I strongly prefer when Tom’s contrarian streak leads him to find something redeemable in a song that’s been dismissed by the conventional wisdom, as opposed to dumping on a harmless band like Vertical Horizon.
I don’t share his enthusiasm for this particular song, though; I feel like the key change is a little watery and the song doesn’t quite take off the way it’s trying to. I think Nickelback’s finest hour is probably Rockstar, which at least has a sense of humor. Their other top 10’s are either dumb or bland, or both.
Chad Kroeger’s peak is Hero, for me. I actually found that song a bit moving at the time. The Spider-Man/9-11 confluence was hard to resist.
But I think there’s something that’s missed about Nickelback’s outsize success: They’re a country band in all but name. It would take adding 10 seconds of steel guitar to put Photograph, Rockstar or HYRM into the same bucket as a hit song by Lonestar or Rascal Flatts. That’s the secret to the alleged disappearance of rock; basic, unchallenging rock-pop has 100% transitioned into basic, unchallenging rock-country. That’s where the (mostly white) audience that preferred rock to R&B/hip hop went. And it’s a huge audience. Even if only 20 or 30% of Nickelback’s record sales were from the country fans, it would still be a big boost to their commercial fortunes.

And there you have it. Y’all were waiting on Tom to rip this song to shreds, and he actually loves it, lmao. You go, Tom Breihan!

“How You Remind Me” is a song I’ve always associated with a toxic relationship that I have with someone in my family—who is an expert at always making you feel microscopic and useless. I have sung this one while angry crying, or drunk, or both, more than a couple of times. Does that make me super-uncool? Oh, well. I’ve never have claimed or had aspirations to be a music taste influencer. Anyhoo… I don’t like anything else by Nickelback (“Photograph” is a 3 and “Rockstar” is a 1), but I’ve always loved this song well enough to give it an 8. Today, just to be messy, I’ll go higher; it’s a 10.

Oh, and I can’t believe that there will be no more rock number ones. That’s sad, especially for many TNOCS members.

or maybe they just thought these songs were better

Meanwhile, on the me side of town….

It was about this time that I released an album under the name of X Takes The Square. I had been in a band through the late 90s and we broke up when the singer decided to move to New York to pursue a solo career. 

We had already started recording and I had paid for the studio time (That’ll teach me to have a good day job.), and I had written most of the songs, so I decided to keep going. I asked the singer to do all her tracks before she left town and then invited my favorite local musicians to come in and play guitar or whatever. There’s a total of 18 musicians so it’s by no means a solo project, but it’s not really a band either.

A lot of it sounds dated now, which makes sense twenty years later, but some parts are OK. I’ll let you decide which this is. It features Dana Victoria on vocals, Bing Futch on Appalachian mountain dulcimer, Mark Empire on drums, and me on 8-string bass and keyboards. It’s also the song from which I get my handle.

https://youtu.be/fGL6xeiYV4Y

The “Always On Time” video makes me think the director saw the video for “It Wasn’t Me” and didn’t realize it was a satire.

Here is a fun game that you can play at home with a single six-sided die, rolled three times:
1 Grimes, 2 MIA, 3 Ye, 4 Matt Pike, 5 Nicki Minaj, 6 Gene Simmons
1 Denies, 2 Feuds with, 3 Defends, 4 Seen with, 5 Accused of, 6 Finally Gets
1 Vaccines, 2 Qanon, 3 Artificial Intelligence, 4 Elf Ears, 5 Robocop, 6 A Bear

Outside of the obvious Kanye stuff, Elon Musk is such a massive fuckhead.

A great one by Bill Withers:
https://youtu.be/CICIOJqEb5c

Shouldn’t M.I.A. have to pay for her lies as well? I mean, her name suggests that she’s missing in action but she literally will not go the fuck away.

Astonishing to hear this from the guy who registered an account to hate on Black Lives Matter

Tom has clearly never had a $5 falafel bowl from Falafel Inc. and it shows