

The post-grunge Canadian quartet has been trashed, bashed and hated on by countless critics, music snobs and other like-minded souls. So have much-maligned acts like Hinder, a rock band from Oklahoma; the Grammy-winning Black Eyed Peas, who have spawned infectious rap hits "My Humps" and "Don't Phunk With My Heart"; and Britney Spears, who in her heyday ruled radio but was condemned for everything from her voice to not writing her own songs.

Yet these acts have sold millions upon millions of albums. So are the critics wrong? Do music buyers have bad taste? Is this karmic payback to all the haters?

"There are some bands that, let's face it, are critic-proof," said Nathan Brackett, a senior editor at Rolling Stone. "Just like there are some movies that are critic-proof. Nobody is really reading the reviews for 'Norbit,' you know? And nobody's reading Nickelback reviews either." (And what does Nickelback think?)

That might be a good thing. Nickelback's "All the Right Reasons," which debuted at No. 1 on the charts in the fall of 2005 and was still number 16 this week, was called "hard-rock ridiculousness" by The New York Times and "unspeakably awful" by Allmusic.com. Even the late Nirvana frontman and grunge icon Kurt Cobain would disapprove, suggested Rolling Stone, which called the disc "so depressing, you're almost glad Kurt's not around to hear it."

Young people who "are introduced to these bands on the radio, they don't have a lot of baggage," Brackett said. "A lot of kids don't care if an act, you know, kind of took their guitar sound from some other band."

Post-grunge outfits like Nickelback and Hinder continue to be popular -- or wreak havoc, whatever your opinion -- in part because they appeal to the estrogen set, said Craig Marks, editor in chief of Blender magazine. A "slightly hipper band" will sell more albums to guys than girls, he said.

"They're selling a lot of records to very casual music fans who don't buy a lot of CDs," Marks said. "When you're selling 5 million albums like Nickelback or 2 1/2 million like Hinder, and especially when you're making your mark with big ballads that are kind of wedding songs, then you're selling records to both males and females. And that's often how you get from selling 1 1/2 million records to selling 4 or 5 million records."

When "teenage girls or tween girls like an artist, that's often a sign that ... the artist isn't cool," said Marks, who also gives Spears as an example. "You know, 'My little sister likes them.' "

Advertisements, music reviews and fashion trends tell us that "cool" is an edgy rapper, an up-and-coming hipster band or a British chanteuse like Amy Winehouse. Cool is not Nickelback or the Black Eyed Peas. They're not so uncool that they're cool, like Fountains of Wayne.

They're just, in a word, uncool.

Hurling batteries
Chris St. Peter, 26, of New York, witnessed this hatred years ago at a concert in Boston, where Nickelback was opening for another band in front of an indie-rock crowd.

"They threw batteries at them, which is also terrible but also really funny," St. Peter said. "Nickelback represented everything I think they hated."

Though he didn't hurl any batteries, St. Peter gives the band a thumbs-down. "I hope they go the same way as, like, Creed, and they just sort of disappear."

But for every hater there's a lover like Jaclyn Hafenstein, 30, from Madison, Wisconsin. "Don't they trash them because their music is considered simple, not unique?" she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "Why is that bad? Whatever it (is) they're doing, it makes me bob my head and sing along! I can't say that for every band, whether I like them or not."

Often, bands that are popular in places like Wisconsin get dissed by snobs on the coasts. "There's a real danger with ... writers being in their kind of music-critic clique, you know, in either New York or L.A. or San Francisco, and kind of ignoring these bands just because all the critics they know and all the kind of so-called cool kids are ignoring these bands," Brackett said.

He points out that classic acts like Led Zeppelin, the Doors and Billy Joel were at first ignored by critics. Then again, he said, "there are a lot of times when music critics are right."

Acts hoping to collect both money and respect would do well to study an It band like Fall Out Boy, which sells heaps of records to teen girls while delighting the critics, too. They don't take themselves too seriously, unlike, say, the Killers in their latest incarnation or -- again -- Nickelback.

It all comes back to Nickelback, doesn't it? At least they're now big enough to headline their own shows, and that means no batteries will be hurled.

Only verbal ones, from outside the venue.

"You know, you have to be really popular in order to corral that sort of hatred," Marks said. "It's the best ballplayer on the visiting team who gets booed during the introductions. No one boos the guy off the bench, but you always boo the star of the other team. You know, it is a tribute to their success."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

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The fool that compared Nickelback to Led Zeppelin...wow, he better thank the lord that me and ginagirl weren't there when he said such bullshit.

So by the way, I can blame teenage girls for why music sucks now. At least the emos won't get my rage.

Or you could ask, why do people hate bands that top the charts?

Because they're uncool, or trying to be cool, whatever. People resent success, especially when it's success on the fool next to you's terms.

What makes you think people hate the songs that top the chart. They are on top because people love them. Maybe you hate them or ronnie hates them or maybe the music critics. But the majority of people.... they love it.
I hate titanic, but it made so much money and won so many awards that I am convinced that people in general like it. It boils down to taste, I think. And also the fact that our friends share similar tastes.

Ahh svsg, but remember TITANIC and the bloody teenage girls(again)?

"I saw TITANIC 6 times! *cries*"

Anyway, I just want good music.

Funny enough, I was on a chat with a friend over in Saudia Arabia, who asks this question upfront that startled me:

"Why is America is so enraptured with that Emo music?"

I still don't have an answer.

Maybe I'm just annoyed that a generic band like Nickelbeck is compared to Led Zeppelin. I mean, what?

I said people, not the majority of people. My point being that sometimes I get the feeling people just hate things because they're popular. And if something's popular it can't be good.

