You also can’t discount the trend nickleback was the successor to. The 90s saw punk turn to grunge and gen x was telling the whole world they didn’t care. The frontmen at the center of the bands were so disillusioned from the inside that they were all dropping like flies while living people’s supposed dreams. It was very much an anti-establishment music movement expressed through self-sabotage and recklessness. That was then co-opted by, yes, clearchannel (now “Iheartradio.” Barf.) and turned into “post grunge.” This is your Stainds, your creeds, your PODs, and yes, your nicklebacks. Co-opting the sound with none of the attitude, none of the principled self destruction. If anything, they took the look and sound and made it a corporate forcefeeding. They are emblematic of so many things wrong music industry, while it’s direct predecessor was screaming and dying over what was wrong with the culture and the music industry. The music industry responded by prying that aesthetic off the corpses of music icons, cleansing it, and making it corpo-friendly. Kurt and Layne would’ve died all over again if they lived to see this shit.
C’mon, Keys To Ascension chased some trends, but it wasn’t-- oh I see.
Blink-182 was similarly emblematic but had none of the backlash. Some dorks found a properly talented drummer and turned pop-punk into juvenile dick jokes. This was a huge step down from its previous focus on erudite sociopolitical dick jokes.
Jonas Čeika has a video essay on Adorno’s critique of television… via the Emoji Movie. Adorno argues that any system worth hand-waving as “the system” cannot comprehend anything besides reinforcement of that system. Even direct populist rebellion simply gets treated as another valid path to a predefined outcome within that system. And that works. These power structures are effective and resilient. That’s how they became a problem.
You also can’t discount the trend nickleback was the successor to. The 90s saw punk turn to grunge and gen x was telling the whole world they didn’t care. The frontmen at the center of the bands were so disillusioned from the inside that they were all dropping like flies while living people’s supposed dreams. It was very much an anti-establishment music movement expressed through self-sabotage and recklessness. That was then co-opted by, yes, clearchannel (now “Iheartradio.” Barf.) and turned into “post grunge.” This is your Stainds, your creeds, your PODs, and yes, your nicklebacks. Co-opting the sound with none of the attitude, none of the principled self destruction. If anything, they took the look and sound and made it a corporate forcefeeding. They are emblematic of so many things wrong music industry, while it’s direct predecessor was screaming and dying over what was wrong with the culture and the music industry. The music industry responded by prying that aesthetic off the corpses of music icons, cleansing it, and making it corpo-friendly. Kurt and Layne would’ve died all over again if they lived to see this shit.
C’mon, Keys To Ascension chased some trends, but it wasn’t-- oh I see.
Blink-182 was similarly emblematic but had none of the backlash. Some dorks found a properly talented drummer and turned pop-punk into juvenile dick jokes. This was a huge step down from its previous focus on erudite sociopolitical dick jokes.
Jonas Čeika has a video essay on Adorno’s critique of television… via the Emoji Movie. Adorno argues that any system worth hand-waving as “the system” cannot comprehend anything besides reinforcement of that system. Even direct populist rebellion simply gets treated as another valid path to a predefined outcome within that system. And that works. These power structures are effective and resilient. That’s how they became a problem.