60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “How You Remind Me”—Nickelback

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

This week, we’re celebrating the Canadian rock band Nickelback! Along the way, Rob discusses butt rock, anti-Nickelback memes, and his friend stealing his girlfriend in high school. Later, author and columnist Leslie Gray Streeter joins the show to defend Nickelback fans and much more. Pre-Order, Leslie’s new book, ‘Family & Other Calamities: A Novel’ here. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Leslie Gray Streeter Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Solic, and I'm here to announce a brand new season of my Ringer original podcast, Bansplaine, the show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists to you and yours. This time, babe, we're going across the pond. That's right, I'm absolutely chuffed to be talking about the music scenes of 80s and 90s Britain. I'm talking Mad Chester. I'm talking baggy. I'm talking shugays. I'm talking Brit Popmate.

So tune in every Thursday starting November 7th for a new episode of Bansplaine on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. I just woke up one day and they weren't cool anymore. So much stuff wasn't cool anymore. So many, so many rock and roll bands that I loved when I'd fallen asleep the night before. When I awoke that next morning in my bed sheets with transformers on them, those bands just weren't cool anymore and would never be cool again. Happened in an instant. Just a galactic light switch. flipped off by the middle finger of God, a galactic light switch that God flipped from cool to uncool.

I awoke on the morning of Tuesday, September 24th, 1991 into a world I did not recognize, where day was night and up was down and black was white. And what had been cool was now permanently uncool. Rock and roll had changed forever. And thus MTV had changed forever. And thus my whole world, not to mention. my whole personality had changed forever. And of course, there is a single rock and roll album released in America on Tuesday, September 24th, 1991 that inspired God to extend his middle finger

and flip the switch. Hold on now. No, no. No, no. Sorry, but no. From their fifth album called Ceremony and released in America on September 24th, 1991, This is the cult. Fantastic English goth adjacent, grandiose rock and roll band, The Cult, with an extra grandiose power ballad called Sweet Salvation that I have never heard before in my life and I feel bad, but it's the truth because the very day this record came out, so far as I could tell anyway, these guys became uncool.

I don't make the rules. I just follow them. Suddenly the cult felt a bit stodgy, a bit Jurassic, a bit pre-apic. A bit pompous. Pompousness had never bothered me before. But dude, I turned 13 years old in 1991 and I loved whatever MTV told me to love. And MTV told me to stop loving earnest, pompous music like this. So's eyes stopped. Yes, I still slept in bed sheets with Transformers on them as a 13 year old. But by then I was sleeping in Transformers sheets like, ironically, listen, I went to bed and this sort of extra grandiose power ballot action was cool, and I woke up the next morning, and it was

disastrously uncool, and that's all there is to it. Uncool. Uncool now. Uncool forever. Really? Such was my perception at the time. Anyways, Billy Duffy, lead guitarist for fantastic English goth adjacent, grandiose rock and roll band, the cult, Billy Duffy laying down some rad solos and tasty licks and whatnot, uncool now. What separates this particular rad and tasty Billy Duffy guitar solo on Sweet Salvation from some other prominent 1991 guitar solos I could mention? Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready's solo on Alive, perhaps.

Or Smashing Pumpkins dictator Billy Corgan's solo and I Am One? A lot of sonic and spiritual grandiose type overlap between these three. What made those guys cool? cool and Billy Duffy, uncool now, at least in my jumbled goofball perception, was Nirvana. Nirvana's Nevermind also came out on September 24th, 1991, and blood sugar, sex magic by the red hot chili peppers. Nirvana killed hair metal. Nirvana killed power ballad pompousness. Nirvana killed any hard rock that was not specifically grunge. That's the legend. That's the cliche. and I personally have somehow devoted a truly alarming percentage of the last five years of my life

to trying to figure out how true or untrue that legend is. Did Nirvana kill hair metal and power ballad pompousness and all non-grunge hard rock? Hey, for starters, let's leave the cult out of it. Yeah, that is tremendously rude to Fantastic English got the Jason grandiose rock and roll band The Cult, whose many rad and tasty radio singles I have enjoyed tremendously throughout my life. She-Sell Sanctuary is probably still the best one, right?

Sure it is. Phenomenal guitar riff, dude. She sells Sanctuary. An all-time classic from the cult's 1985 album, Love. Look, the cult have the misfortune of also releasing a hard rock album on September 24th, 1991.

And okay, no, the cult album's ceremony is not as successful commercially or sociologically as never mind or blood sugar sex magic. But how's about we leave the cult out of this? Rude, let's start over. When I went to bed on Monday, September 23rd, 1991, these guys were supremely cool. Death Leopard. Dude, I love Death Leopard so much as a non-sophisticated preteen. I also love poison and Motley crew and Warrant and Cinderella and Bon Jovi and so forth, but I loved Def Leopard more and I loved Pour Some Sugar on Me the most.

Despite the fact that I did not understand Pour Some Sugar on Me, lyrically or contextually, is it obnoxious to play the pre-chorus but not the chorus to the 1987 All-Time Def Leopard classic Pour Some Sugar on Me? I do believe that not playing the chorus would be obnoxious. What does that mean? Pour some sugar on me. I wondered as a nine-year-old. What?

Like dump a snow cone on his head? But then on a Tuesday morning, Nirvana's Nevermind comes out and Grunge kills hair metal and Def Leopard ain't cool anymore. Such was my perception. I remember so clearly buying the next Def Leopard album on cassette. I bought the 1992 Def Leopard album Adrenalize on cassette. And Nirvana's Nevermind has been out for like half a year now and it's a number one album now. And MTV, the network that bombarded me with the pour some sugar on me video like 200 billion times,

MTV is now wall to wall Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And I remember feeling sheepish about listening to Death Leopard in 1992 like it was contraband. Like I was risking my life by being so criminally uncool. like Kirk Cobain was personally going to jump out of a bush and kick me in the nuts for listening to a song called Let's Get Rocked. Oh, leave me alone. Adrenalized is a great album, or at least Let's Get Rocked is a great song. I don't recall much else about this record, to be honest with you. Other than the rad, cheesy, extra, extra grandiose power ballad, have you ever needed someone so bad?

I don't recall anything else about this particular Def Leopard record. I just looked. The third track on adrenalineize is called Make Love Like a Man. No thank you. Whatever Death Leopard thinks making love like a man entails, I don't want to hear about it.

Don't get involved. And maybe that was the problem with Def Leopard in 1992. The somewhat retrograde hornball lyrical vibe. All those salacious behind the music stories like the harem of groupies apparently chilling out beneath deaf leopard's fancy revolving arena stage.

What's wrong with being sexist? Not very enlightened. Deaf Leopard gender politics wise. Kathleen Hanna is not inadvertently suggesting any song titles to Death Leopard. It was a different time. Oh my God. Yeah, let's go ahead and induct

suppose a rocks out of the question into the John Cougar melon camp sucking on a chili dog outside the Tasty Freeze Hall of Fame of grody phrases in pop songs that no human being has ever uttered in real life ever. Nobody roaming this earth at any point has ever said the words, suppose a rocks out of the question in that order. IrrL. Nirvana made deaf leopard uncool. That sounds truer. That still sounds rude, but less rude. Can we get even truer and less rudder? I do believe we can. Nirvana made winger uncool. It was a different time. I've thought about it. I thought about it for like 15 seconds, but I'm afraid that there is no other logical interpretation of the 1988 winger song 17 other than that one. My favorite YouTube comment on the video for 17,

It just says she's only 42 now, and that comment was from 11 years ago. Oof. That shit woke me right up. Nirvana and Pearl Jam and so forth made jovial horn dog pop metal tributes to underage girls uncool. Can I say that? That feels truest and least rudest to me. Lyrically, spiritually, and philosophically, grunge at least theoretically occupied a more enlightened plane of existence. four adverbs and 15 words.

