drake, post malone, taylor swift, ariana grande… yikes. I don’t listen to nickelback enough to know this album but I’m sure it’s better than the shit ones.Īnd then they left roadrunner… for republic. so again, pop rock that’s somewhere between mediocre and good. but also the guy who produced for hinder, puddle of mudd, skillet, simple plan, daughtry, and halestorm. and wouldn’t you know it, dark horse is ACTUALLY A GOOD ALBUM BY NICKELBACK? NO WAY, IT CANT BE TRUE!!!īut then their fifth was produced by the bad one again. oh wait, those are all ALSO pop acts, but at least they’re pop acts with heart and soul. Their fourth was also produced by that guy but thank fuck they also had creative control from the same guy who produced three of the best ac/dc albums, the three best def leppard albums, and songs by Tina Turner, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus, Eddie Money, and the Backstreet Boys. because yeah I like one or two songs on each… but they’re both such bad albums overall. and by different I mean fucking terrible. I WONDER WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN THE REASON WHY THISE TWO ALBUMS WERE A LOT MORE DIFFERENT THAN THE REST OF THEIR STUFF. gee I wonder what corporate meddling could have possibly turned nickelback from a post-grunge band into a formulaic pop rock band.
Their second, the long road, and the third, all the right reasons, were produced by the same guy who started theory of a deadman and my darkest days’ careers, wrote songs for hinder daughtry and three days grace… and also a fuckton of shitty country music. and it was copyrighted under roadrunner records which has a phenomenal discography anyway. the man is a grunge legend so obviously the work was good and those are good albums. Nickelback’s first successful album, silver side up, was produced by the same guy who did away from the sun by three doors down- another hit machine- which isn’t too surprising since he ALSO produced temple of the dog, blind melon, sap, and ten. You won’t hear many Poison songs in my 80’s rotation and though I might change the radio station for “Every Rose Has Its Torn”, I wouldn’t if “Unskinny Bop” or “Talk Dirty to Me” came on. None of their hits list ghostwriters so if they did that all on their own (I’m sure the producers helped some), it’s still impressive.
Still, if the music was truly secondary to the goal of getting easy pussy, as they themselves claim in Behind the Music, they had a good instinct for trite pop music. Sometimes party music doesn’t need to be anything other than party music but it can still have some heart to it like AC/DC or Rick Springfield. I think there is something a little too dialed in for mass appeal in their sound that results in a lack of honesty or authenticity. I would ultimately call it a “good but not great” song. “Talk Dirty to Me” is probably their best tune (in my limited awareness of their discography) but even then it’s a little too on the nose in cribbing tried and true progressions and running through the motions of young forbidden sexuality lyrical content. “I Want Action” is a bit substanceless in the same way as Katy Perry’s “California Girls” but it has a good hook (better than the Perry tune.) Same for “Nothing But a Good Time”. (It’s easy to say it sucks but go back and listen to how many shitty power ballads have been forgotten.) “Unskinny Bop” is meh. It does make me wonder though: Is Poison’s music as soullessly perfunctory as critics allege or is there something to it? Though I’d hate to admit it, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” is one of the better power ballads and has staying power. It’s funny to think that even when I was a baby, American mass culture was gaudy, tasteless, and fucking weird as all hell. It’s kind of delightful to go back and look at hair metal just past its aristea, when it was at its most excessive, neon, and feminine. There was also some weird subtext about them giving flyers to high school aged fans that probably wouldn’t have gone as under the radar today as it did in the late 90s/early 2000s. The forced “grunge killed hair metal wahh!!” narrative is very much there, like in most Behind the Music episodes about 80’s bands. You don’t get that with Zep or Sabbath even though they were critically panned at their inception. It’s kind of funny that they actually let the critics talk unabashed shit about them on that episode. I rewatched the first 20 minutes of Poison’s VH1 “Behind the Music” last night, having somewhat remembered it from when I was a kid.
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