![]() ![]() ![]() I think the first three songs that were in the category for first single were “Too Bad,” “Never Again,” and “How You Remind Me.” We sent them to the label and there was an unequivocal, “It’s going to be ‘ How You Remind Me ’ first. That’s why we don’t let Mike pick singles. Rumor has it Mike wanted “Never Again” to be the lead single instead of “How You Remind Me.” Is that true? Over Zoom from his home in Vancouver, B.C., Kroeger spoke to Billboard about “How You Remind Me,” Nickelback’s career-defining hit, the rock music landscape of the early 2000s, and just what it is like to become the “longest overnight success in the world, ” 20 years removed from that “ night. I think even some urban and country stations p layed i t.” I mean, HUGE! … There was a period I would get in the car and almost any station I’d hit on the radio you’d hear the song, whether it was rock, active rock, alt rock, hot AC, AC, pop, etc. ’ Little did I know how big it would ultimately become. “ It was a first listen, and I remember saying, ‘ Damn, that’s a big song, it is going to be a hit. “ To be honest, I got chills when the band played it for me ,” Burman says of hearing “How You Remind Me” for the first time. 6.) But it all started with “How You Remind Me.” which proved to be Nickelback’s calling card in later singles, like “Photograph” (which peaked at No. They had made it.įrom there, the ascent to stardom was swift: Sil ver Side Up ultimately went 6x platinum - largely thanks to the ubiquity of its lead single, but also the album’s moody melodies and chunky chord progressions. The band moved from clubs to arenas, passenger vans to tour buses. ![]() Eventually “How You Remind Me” became the most-played radio song of the entire decade - spun over 1.2 million times since its 2001 release - regardless of genre. In 2002, it was Grammy nominated for Record of the Year. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 that same year. The end result was a song that sold almost a million copies on its own in just under a decade, has been played over a million times on the radio and is pretty much responsible for putting one of the most hated and yet oddly popular rocks bands on the planet, on the map.The song, a mid-tempo power-ballad about a relationship on the outs - a far cry from the album’s other singles, like “Never Again,” a metallic treatise on domestic violence, or “Too Bad,” which centers absent fathers - was an instant hit, peaking at No. For example, although the song is clearly written about an ex-girlfriend, Kroeger made sure to never mentioned her by name and kept the lyrics as vague as possible so that it’d be easier for listeners to empathise with the overall message of the song (that breaking up fucking sucks). When the time came to write How You Remind Me, Kroeger took everything he’d learned and applied it. Kroeger analysed the shit out of every chord, lyric and hook he heard for pretty much all of 2001 and made detailed notes about what he discovered. Metal and conditioned!Īs it turns out though, Kroeger intentionally wrote the song knowing it contained all of the elements that made it a potential number one hit because he’d spent months painstakingly analysing every song on the radio to figure out why the fuck people enjoyed listening to them. Now you’re probably thinking that the song’s success was a freak occurrence, an example of the notoriously fickle public taking a shine to an obscure (at the time) Canadian band and a singer with ridiculously metal hair. If you spent any time whatsoever near a radio in 2002, you’re probably aware that this song went on to be a massive hit and it received such a ridiculous amount of airtime that some people started petitions to get radios to stop playing it. The band liked this suggestion and immediately incorporated it into the song, they then gave the technician a $5,000 bonus because despite what people might say about them, Nickelback aren’t a bunch of assholes. Apparently the only real problem the band had during the whole process was deciding how to make the chorus stand out, a problem which was solved when the drum technician in the studio suggested they have a big-ass pause before the song’s finale. All in the all the band spent about 20 minutes discussing the song and only 10 minutes recording it. According to various interviews Kroeger has given over the years, he walked into the studio with the lyrics and a rough idea of how the song would sound and then walked back out again half an hour later with a multi-platinum selling single. ![]()
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