There is no grunge equivalent to warrants cherry pie. I bet there is, though. I bet there's a grunge cherry pie if I think about it for more than 15 seconds. But I don't want to think about that. So I'm not going to. Hey, look over there. This is not the grunge cherry pie. Just to clarify, that was just my transition.

We've been here before, you and I, presuming, that you've listened to all 134 previous episodes of this podcast. but we've been here before now, we're here again, candlebox, far behind, 1993. I turned 15 years old in 1993, and I spend hours upon hours, seemingly every night and seemingly all weekend, every weekend, driving around with my buddy Todd, pseudonym, my good friend Todd, Todd drives an I ride shotgun in Todd's Saturn, and we drive around suburban Ohio. We drive from one Denny's to the other Denny's and back in Todd's Gunmetal Grey Saturn

beneath the gunmetal gray suburban Ohio skies thinking our glum gunmetal gray thoughts whilst listening to Todd's CDs I can tell you every CD Todd owned right now from memory. Nine-inch nails, tool, Maryland, Manson, Allison, Chains, Sound Guard, and the Crow soundtrack, Stone Temple Pilots, Gravity Kills,

stabbing westward, lords of acid, et, et, et cetera. there were exactly two states of being, two headspaces, two existential scenarios in Todd's Saturn. Either Todd and I, and maybe another dude or two, either it's a bunch of dudes driving around and we're all listening to Todd's CDs and thinking about girls, or we are driving around with some IRL girls sitting behind us in the back seat and we're listening to Candlebox. Yes, far behind by Candlebox is the most feminine, or at least the least scary to girls' cool rock music Todd and I can conceive of in 1993. And honestly, yeah, I stand by that. Candlebox are from Seattle. Candlebox are a grunge band from Seattle who released their debut album called Candlebox in 1993. but this tasty and rad guitar solo from Candlebox lead guitarist Peter Quinn has prominent pompous hair metal overtones. No, something about that ascending, that little G-Wiz laser gun riff

somehow releases a cloud of hairspray. Does it not? And I cannot convey to you how hopelessly romantic, how passionate this suspiciously priapic sounding guitar solo sounded to me as a 15-year-old in 1993. I will pronounce that word however I want and it will change without warning to my undeveloped mind. The far behind guitar solo somehow fused the possibly felonious knucklehead hornball id of hair metal with the grouchy wallowing romanticized super ego malaise of grunge. The little chunky ascending palm muted action that's about to happen right here. The first two seconds of rad guitar action you're about to hear always sounded to me like pure hair metal, pure winger,

pure supposa rocks out of the question lewd badassness. Like everything cool and everything uncool, spectacularly colliding in mid-air. And all I wanted was a young lady to smooch with as we watched the explosion bloom against the sunset. I'm doing it again. and so, but but but but with the wampo-wah-wah-wah-wah. And so, but it turns out that candlebox ain't cool at all.

Huh. Candlebox ain't cool. I had no idea. At 15, I had no idea that Candlebox were often critically derided. Robert Criscoe, Dean of American Rock critics. He called Candlebox, quote, post-grunge scene suckers, end quote. And all the other cool grunge bands in Seattle,

but Candlebox were bandwagon ass posers. In the fantastic book, Everybody Loves Our Town, an oral history of grunge, written by Mark Yarm, came out in 2011. There's a whole chapter in this book about how Candlebox came along

just a couple of years after Pearl Jam and Nirvana broke and Grunge got huge. Then Candlebox got signed a Madonna's record label. And Candlebox sold four million copies of their self-titled 1993 debut album and a lot of people in Seattle talked shit about Candlebox constantly.

This chapter made me weirdly very sad. In the book, Candlebox frontman, Kevin Martin says, quote, we'd been a band for a year and a half, and some people felt that wasn't long enough, which never made sense to me. The biggest detractors,

the young bands that weren't successful. Not Alice and Chains or Soundgarden. None of those guys were talking shit about us. It was Sweetwater, Green Apple Quickstep, Easy, Satchel. They felt like we didn't really deserve it. We took a lot of shit in the city and nobody ever fucking stood up for us. End quote. In the event you've never heard of the Seattle Grunge band's Sweetwater, Green Apple Quickstep, Easy or Satchel,

well, none of them bands wrote anything half as catchy as the Candlebox song, you. And we'd rock this song too in Todd Saturn with the girls in the back, but ill-advisedly, all the dudes in the Saturn, we would yell, fuck you, along with Candlebox frontman Kevin Martin during this part, and we'd scare the girls. This phrase was not at all in vogue at the time, but I fear that we gave the girls the ick. You could just tell. Mistakes were made.

Uncool. Yelling, fuck you. along with candlebox and a crowded Saturn with visibly alarmed girls sitting in it is uncool. But candlebox themselves are even more uncool, apparently. And I struggled with this notion as a teenager. My understanding was that Nirvana had annihilated all the uncool rock bands, that any rock bands with even a whiff of hair metal bonerification had ceased to exist, or at least all those bands had ceased to be audible.

and therefore all remaining audible rock bands were cool now. That was my understanding. I simply could not process the idea of an uncool grunge band. Google Docs is very upset about my use of the word bonerification, by the way.

Spell Check keeps flagging bonerification no matter how many times I hit the little X, right? Like, no, it's cool. Google Docs is big mad about this. There are no uncool grunge bands and the enlightened opinion. of teenage to me. There are only grunge bands that are slightly less cool. Collective soul. A slightly less cool, but still very cool, grunge band from Atlanta.

Collective soul are named after a phrase from the Ein Rand book, The Fountainhead. No comment. From their 1993 debut album, Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid, that song is called Shine. These fellas, collective soul, aren't critically beloved? per se. Robert Criscoll, Dean of American rock critics called them, quote, tuneful blandoes, end quote. That's why he's the best. Nonetheless, I thought they were cool because all grunge bands are cool. Sponge. A slightly less cool but still a very cool grunge band from Detroit. Spunge are named after a Sponge from their 1994 debut album, Rodding Pignata. This song is called Plowed.

Pretty great album, Rotting Pignata, but the true Spongeheads know that their next album, 1996's Wax Ecstatic is even better. The Sponge Song, Wax Ecstatic, parentheses to Sell Angelina, is like Sonic Youth for teenagers who find lady-based players too intimidating. Just speaking hypothetically.

