Nickelback: should Canadian pride outweigh Aussie derision?

They are considered one of the most irritating bands in the world.

Derided by critics, but loved by fans, their CDs sell in the millions. Their formulaic and insipid songs are permanently lodged in the minds of a generation.

So why aren't Australian police seeking The Wiggles for crimes against music as opposed to Nickelback?

Or perhaps they should be turning their attention to some unsolved musical mysteries: Air Supply? Men At Work? Kylie Minogue?

"It's an outrage!" says Dalhousie musicology professor Jacqueline Warwick.

"There is a point at which poking fun at Nickelback becomes kind of itself a tired cliché."

Jumping the mockery shark?

As it turns out, this is the second kick at the Nickelback can for Queensland police, who announced plans to publicly destroy one of the band's CDs last December.

No doubt Queensland residents sleep soundly at night knowing their streets are safe from middle-of-the-road rock, as opposed to, say, criminals. But have police jumped the mockery shark with the wanted poster?

And will Canadians finally rise to defend an insult against a band that, like it or not, is part of our national fabric?

Following the Aussie stunt, even the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guardian announced that 'Piling on Nickelback is Old Hat'.

"Come on, world: give the boys a break. Nickelback's hate-tank is full," writes the newspaper's Luke Holland. 

"Let's do something more productive and direct our ire at those who truly deserve it."

In Australia, Dalhousie professor Warwick has written about lead singer Chad Kroeger's place in the pantheon of white male singers. While admittedly not a "Nickelback-ologist", she says Kroeger's singing grates on a lot of the haters.

"A lot of people really dislike his voice and talk about it as too gritty, it seems like an affectation," she says.

"Whereas that kind of aching, growling vocal timbre from Kurt Cobain signaled anguish and artistic integrity and a willingness to suffer to get his music out."

A core of anti-fans

But Warwick says the band clearly has something to say. And she also believes their lyrics are more nuanced than critics give them credit for.

"I'm not letting them off the hook for some really quite sexist statements and objectification of women," she says.

"But that is in keeping with a certain kind of rock masculinity."

Warwick likens Nickelback-hatred to disdain of Celine Dion.

Both, she says, have a core of 'anti-fans,' which she describes as "people who are willing to invest energy and effort into showing how much they dislike an artist."

But Dion has overcome her anti-fans to receive the Order of Canada.

Does a similar honour await Kroeger? And will that be what it takes to stir the kind of grudging national pride that would make even a non-Leafs fan defend the team in the face of the Australian derision?

And let's face it, at least the band delivers to the stadiums they fill.

Live and let listen?

Calgary-based fitness columnist James Fell lands squarely in Nickelback's anti-fan base.

"I don't hate them because it's fashionable," he wrote in one commentary.

"I hate them because they suck."

A Rush fan himself, Fell says he's happy to live and let others listen to what makes them happy. But he can't place his nationality above his musical taste.

"I don't think that Canadians need to rally support to Nickelback because Australia's poking fun at them," he says. 

"They don't seem to care too much about the fact that some people hate them because they've got lots of people who love them."

So, in reference to Nickelback's How You Remind Me, maybe that's how Kroeger's reminded of what he really is.