Major misconception.

Very true Capo.

You are right, but people hate success of others when they feel they don't deserve it. You can find the thread on Paris Hilton vs Britney Spears where pretty much everyone thrashed both. But it is also a demographic divide. We don't have many teen girls on our boards.

Thank God.

Britney Spears' music is very, very catchy.

It depends. I like Jimi Hendrix and consider him the best gutiarist, I am far from alone. However in my school it's almost as if Hendrix is an underground musician in terms of popularity.

I think music gets more shallow as time goes on in terms of popularity because of the way generations are changing. We went from Aretha Franklin to Britney Spears.

ronnierocketAGO queries:

H.L. Mencken would say, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

tony b.

Saying we've gone from Aretha Franklin to Britney Spears is like saying we've gone from Citizen Kane to American Pie.

Very simplistic.

Not really in terms of popularity. Popular music's quality has declined.

I'm talking to Lombardi now and he has an opinion on it too I agree with.

So how are we grading "good" and "shit" then? Somebody wants to set out to be popular and they become popular. Success. Goal achieved.

But it's "shit"?

"Non-music fans"? That doesn't make sense. That's sounds very elitist, to me. "You like that band, and since I don't consider them music, you don't like music."

It's almost the same as saying "Music is inherently a good thing. If something is bad, it isn't music." This is even more rampant in Literature, wherein a hierarchy, or "canon", has been around since I don't know when. Everything which falls into it is Literature, and thus worth reading, worth studying, and everything which doesn't, isn't Literature.

It's like using the terms "Literature" and "Music" and "Art" as labels which are meant to be some kind of measurement of value.

By non-music fan he means people who don't really care about music. People who listen to music for the wrong reasons.

Not everyone wants to be popular either, and even so, it's irrelevant. Led Zeppelin was popular, B.B. King was popular, Jimi Hendrix was popular. They were also great.

I gotta go, I'll be back later.

How can somebody listen to music for the "wrong" reasons, as opposed to any "right" reasons? Again, very elitist way of thinking. Are there any rules written as to how we should approach music?

Spears might sing a song which is meant to be foot-tapped to or hummed in the shower; so if people tune into MTV and tap their foots and then go and hum the tune in the shower, they're listening for the wrong reasons?

There's no reason for Art to exist, so how can there be any wrong way of consuming it?

This is one of the most retarded things I've ever read. You don't think about music, you listen to it. It's just tunes.

I think Pink Floyd would care to differ,

Same with The Clash.

"Love songs have been done to death." - Joe Strummer on Tom Snyder Show, 1980.*

*=Now that statement is ironic, since his CLASH partner Mick Jones wrote/sung two of the major Clash single-hits "Train in Vain" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go"...both about scorned love. Go figure.

Fuck, add Dylan.

I think 90% of young music fans I know fall into the group I'm talking about.

I don't consider these people real music lovers. The type of people who listen to music based on what's hip or cool, and then they tell you Sean Paul is sweet shit and Notorious BIG or other music is "old." Then a year goes by and the shitty Sean Paul himself has become old to them. It's shallow. I look at music as art and expression, not as materialistic shit like most people do. That's the type of people that get these records up to sales. Britney Spears makes music just to be a diva and be famous. That's shallow. And the people who love music they toss away after it's expiration date goes are idiots.

Not that I like them, but I remember all the people who loved Hybrid Theory. Now it's about Underoath and Fallout Boy or Killswitch Engage.

I hate that emo shit. Please slit your wrists already and save us some time and energy.

I do sort of enjoy Nickelback though, I don't think they're that bad. I can tolerate them better than crap like Fall Out Boy or Panic! at the Disco.

Well, this is coming from someone who works 8 hours a day in a kitchen, with a constant radio playing the latest pop songs.

They're fucking terrible.

I hear the same dozen songs, over and over again. Its enough to drive anyone insane.

You've got the emo shit. Wah wah wah, my boyfriend broke up with me and stole my pants. Watch me cut myself and die.

Then you've got the rap shit. Which just repeats itself. (Prime example? "THIS IS WHY IM HOT. THIS IS WHY IM HOT BLAH BLAH BLAH THIS IS WHY YOU'RE NOT."

You've got the "hard rock". Breaking Benjamin, Cold, Hinder, Seether, etc. It all sounds the same, its emo with power chords.

Then theres the pop songs. Dear god. "TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT" "AND WE CAN ESCAAAPPPEE.. blah blah blah, TELL ME BOY, NOW WOULDN'T THAT BE SWEET?.. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHH. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"

I mean shit.

I'm just glad they keep it off the country station.

And what the fucks up with that guy comparing Nickelback and Zeppelin?

DJ, that emo music also makes me wanna slit my wrists...because of how crappy it is.

Folks, is there actually a good rock band out there of this generation?

DV?

Isn't he just a song and dance man?

And, to be fair, he's more of a poet than a musician. In the most precise use of the terms, I'd separate lyrics from music.

But a lot of people don't, and aren't.

Modest Mouse, Radiohead (to an extent), The Shins, Black Label Society, Foo Fighters, John Mayer, Coldplay (save the last album), Dropkick Murphys, Pagoda, The Distillers.

Here is the best band out there today

The Hold Steady

Good point and I agree, but to say the music is not meant to make you think? Just listen to Dylan's lyrics and that should be enough to think about I'd say.

What do Pink Floyd, The Clash, or Love songs have to do with my post?

Bob Dylan doesn't want to make you think, as he's admitted several times. Why would you want to think while listening to a song anyways? It'd get in the way.

Watch this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8YuIGqWi4