I thought Sponge were very cool myself. and not intimidating at all. Grunge as an overbroad musical category is already getting even more overbroad by 1994. Anything with crunchy, snarling, grouchy, ultra-distorted, macho, but like enlightened macho

guitars counts as grunge, in my humble opinion. How less cool can a grunge band get and still be cool? Let's find out. Oh, hell yes. It's Seven Mary three. A slightly less cool than sponge,

but still very cool grunge band from Williamsburg, Virginia. Seven Mary three are named after the call sign of one of the motorcycle cops in the late 70s, early 80s cop show chips. Not Eric Estrada, the other guy. You can name your band after anything. From their 1995 album, American Standard,

that's good. That song was called cumbersome. Are Seven Mary three grunge? We've gotten overbroad to the point of meaninglessness. Also, these fellas have a remarkable psychic connection to hair metal. Perchance, are you familiar with the seven merry three song Waters Edge? I had to get that, I tell you man, in there. Water's Edge. Also from the American Standard album is a stormy murder ballad in which our meek but remarkably growly narrator witnesses

a terrible crime, but is powerless to do anything about it. You know who else has got a song like that? The Cherry Pie Guys, that's who. From their 1990 album, Cherry Pie, that is Warrant with a stormy murder ballad about a meek but remarkably Yelpy narrator who witnesses a terrible crime but is powerless to do anything about it. And this song is called Uncle Tom's Cabin. Or, as I think of it, this song is called parentheses, I can't fucking believe they called this song, close parentheses, Uncle Tom's Cabin. You telling me ain't nobody in Warrant. Had a library card. I will never get over this for as long as I live. Warren and Seven Mary Three ain't as far apart, musically or spiritually, as they appear.

Genre is an illusion. Coolness is an illusion. And already by 1995, by the time Seven Mary Three blow up, grunge or even post grunge will no longer suffice as a way to describe anything. We are building towards something new, or something quite old that feels new.

something huge and terrible and nonetheless somehow wonderful. But to get there, you got to go through just a few more growly guys first. Are you going to be ready to go, oh, when this guy goes, oh, you better be ready. Oh, super hell yes, it's Days of the New from Louisville, Kentucky. With their 1997 breakout hit, touch, peel, and stand. That's touch, comma, peel, and stand. No Oxford comma. Oh!

There is a severe, snarly grunge energy here, for sure. A lot of Alice and Chains happening. But Days of the New are somehow both progressing and regressing as rock and roll goes. There's a distinctly late 80s knucklehead energy creeping into the mix. The line between what Nirvana killed and what Nirvana wrought, the line between cool and uncool is getting... What's the word I'm looking for? Ah, blurry. puddle of mud

two D's in both puddle and mud from their 2001 major label debut album Come Clean That song is called Blurry and I love it Great song Tone Sincere I was driving with my 13 and 11 year old sons

The other day And I was listening to our rad Super Macho active rock radio station here in Columbus, Ohio 99.7 The Blitz And they played another puddle of mud song Off that Come Clean album and I could not decide whether or not to turn it off.

I was paralyzed. I was like, this is a pretty good song, but it's a pretty uncouth. I turned it off before it hit the chorus, and it was the right call, like, parentally, and I still kind of regret it. This song's called She Hates Me. That's the radio edit.

La, la, la, la, la, what do we call this sort of rock and roll? Uncomplicated, uncouth, unruly, unapologetic, unafraid to slather the most knuckle-headed possible sentiments in the most radio-friendly gloss imaginable. Hair metal, no. Grunge, no. Post-grunge, no. Alternative rock? Nah. You know what we ought to call this? You know what people called this? But rock. I think that's worth a bunch more la-l-l-l-l-las.

Why does the puddle of mud guy yell trust a bunch of times during this song? But rock! Two T's, but rock. Yeah, I saw this article in the Houston Press, the great all-weekly newspaper, Houston Press, and it tried to argue that but rock, that name is a reference to 90s radio stations that proudly advertised that they played nothing but rock.

I think it was the Houston Press quoting urban dictionary.com, actually, and we played nothing but rock. That's a very funny. That's a very clever explanation for where the name but rock came from. But no, obviously no. Cleverness has no place in this universe. Don't overthink it.

It's called butt rock because that's what it sounds like. Not a pejorative, even. It's just a fact. But period, rock, period. This term, but rock, has been around for decades already. You can find it. It's tangential to 70s super radio-friendly rock of the foreigner or journey or even ACDC persuasion.

It's tangential to glam rock. It's tangential to 80s hair metal, even. However, all caps now, but rock flourishes, starting in the mid-90s in the post-grunge vacuum. Offensively simple lyrics. Offensively simple riffs. Shiner than thou guitars. Great big, dumb, undeniable hooks.

Copious gratuitous radio play. growling and or bellowing, triumphantly unenlightened lyrical sentiments, Nirvana without the angst, Pearl Jam without the pesky morality, testosterone, bonerification, and uncoolness so absolute and all powerful, it can heal the sick and raise the dead. It is 2001. It is time for a new world order. I meant to mention creed somewhere on the way here, but I forgot it. It's too late. All rise for the But Rock National Anthem of Canada. Ladies and gentlemen, but especially gentlemen, let's get rocked.

Never made it as a wise man. I couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 15th episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s, Cole in the 2000s, and this week we are discussing how you remind me. By the Disreputable and Absolutely Massive Canadian rock band, nickelback. From their

2001 album, Silver Side Up, Never Made It as a Wise Man. I love it. I do. Clearly, I never made it as a wise man either. I'm tired of living like a blind man. I'm sick aside without a sense of feeling

and this is how you remind me. I'm sick of sight without a sense of feeling. That is an intriguing phrase to me. I do not ordinarily turn to Nickelback for intrigue, but that only makes me more intrigued when Nickelback intrigues me. If I don't do an ad break in the next 15 seconds, I'm going to be shot. Hit the deck.

I could just sense that you needed to hear someone else's voice for 30 seconds. You're welcome. Nickelback. Right, I know. Real quick, though, I need to tell you two important facts about my friend Todd, the guy driving the Saturn, the guy I spent 30% of my high school years with driving around. the nine-inch nails tool Marilyn Manson, Allison, Shane, Sound Garden, Crow, Sound Drack, Candlebox guy. Two important facts about my buddy Todd. Fact number one, eventually he stole my girlfriend.

It's fine. It's fine. Of course it's fine. Whatever. I'm over. It's no big deal. It's fine. Sure. Get a load of the Riz on Todd. You know? Fact number two, and I do struggle to reconcile this with fact number one, but fact number two, Todd would occasionally play

death leopard. He'd play the 1987 death leopard album Hysteria in the Saturn, but Todd's favorite song on hysteria was not pour some sugar on me. Todd preferred a little tune called Love Bites. The extra, extra grandiose cheeseball power bowed love bites. And Todd would sing along

loudly, too loudly. Not a classically beautiful voice, Todd's. And Todd would change the words. Todd would change the words to love bites so it became a song about his d-a- yeah. Yes, I'm bleeping that word out now. Arbitrary decision. Inexplicable. Those of you familiar with this program may recall that I personally said the word d-bibre like a billion times in the first 15 minutes of the Mr. Brightside episode, very much unbleaped, entirely unneighed. necessary. My mother was super pissed, but now suddenly I'm getting all coy and professional.

Huh? Curious. What is the f***ing point of trying to clean up my act now? Oh, we're bleeping out that now, too, eh? Why bother? It is far too late. Nobody associated with this podcast will see heaven. Here now, and I'm sorry, but I wouldn't do this unless it was absolutely necessary. But here now are Todd's Alternate lyrics to Love Bites by Deaf Leopard. My d*** so big. It hangs right down to my knees. My d' so large. I trip on it when I walk.

My d'b so big. All the women scream. And then Todd stole my girlfriend. friend, unbelievable. It's fine. It's fine. But it is unbelievable. And that is how I became the man I am today. Nickelback formed in the mid-90s and Hannah, Alberta, Canada, a quintessential sleepy little farm town. As a guitarist, Ryan Peek describes it. Hannah's got a population of 3,000 or so, including three other guys named Chad Kroger, vocals and guitar, Chad's older half-brother Mike Kroger, bass, and their cousin Brandon Croker.

