Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to don some dodgy eye mascara as we revisit the music that we used to tolerate during our younger and most questionable emo phases of life for ‘Scuzz Sundays’ as we re-evaluate their quality or value in the present day, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! When you review the history of rock music, particularly throughout the 2000’s, the Canadian rock group of Nickelback provide a fairly interesting case. They were a punching bag for music enthusiasts, garnering almost unanimously negative reviews for their recycling of ideas and their continued relevancy in the mainstream, but they were still one of the most successful rock bands of the time when you really think about it. Their list of achievements includes enormous sales figures of over 50 million albums worldwide, five SOCAN International Achievement Awards, and a whole host of hit singles across multiple territories including ‘Rockstar’, ‘Far Away’ and ‘Photograph’ among a few others. They are also pretty active today, as they are currently working on their upcoming tenth studio album to finally follow up on 2017’s ‘Feed The Machine’. They have recently celebrated the 20th Anniversary of their fame-propelling third studio LP – 2001’s ‘Silver Side Up’ – which has been certified as Platinum eight times in Canada. The record included, arguably, their biggest hit of all – ‘How You Remind Me’ – which is a Karaoke favourite of my mother’s choice. The single’s commercial success led to their first arena tour of the UK, and, in 2009, Billboard ranked it as their best selling rock single overall. You know it already, but you can hear it for the first time in ages below.
Chad Kroeger – the lead vocalist of Nickelback – wrote ‘How You Remind Me’ as a response to a conflict with his then-girlfriend at an airport in Vancouver, where she set up shop in his basement and improvised the lyrics loudly in the hopes that she would hear him and catch the drift that he was, well, pretty angry. It makes sense considering how the guitar riffs have a nice grit to them and the pacing of ‘How You Remind Me’ has a harsher energy to it than some of Nickelback’s more melodramatic ballad work explored on the likes of ‘Far Away’ during the 00’s. The single starts off with the familiar lyric of “Never made it as a wise man/I couldn’t cut it as a poor man stealing” that Kroeger delivers in a husky voice as the laidback and casual sound of the mid-range guitars, in terms of tone and reverb, wind on up to a slightly more dissonant and aggressive style, although the instrumentation never becomes truly harsh, for lack of a more suitable term. The chorus has a rougher edge too, with rhythmic lines like “This is how you remind me, of who I really am” and “It’s not like you to say sorry/I was waiting on a different story” bordering between a spoken and a chanted delivery. The guitar riffs don’t progress a great deal, but the drums and the bass is more prominent in the chorus and increases the speed of the core melodies. There are elements of Punk and Grunge here, but they are measured and the violence of their mood is kept at a radio-friendly level. It also explores love-sickness lyrically, with fun sequences like “I’ve been wrong, I’ve been down” and “This time, I’m mistaken/For handing you a heart worth breaking” that sound assertive, but not completely outside of the realm of forgiveness or reconciliation for the dwindling relationship that Kroeger is referencing. As one of the most snobbish music critics out there – which my parents would probably tell you, believe me – I don’t mind ‘How You Remind Me’ very much. I’ll admit that the guitar riffs are a little bland, but it is a fun track that is a fun time and has it’s catchy moments. It’s not a masterpiece, but it is melodic enough and it established a few selling points for Nickelback that admittedly got recycled a little too frequently over the years, but there’s a reason why the tune was successful and I can see why Kroeger’s band would go down to the well for it as a point of reference for later work. A solid standalone single that still sounds fine today.
That brings us to the bottom of the page for another day! I’m going to be swiftly off now as I’m planning to see my family for two days running, but I’ll be back tomorrow to guide you through some gorgeous new experimental electronic music from an Enfield-based IDM producer who reached the top three of my ‘Best Albums Of 2021’ list with her Hyperdub-signed hit ‘Reflection’ that was also loved by Tom Ravenscroft.
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