Setting aside the band’s repetitive and boring music, cliched lyrics, inauthentically growly lead singer, and cringe music videos, why is it that so many of you are such Nickelback haters?
I kid, I kid — but, having said all that, a new documentary about Nickelback, which made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, takes a closer look at the widespread hate the band has attracted over the years. It’s even right there in the title of the doc, Hate to Love: Nickelback. The movie, according to the TIFF synopsis, “doesn’t shy away from the band’s topsy-turvy legacy, but it also finds enthusiastic advocates in the likes of actor Ryan Reynolds and Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan.
“Throughout, the band speaks candidly about their past highs and lows — and getting energized about the next quarter century of growling vocals, colossal drums, gnarly guitars, and irresistible hard-rock anthems.”
Moreover, the documentary from director Leigh Brooks is reportedly headed to Netflix exactly one week from this writing. Hate to Love: Nickelback, which has a 43% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes (lol) and a 100% audience score, is scheduled to begin streaming on Netflix in the US on June 26. That’s according to the Netflix-focused news and commentary site What’s On Netflix.
The documentary tells the band’s story starting from its early days in Alberta, Canada, including the breakout success of 2001’s How You Remind Me. Other massive hits followed, but so did a wave of online vitriol, and the film doesn’t shy away from discussing the personal impact of that hate on the band — as well as the group’s decision to come back with a new record and tour after a five-year break.
“To call Hate to Love a vanity project is giving it too much credit,” opines a Rolling Stone review of the documentary. “It is merely something that follows a tried-and-true formula, and uses it to tell the story of a highly divisive band that could really be the story of any band, or every band. This is how it reminds you that Nickelback is a Canadian rock group, and what more do you need to know than that?”