Drums for now. A lot of drummers in this band. Don't worry too much about the drummers. They start as a cover band called Village Idiot, playing Metallica, Led Zeppelin, that sort of thing. They also play a lot of the tragically hip.

It's Canada. In a widely reported origin story that I personally do not believe, guitarist Ryan Peake is working at Starbucks and a coffee costs a dollar 45 Canadian. And so a customer would pay him a buck Canadian, and Ryan would say, here's your nickelback. And so village idiot changed their name to Nickelback. Yeah, sure. That sounds super made up, dude. But they tell that story in a bunch of

interviews. And it also appears in Nickelback's online bio for their star on the Canadian Walk of Fame. So, okay, Nickelback debut in 1996 with a self-released EP that they record in Vancouver and call Hesher. They don't say, sound much like the tragically hip at all. And this song is called Where? Question Mark. And here is Chad Kroger. Nickelback frontman, primary songwriter, focal point, benevolent overlord, ex-husband of Avrilavillevine, boy, that was weird, and future target of much derision. I hear the phrase butt rock and this man's face just shimmers into my vision. Not a pejorative, just a fact. Chad grows up as somewhat of a fast-talking problem child. Chad's own mother, quoted in the

2023 documentary Hate to Love, Colin Nickelback, she says, quote, oh, Chad, he was always on his way to it or from it, end quote. But Chad has a tremendously loud and strikingly raw singing voice with a serrated edge reminiscent of Kirk Cobain, but not, you know, too reminiscent. And Chad Kroger has ambition. Not necessarily ambition in the sonic experimental. I want to redefine rock and roll in my own image sense. Chad is ambitious in the I want my band to get played on the radio more than any other rock band in world history sense. Nickelback are a hard rock band. Meat and potatoes. No bullshit. No pretension. No Prague rock wonkery. No DJ. No messianic nonsense. No particular lyrical or

spiritual agenda unless you consider chicks, am I right, to be a spiritual agenda. And no tights or mascara, but you'll still dig these guys if Motley Crew and Poison and other tights and mascara type dudes used to be your thing, or better yet, still are your thing. Mainstream is not a pejorative. Radio friendly is not a pejorative. Middle of the road is not a pejorative. The Hesher EP is only streaming on YouTube and a used CD copy will run you about. about $600 American on Discogs.com. Chad Kroger, talking to the Canadian website, Jam in 2000, describes Hesher by saying, quote,

we had no expectations and no experience and no idea what to do with these songs. He also says, I'm trying to bury that album as fast as I can. End quote. And indeed, Chad Kroger sings like a man already dreaming of the albums he'll make later that'll bury this one. Later in 1996, Nickelback released their first full-length album called Curb. And the band will allow this one to remain on Spotify and generally acknowledge its existence,

but that does not mean that everyone loves it immediately. So this documentary called Hate to Love, Colin Nickelback, directed by Lee Brooks from 23. It's on Netflix. And per the title, the thesis of hate to love, colon, nickelback, is that everyone loves to hate nickelback. Everyone talks shit about nickelback. Other rock bands talk shit. Critics talk shit. The internet talk shit. Lots of rude nickelback memes that the members of Nickelback do not appreciate. Chad Kroger is especially sensitive about the memes. Like a picture of Boromir from Lord of the Rings with a giant caption, one does not simply like nickelback. That's good shit. That's a solid meme. Right away in this movie,

somebody in voiceover says that nickelback were a part of cancel culture before we had a name for it, which, no, no, that's not a thing. And nickelback are not part of the thing. That's not a thing. My favorite letterbox review of the nickelback movie, it just says, quote,

the shit I watch to get laid is obscene. End quote. Three stars. So, are Nickelback, the uncool- band ever, possibly. Are Nickelback the single biggest uncool band of all time?

F*** yes. But what this very earnest and workman like in Meat and Potatoes documentary would like to convey to you is that nickelback were uncool way before they got big and they worked very, very, very, very, very hard to get big. They incessantly

toured in Canada, a country that is a very large, B, very cold, and C, not filled with very many people relative to its largeness. To underscore Nickelback's uncoolness, the coolest person in this movie by an order of magnitude is Nickelback's lawyer, who is sitting at his desk wearing mirrored sunglasses. He got the long hair. He looks like he just spent the night in his car.

He looks like Colt, the villainous sniper guy from season four of Justified. That's a niche reference, and I don't care. Nickelback's lawyer's desk is super messy and it has one of those long dangerous nails that you see on the counter of like delis and Chinese restaurants and whatnot where they can impale your order or your receipt and like what legal documents

can be appropriately organized in this fashion Nickelback's lawyer talks about how hard the band worked at recording and touring and hustling their albums to record stores and radio stations. And he says quote, everybody pulled together as a team and sort of moved the ball down the field. So to those of you who see this band as some big corporate sellout, um, fuck you.

End quote, not bleeping that anymore. If I ever get sued, I'm hiring Nickelback's lawyer. This song is called Fly and it's fine, but I'd probably like it more if their lawyer sang it. But see, Fly gets a little radio play in Canada, because Canada's got that thing were Canadian radio stations by decree of the Canadian radio television and telecommunications commission,

better known and loved as the CRTC, 35% of the music on most Canadian radio stations has to be from Canadian artists. And there's a 2000 interview on the website, anti-music.com, with Chad Kroger, where he talks about how lesser-known independent bands should send their music out to Canadian radio in the first quarter of the year, because all the big bands will release new music in the third or fourth quarter of the year for the Christmas rush and so forth. So in the first quarter, Canadian DJs are more desperate for new Canadian material. And a rock star frontman talking about Q1 versus Q4, like a CEO or something, isn't very cool. But Chad don't give a shit. it because, quote, radio gets you everything. You get played on the radio and instantly a club owner knows he can sell beer because beer and the music industry are extremely intertwined.

If you can put asses in the seats and beers in their hands, you get to do that because you're on the radio. End quote. This is a song off the curb record called Just Four that didn't get played on the radio so much, but it's still my favorite. And if I heard it live, I would definitely buy a beer and then throw it at a passing car. They re-record that song later for the Silver Side Up album and it still kicks ass. All right, Nickelback had signed a Roadrunner Records, a metal label, a metal label best known for signing typo negative, coal chamber, sepultura, slip-not, bands of that nature. By comparison, Nickelback are way less metal, and everyone gives them shit about that as well.

But Nickelback make their label way more money. But not yet. We're still grinding. We're still uncool but not big. In 1998, Nickelback put out an album called The State. And we're closer, melodically, anthemically, architecturally. The double

helix of Chad Kroger's here, the crooner and the screamer, the CEO and the rock star, the myth and the meme. This song is called Leader of Men. And Chad is one, whether he'll admit that or not. Did I mention that according to a 2000 interview in Billboard, Chad wrote this song under the influence of magic mushrooms? And quote, a lot of lines in the song are about what you're

going through while you're zooming, end quote. That explains a lot, actually. I was struggling to interpret that line about how it's so hard to swallow until I found out about the mushrooms thing. Okay, look, early nickelback, pre-superstardom nickelback, is not at all terrible, but nor is it especially revelatory. What you hear on these first few records is a young, hungry, and thirsty rock band that's getting better at songwriting, but getting even better at hustling, at grinding, at strategizing. When these dudes blow up, it's going to seem like it happened out of nowhere. but often where butt rock is concerned, the more sudden it seems, the less sudden it actually was. Enjoy your anonymity for the next 60 seconds or so, fellas. I will say that when I first listened to this record, the state, I was still recovering from my exposure to the winger song, 17.

And I got to this nickelback song called Old Enough, and I went, uh-oh. Nah, I do believe this song is about Chad moving to Vancouver with a young lady, but she's not that young. She's like 21. She's old enough. That's a relief. The Grody Nickelback songs will come later. Old enough did appear on the soundtrack to the scary movie Book of Shadows, colon Blair Witch 2 in 2000.

So that's nice. The state still flops. Nickelbacker concerned that Roadrunner is going to drop the band, but Roadrunner doesn't. And so then Chad Kroger does what Chad Kroger does best, which is keep grinding and write another song. And he takes that song to his guitarist Ryan Peek's house. and Ryan Peake's wife hears the song and yells,

That's a hit. And so Chad convenes the rest of the band. In a remarkably unglomerous and Spartan and dingy and office complex type rehearsal space, and he plays the song for them. And the unglomerousness of this scene, as it appears in mesmerizing archival footage in this hate-to-love colon-nickelback movie,

well, the unglomerousness, the uncoolness is pure Nickelback. And the unglamorous uncoolness, in fact, is a crucial part of what's about to make nickelback huge. How you remind me is a perfect song. It is immaculately constructed. If you don't believe me, then just go listen to the first several nickelback albums. which are full of songs with the exact same elements. The crunchy jizz guitars, the stiff in multiple senses, hard rock swagger,

the basic but alluringly primal melodies, the medium soulful growl of our boy Chad Kroger. All those same elements are present, but the songs just aren't quite as immaculately constructed. I believe it was Ed Sheeran, who said something in his own rock star documentary about how songwriting is like, turning on a tap, a water tap, like an outdoor faucet.

And at first, the water comes out dirty and gross. And in that same way, as an aspiring songwriter, you start out writing songs, and those songs suck for a while, or at least the first songs you write aren't anywhere near as good as the songs you will write. And you just got to let all the dirty, gross water run its course and keep writing and writing and writing until suddenly the water is crystal clear and refreshing and delicious. Just an immaculately structured tower of meat and potatoes, erected before our eyes and ears, as how you remind me ramps up.

30 or 40 years of unabashed radio rock majesty culminating in this moment, the spectacular dynamics, the slow build, the maximum Canadianness. I had never quite focused on the way Chad Kroger sings the word sorry, sorry, but he sings the word sorry exactly the way you want him to. All right, let's chop up the rhythm just a little bit here. Give all those air guitarists and air drummers a little signature. Bair, bort, Baird,

action. Nickelback's actual drummer is now Ryan Vickdal. Brandon Kroger split and then Mitch Gwinden was their drummer for a while, but now it's Ryan, and Ryan won't be around forever either. Don't worry about the drummer. I bet this song kills at karaoke, too. And it's one of those deals where everyone laughs at the song choice.

It's like, ha-ha, nickel bad, that's hilarious. Ha-ha. We're being cool and ironic. But then within 45 seconds, everyone is unironically super into it. I've been wrong. I've been down, been to the bottom of every bottle. Pretty great lines. Clear, vivid, relatable, memorable, scream-alongable.

But it is no insult to Chad Kroger. I intend rather to pay Chad Kroger a tremendous compliment when I tell you, that the most important lyrics he will ever write are, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when the corny, endearing nickelback documentary hits the corny but endearing part in every rock band documentary, when it goes, and then they got super famous, these three words are screaming in my head.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And suddenly we are pumping our fists and flipping on the cigarette lighters nobody carries anymore. and having more fun than anybody's ever had in the history of the world. The expert dynamics, even here, too, the mellow, no, no, as counterweight. This is the very moment when 2001 super mainstream rock truly solidifies, truly self-actualizes, truly asserts its own identity. And But Rock's majestic present sounds an awful lot like But Rock's very recent and not so recent,

And Nickelback have not so much reinvented the wheel as put ultra-shiny new 20-inch rims on the wheel. And that's the wrong analogy. But you get me. Whole song is basically the same four chords. By the way. That's butt rock to its very core. How you remind me is Nickelback's first and only number one hit

on the Billboard Hot 100. Four weeks at number one. Our friend Tom Bryan, the critic and author and genius who writes of the number one's column for stereo gum Tom did a column on how you remind me and Tom says quote here's one important thing about nickelback

they are the last hard rock band arguably even the last rock band full stop to top the Billboard Hot 100 end quote I am not in immediate position to dispute that claim this song came out 24 years ago this song has 1.2 billion

Spotify plays and counting. If how you remind me is indeed the last number one rock song of all time, well, that makes total sense whether you love Nickelback or hate him. Either these chuckleheads killed rock and roll forever or they perfected it.

Ooh, sorry to throw you in the deep end there, but I do got to mention that Nickelback also do their part to reintroduce a somewhat retrograde hornball lyrical vibe to mainstream rock radio. And Nickelback have company in this pursuit as fans of fellow butt rock grates like Buckcherry and Hinder will attest. But there is a specific flavor to Nickelback's hornballness. No, this song is called Figure You Out from Nickelback's next album, The Long Road, released in 2003. And at least I'm not playing you the part where Chad likes the white stains on.

her dress, though my just saying that is arguably worse. Sorry, my bad, but it's going to get slightly worse before it gets better, because now I need to remind you that in 2008, Nickelback put out an album called Dark Horse, and they kick it off with a song called Something in Your Mouth. I'm sure that's a metaphor for something. Of course it's not a metaphor for anything, but rock don't do no metaphors. Chad Kroger in that nickelback documentary, he says, quote, I'm not the first person to sing something a little risque in a song, end quote. And he leaves it at that. Chad also says, with regards to the whole uncoolness, hatred thing, he says, quote, I play nickelback songs to nickel back fans. They want to hear nickelback songs and I want to sing them. So I don't have to go out and try to win over someone who doesn't like my band. That sounds like, some very strange form of torture, probably for both of us. End quote. Nickelback's best-selling album,

10 million copies sold in America. This shit went diamond. Holy moly. Their best-selling album came out in 2005 and it's called All the Right Reasons and features of the best song they ever did. Don't overthink it. This song is called Photograph, and it's the second best song called Photograph in rock and roll history, Def Leppard. And Chad's specific phrasing of the line, What the hell is on Joey Zed? Always bothered me. But nonetheless, guess what's cool again?

Extra, extra, extra, extra grandiose cheeseball power ballads. That's what. The second most important lyrics Chad Kroger will ever write. He's compress his style even further. It's just two words this time. Goodbye. Goodbye. It's hard to say it.

Time to say it. Goodbye, goodbye. I don't care much for nostalgia myself, but I find those lines genuinely moving in a fist-pumping, cigarette lighter, waving sort of way. Photograph peaks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, beaten out only by Gold Digger, by Kanye West. I can't quite articulate why I find that so funny, but I do. Also, Daniel Adair is Nickelback's drummer now and apparently forever, and he's cool, but don't worry too much about the drummer. But no, it's another giant hit song on this All the Right Reasons record that really did my head in. It's like I woke up one day and God had flipped the switch from uncool back to cool.

Rockstar. One word. I distinctly recall being so confused the first time I heard this song. The first time I heard these lyrics. The girls, the drugs, the houses, the cars. Is this what we all really want? is this what we really imagine rock stardom to entail? Didn't Kirk Cobain and Eddie Vedder vaporize all this?

I thought this song was Nickelback doing like a clever Civil War reenactor parody of what Ross Stardom used to look like and sound like and feel like. All those old jovial horn dog cliches that Nirvana killed forever. Part of me has never stopped believing that myth, apparently. But if there's one thing Nickelbag aren't, very much by design, it's clever. And so I find myself confronted with an existential question. Are jovial pop metal tributes to girls who fortunately aren't underage, but unfortunately do look cuter with something in their mouths? Are these sorts of songs suddenly cool and popular again?

Hmm. Are nickelback the rebirth of uncool but hugely popular rock? Or are nickelback proof that uncool but hugely popular rock never died in the first? place. To me, in 2005, this was a vision of the past. My past, specifically, is a death leopard-loving MTV obsessive in the 80s hair metal era. But also, I thought, this was rock and roll's past broadly. Such was my perception at the time. And evidently, I found this perception, this quaint idea that Nirvana made rock and roll cooler permanently. I found this whole worldview harder to shake than I thought. But Nickelback disabused me of these notions for good. Coolness is

temporary. Bonification is forever. We have waited far too long to speak once again with our dear friend Leslie Gray Streeter, a columnist for the Baltimore Banner, an author of both the memoir, Black Widow, and her upcoming novel out on my birthday. May 13th, it's called Family and Other Calamities, pre-order that action right now. Leslie, we missed you terribly. Oh my gosh. I was so jealous. I was like, why don't they call me? We were waiting for an important episode and we found it. Leslie, you emailed me my favorite line of rock criticism in recent memory. You said, I quite liked Nickelback because they were not trying. Please tell me exactly what you mean by that. Well, you know, having been a

connoisseur of the 90s that so much of the 90s was about trying while trying to look like you weren't trying, right? It was about authenticity that passed the smell test. It was about being serious about art and all these things have periods or question marks or, you know, exclamation points, serious about my art all the time. And all these guys, as we know, later, 30 years later, were cheating on the wives and banging out, banging groupies, and new all the stuff. But the thing about nipple back is that they were doing that and wanted you to know what's poison and these do, and weren't that they were happy to do it.

And they were not upset about it. They were not conflicted about the spoils to which their money and their fame and their renown got them stuff. And I loved that because they weren't trying to pretend that there was some some existential height of, you know, happiness or like meaning and pretending you didn't want these things. And I loved that about them. Love that for them.

I guess we should clarify that we don't know for a fact that Nickelback were banging groupies, you know, even in their prime. They wrote and sung and performed that lifestyle. And that alone, as you say, sets them very far apart, you know, from the super moral, super serious, super credible, you know, 90s rock stars. You were drawn immediately just to the honesty about the horn doggery, you know, and that we want to be rock stars of this band. That's what appealed to you.

It appealed to me. And I got to tell you, speaking of. Canadians with scratchy voices. I'm a Brian Adam super fan. Oh, yes. And I don't care if it's cool. I'm 53. I don't care if it's cool. I love that scratchy soundtrack

anthem belting voice, which Shack Kroger obviously has, and we'll talk about Hero in a minute. But I love... Robin Hood, etc. Yeah. Oh, my God. I love that stuff. And I love that. It's just like, I'm a guy who has a talent and people like it, and I'm going to do it. And

I got a check. Where's your check? I have a check. Because everyone got checked, having been accounting crows and R-A-M fan, all these people who are like in a Pearl Jam fan, I don't care about the check. You care about the check Eddie Vedder, because the check keeps you going. And I like, there was something refreshing to me about Nickelback being like, we love this, we're good at it, people like it. And it's okay that people admit to liking it. And they don't have to pretend that they're better than other people for liking or not liking it. And there was an earnestness. You and I've had this discussion on your podcast and on mine about the weird disconnect

between earnestness and art and pretending that you cannot be earnest if you're going to be important. And an importance is subtext, an importance is and value in art artistic value is in subtlety and whatever so we call subversion cynicism yeah cynicism and we call things

cheesy if they just go you know what screwed I like that yeah and I love nickel back because of that yeah Hero I haven't talked enough about Hero because I think that was the first is that that's a Chad Kroger's solo song right that's not technically Nickelback

it's a spider man and first once again it's my Brian Adamsery situation. That song was back. Remember, children, a time that you don't know. We're soundtracks. We're sweeping. My bridesmaids in 2010 walked down the aisle to the love's theme from San Amos effing fire.

That's credibility right there. You know what? I'm an idiot. I don't care. I walk down the aisle to my friend Louis Johnson, who's briefly a rock star playing that all I want to do is growled with you from the wedding singer. I mean, wedding singer, Adam Sandler, yeah. Yes, my wedding song, my first dance was it might be you by Stephen Bishop from Tutsi.

Was this the theme or are these, it was an all soundtrack musical wedding. I've never heard of this and it's wonderful. Which is why no one has married me since, but I got that one. Right. It is my husband's like, I died and she got her wedding and it's all good. But yeah, I got my stupid Dedy wedding in 2010. He was like, he's looking through the sound, through the playlist. He's like, what?

I'm like, deal with it. He's like, what's happening? I'm like, just give me, I'm 87 years old. This is my day. That's right. My day. So hero, hero evokes the golden age. of movie soundtrack anthems for you.

It's soaring and it's earnest and it has this, it's very tied in just like everything I do, I do it for you, tied into a line from the script from Marvin Hoopin's of Thieves. This is about a hero who's conflicted, who's like not sure he can do it like Spider-Man, like Peter Parker Man,

but a hero can save us. I'm not going to stand in a way. It's like, ah! You know, and his voice. was perfect for that moment. It was perfect for that song because he's like, I'm gritty and I'm tired.

It's like my favorite Marvel superhero of all time is Hawkeye because he's a middle-aged dad who's tired. He can't hear. He's not cheering aids, and he just wants to go to fuck home. He's relatable.

Hawkeye is the Chad Kroger of Marvel. Okay. Wow. That's, you did it. Chad Kroger is the Hawkeye of, Rock and roll. He's just, he just, he's there, right? And he's like, I might as well do it.

I'm here. And so let's, let's make it happen. He was there. He was there. Okay. Let's make it happen. I got my, my arrows and my raspy voice, mixing metaphors. You know, I just, I like the utilitarian.

Once again, it's not a Tweed, already overreau. whatever thing. It's like, it's like, I love Green Day because Green Day was like those guys. And now they're like, we're 50 and we love singing these songs. And I love that. My son's favorite band is Green Day. Okay. Interesting. Like American Idiot era or Duky era? First, his godmother gave him Duky and American Idiot on vinyl and a record player. And last summer, you know, she's great. We went to see Green Day, the opening. of their tour at Nationals Park in D.C. as the beginning of our vacation. By the way, people, you don't know this. So being on the show actually got me a free pizza because we were on this

vacation. We started in peace. Yeah, I told you. Went to New York and we went to Portland. And we're in Portland. And I ordered pizza, two pizzas, a vegan one for me and one for my kid. And the guy at the counter looks at my name. He goes, are you a writer? And I said, yes. And he said, you're on 60s, so explain the 90s sometimes. I go, yes. Oh, my goodness. Here is a pizza. And he gave me our pizza for free. That is a beautiful story. You deserve it. I would like a free pizza from this person as well, but yes, I'm glad you got it first. So everything is cyclical. Where am I going? And people listening to like Green Day. Yeah. Green Day. Yeah. So that they understand the assignment, as people say. They understand that who they are now.

Okay. I don't know if you've seen the Nickelback documentary. I did. Yes. I loved it because it's just like, were these guys, yes, there were like changes in personnel and tragedy and whatever, but also we're just... They're just dudes.

They're just dudes. They have wives. They have like wholesome family lives except for Chad. And they're like, we won't even hang out with Chad. That's bad for our family lives. And it's like, okay. It's convincingly normal, chill dudes. And like, this is, and they interviewed their parents.

This is their parents and their brother and the people at the pizza place. And just, you know, I just, I like them because it was just guys in a band who decided Depeche Mode was just guys in a band at some point. All these people that later decided they were this other thing. And I love Depeche Mode. But Green Day was just dudes in a, you know. And so these are. dudes in a band who remained dudes in a band for 30 years. And I like it.

I never made the Depeche Mode connection, but I totally, I believe anything you say at this point. So you're playing with house money after Hawkeye. Are you the sort of person, like the whole point of that documentary is everyone hates us and we're not cool and like we care a little bit, but basically we don't care. Are you this sort of person who reacts like almost a backlash? Like if something is, you're told something is not cool, you gravitate towards it? Do you care about critical opinion or like public, like meme opinion? Or do you go in the other direction instinctively and like something you're told you're not supposed to like? I think I sometimes err on the side of contrarian, but not on purpose. I think that there is, if you were told that

the things that you like are not cool, you tend to fine, I'll just be the most uncool person ever. But that's not really authentic either. So what I try to. to do in my life is be like, I like this thing. I like Brian Adams. I like New Edition. I like all these things. And so, and there are some things that like, you know, Neil Finn. I love Credit House. I love. There's some things that love. Yeah. Some things critics love and some things critics don't like Brian Adams. And you just go, after a while, you become comfortable with telling people to screw themselves. And because then you open yourself up and you can't make it about screw yourself, right? You have to make it about what do you like? Are you liking this

ironic thing? You know, that's a whole yacht rock situation. It's like, we like it's because it's not clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some people, I like that music because to me it was just like blue-eyed soul. It was not whatever yacht rock was. It was just like white guys, they played on their R&B stations. You could sing. And I liked it because I liked it at face value. I didn't have to create layers of irony to enjoy it. through so people enjoy it. That all came later, of course. Yeah, we sort of retrofitted a whole concept onto music that you didn't have to work very hard to like. No, you just, it was good or you didn't. And it's like,

it's okay if you don't like it, but it happens to create a cooler than Zal situation through which you can enjoy it, like Rex Manning. You know, it's just, Rex Manning reference. Good poll there. Yeah. Sometimes you just grow up and go. I can appreciate this thing, and certainly as a person who's written criticism for a while, you can appreciate things as they are. Like, I don't like Rush as a artistic enterprise. Not my thing, but I appreciate how long they were together and how I've seen them. I love that for them.

Yeah. Okay. I love that for them. I love that for their fans. I love that they were clearly enjoying being these three guys who played together for 50 years and loved each other. I loved all of it. And I loved that they had people, they didn't need me to love them or not. No. They would have loved you, I'm sure, but they didn't necessarily.

I love them. And I don't like their music. But I enjoyed who they were because I could separate their music from the importance to other people and not go, this thing isn't important because I don't like it. Right. That's an undervalued skill. You know, as you know, my biggest problem with criticism is that it's the people who are established to then establish the taste of the time. And so if you were not that person.

Yes, the gatekeepers. And so if you are a guy who's confused by how attractive Sarah McLaughlin is, but she's a chick and you like her music, which you can't reconcile it, you're weird about it. and then she can't sell records. So, like, all of that. So the disconnect of the gatekeepers becomes the burden of the artist. And so if you're nickelback, once again are dudes playing music for chicks and dudes who like beer and sex and whatever. And I will say there's some depth.

There's some real depth to some of the lyrics that nobody got because it was them. Okay, like what? What jumps out to you? Okay, so Rockstar is And Rockstar on its surface is, yeah, we just want to do whatever, but it also, there's an

ironicness to, you know this is what this is about. You know this is about, we all just want to be big rock stars. And the whole, like, the hyperbole, a bathroom I could play baseball in. Everybody's got a drug dealer on speed dial.

they're going to the height of the hair metal motley crew of it all and saying this is what you all want and you know it and you know this is why you're here in 2005 right right you can admit it or not but here we are and i found that brilliant or like how you remind me um which is i think so well written but people missed it because a dude had a perm the perm does detract from the critical acclaim. There's no denying a connection there. Is that a perm? I'm not in a position to say it's very wavy. I'm going to defer to you entirely on how you would characterize Chad Kroger's hair because I didn't really know. I don't have the vocabulary for this.

It's blonde. It's obviously dyed. There's an effort that went into that hair. because we weren't to have effort, right? We weren't supposed to care. No, we weren't. Exactly.

And you have people like, oh my God, the strokes who cared a lot while pretending didn't care. And it just, Julian calls it Blancas

in his face, you know, I know, right? You know what I was saying. It was a beautiful face. I, exactly what you're saying. They cared very much in the same time about it, but they just could

be cooler than thou and pretend they didn't care. And Nickelback goes, we care. And they go, boo, don't care. How you remind me, how you remind me you mentions, like, there's the line, right? Like, I've been in the bottom of every bottle. Like, do you hear the song primarily as about his relationship with alcohol? Like, I guess I took that line. face value, but the rest of the song is maybe about something else. But you think like, you know, overall, this is a song, at least in large part, about drinking. Well, it's not, it's about what the drinking means. It's about the examination of a person who says, I'm looking at this relationship I have with this person I'm singing about in totality. And I'm looking at

where I've been. And I'm looking at the things that I've been through. And I'm looking at, at how you remind me how I really am, who I really am, what I'm about. And I have to go back to the dark stuff too, because the dark stuff informs where I am now, where I'm desperate for your attention. I'm desperate for your consideration. And so I'm telling you that I can't consider the heights if I don't consider the lows. And once again, it's a startling lyric in 2002 or whatever it was. It's a startling lyric.

I think I told you I had an editor at the time. York, Pennsylvania, who was like, cool dude, 40s-ish at the time. And he walks by me and he knows, he just wants to say something that only I and my cheese I'm going to get. And he says, couldn't cut it as a blind man, never made it as a blind man. Couldn't cut as a poor man stealing. Oh. And he walks away. I'm like, good line. Good opening line. Call me Ishmael. Yes. Yes, and because it's about like I'm coming to you at the very ugly base of who I am, rock bottom and you in your truth, whether I want to or not, have exposed to me the thing that I am and the thing that I want to be. and to have the bottom of every bottle be a part of the chorus of a song that is played in early 2000s radio on pop radio to me was very significant because I think people missed it but it was like it was a cutting over my chest and bleeding out and you know I love that shit so I was very struck you know I was struck by that because there is a and because if anyone else had written

that line, people would have said it was brilliant. If anyone else had written that and written this. Yeah, I agree. If, like, Dashboard Confessional had written that. Oh, my God. I can hear that so clearly. You know what I'm saying? And Chris Carrava is from, I've met him a couple times.

He's from a book of her time where I worked in Palm Beach County for a very long time, talked to me a couple times with a guy. But he wrote those kinds of songs, right? He wrote those, like, he did. Cut my heart out, spilling it for you. on the page songs. And I think that he's taken more seriously as a little acoustic dude on the guitar than Chad Kroger plugged in with the perm going, let's do it. Yeah, the perm, right. I was going to ask you if you ever attempted this song in your open mic night

days, are you heard anybody else do that? Because I can hear that. So clearly, that's sort of an extension of the dashboard confessional thing. Yeah. I have heard people do how you remind me, but I don't know if they, it's always a question of my open mic nights, right? Because the difference between karaoke and art, do you know what I mean? Like, are you interpreting it? Are you just playing the chords the way you heard them and you're doing your pants of mining vocally the thing that you've heard? But I've heard people do it.

I was not ever particularly moved by anyone, like interpretation-wise, but I've heard people do it. I have never tried that song. I would love to do that song. If I ever leave my house again to do anything publicly performancy, you know, it's all. Book tour. Do it on your book tour. Just don't explain

the relationship. That's right. I'm just going to start off with a few tunes. Yeah, you got to do it. You mentioned like Rockstar, I agree with you completely on Rockstar, the honesty, the bracing, you know, welcome honesty of it. But like this is this is a band with some dorky hornball action.

You know, there's a song called Something in Your Mouth. That's just a fact. Are you, are you, exactly. Are you drawn to or immediately revolved by like horny teenage knucklehead energy? Or is this another thing that you're told not to like, but like there is some aspect of it that appeals to you? I was a dorky, 16-year-old black girl in Baltimore, Maryland, and a pink sweater who loved poison. I don't know why. Wow.

I just did. I do. The poison are great. This is not something they require. The person is wonderful. And Brett Michaels, I enjoy mostly because he was this guy, like in the 2000s where he was like dying every other week and he would just show up to shit.

Like I would say, perfect example. So American Isle would do in these finalities where like they would have people come on. And the kids would sing a song and they sing a medley. You're like, oh, no, that person's going to come on and sing. So I'm with my husband. we're at the Fox 40, whatever it was, Fox 20,

whatever it was in West Palm Beach and I'm about to do the commentary and they start singing poison songs to my husband. Brett Michaels literally had a stroke last week. This cannot be him. And he comes out and he's singing whatever. It's because he's that dude.

He's like they gave me a check. They wanted to sing my songs. I showed up where it is. If I need to be in a hospital bed, just point me toward the camera. And I've met him. He's a lovely person. He's a lovely person.

I'm glad to hear that. Really just such a good dude. And I enjoyed, he was there for the sake of the music. And I think that that to me applies to things like Nickelback or like, you know, warrants heaven or like, which is a heartbreakingly perfect song. It's perfect because it's just, it just is. and it just, or high enough by damn Yankees. I mean, I disavow the... You've mentioned that before.

That's good, yeah. The Ted Nugent is rough, but yeah, it's still a good song, totally. But there's a beauty in just the sincerity of like, I love Night Ranger Man. I sing Sister Christian in my car. I sing, like, sentimental street in my car all the time. It's just like these anthems that just like crank it up. And I remember,

realizing that no one thought this was cool. I love this music. People are like, what is that? And then you go through, well, I don't really like this. You go, fuck it. Yes, I do. I don't care. And so I didn't so much embrace it to be contrarian.

I embraced it because it's really what I liked. Okay. Yeah. You can't love something like this ironically. Right. You got to actually believe yourself. And you can. And there was like that whole thing 10 years ago where it was like doing maframay.

And we're in. fringe bangs and like doing like I think I missed that but I trust you macramee macramee and everyone just being like super weird and ironic it's just like it's painful it's like in the 90s when we were like swing dancing we were not me personally but we collectively were I did I'm sure you were I don't doubt that it terrible and I loved it I loved it don't jive and whale bitches jump jive and that's right I just to wrap up I have this theory that we always need a huge rock bands that everyone hates, right?

Or performatively. I feel like Imagine Dragons has this energy now. I think Maroon 5 somehow has this energy now. Like Post Malone is a little more complicated. But there is that like, oh, not this guy sort of energy to him. Like does society always require like a punching band rock band or person? And everyone, look at it. He's not rock, but look at Drake.

Look at poor Drake. There's even more going on there, but I get you. I know, yes. That he, he once again, is a fiction created by Aubrey Graham to play a character and cosplay American urban blackness rap as a Canadian, like, child star. And it is what it is. But the fact that, and he was doing fine. but then he couldn't stop him.

Then someone like, like Kendrick, who goes, hey, and I read that thing that said, I wish I'd written this, that Drake bought a lawyer to a rat battle. That's a beautiful way of putting it. I did not expect us to talk about this,

but I'm so glad we are. I'm just saying that there isn't pop culture. No, yes. We're not in a big rock moment right now, so we're looking at whatever it is. We certainly are not and haven't been for a quarter, century. A quarter century. When we look at whatever's popular, that always is a person that the cool people have to dislike and that it's not artistic. There's no problem with drink until he didn't stop talking. And, you know, I'm not going to speculate, but, you know, I refer you to the opening lines of not like us.

Anyway, there's my sister, my son and I listened to on Thanksgiving and the car. We first listened to Hot to Go. And I was like, we cannot listen to the song together. I'm sorry. We cannot listen to Chapel Road in the car. That is uncomfortable. That is, I play that song for my four-year-old daughter, and that's the only Chapel Roan song, I think, that I could. I want to do casual, but I can't. It's hot to go or it's nothing. And even that, even that is... She's so... When he's 15, I'll say...

Once again, I had no idea this was going to happen. Yeah. No. It just happened. But I'm saying is that, yes, there's always a moment where people go, this is not a thing that you should like, and it's music. It's not. It's, it's, it's, music, it's TV shows. This is like, this is like when Abbott Elementary came out and people were like, there should be a school shooting episode. It's like, why would we want reality to tread on that? Just let it be what it is. And I feel like Nickelback was like, this is who we are. Yes, people hate us, and they don't hate us, and their fans are super devoted. And I love it. It was a great documentary. I'm not like a super fan, but I'm a fan of the stuff that they- You appreciate them.

I appreciate them. And like I appreciate, you know, like he was, Chad Kroger was, you know, briefly married to, you know, Evel Levine. And there was like that brief Canadian super couple poppy situation. And I don't know what happened. The royal family of Canada. You know what?

It's not my business. But I would stay out of that. Absolutely, yes. For one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot. You know what I'm saying? It was what it was. And I appreciate that there's still. at it. I appreciate that like

watching the yacht rock thing and watching Christopher Cross, who I saw about 10 years ago at Sunfest was at the festival at West Palm Beach. And he did like the Sunday morning thing. And they rock that shit. He did

some like jazzy stuff. And when he gets to all right, you're going to make it, I'm like, yes. Beautiful moment. It's a pure, it's a nickel back moment. I am so glad that you are here. I like what you like, dude.

I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for letting me drone on about stuff as usual. This has been absolutely phenomenal, as always. It is wonderful to talk to you, Leslie. You will be back soon. You will be back sooner. Go get Leslie's book. Thank you so much for being.

Thank you. Thanks very much to our guests this week. Thanks to our producers, Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales. Thanks to Olivia Creary for additional production help. Thanks to Juliana Ress. for fact-checking, and thanks very much to you for listening. And now, please, let's all go listen to how you remind me. We'll see you next week.