Nickelback - Here and Now

[Nightrain]

I think the real problem with Nickelback is to consistently write good to great songs. If they invite several other prominent writers to co-write the songs, i think it will be a better result, but Kroeger has stated that 'they love to write music and they think they're happy with the result and want to share the fans'.

 

Even back in the days, the most creative writers may run out of idea and it's no shame to collaborate with other writers to create a great song. That's why Diane Warren, Desmond Child, Mutt Lange, Richard Marx, or Bryan Adams sometimes contribute their writings to big bands.

 

Well, it's always good to be idealistic, but they need to see from both perspectives. They play the music they like but will that please many fans or not ?

 

But Nickelback might not paying attention to that because they're a major label band, so what the hell, even if they put out something shitty, the heavy promotion will help the sales, and check out the chart, I think the new album topped some countries chart, and with only a handful of great songs, they have at least 2 tracks on the Billboard and they still can ship 500k albums.

[TIM (2)]

What gave 'Dark Horse' that extra special something was Mutt Lange's involvement and in general that album kicked serious ass. 'Here And Now' isn't as good, but is pretty good in spots, especially 'Lullaby', 'We Stand Together' and 'Trying Not To Love You' which are great songs and make it worth buying just for those. On the minus side (and a point in which they fall down on every release imo) are some of the worst lyrics since that Panto Metal band released their album last month. All in all it's pretty much what you would expect a Nickelback album to sound like, so absolutely no surprises at all really.

 

Yeah I agree there's no surprises and you know what you're going to get, but this time around there just seem to be less great melodic songs (2 or 3) and weaker and more generic heavier songs. In fact, "Bottoms Up" and "Midnight Queen" are about as bad as Rock music gets IMO - the two worst songs on any CD I've bought this year. I've generally been a supporter of this band, and I always buy their music and have seen them live a few times, but even I can't defend albums of this quality. They will still argue against all the critics that people are still buying their albums, but - speaking as a fan - if they release any more albums like this then those sales will disappear.

[TIM (2)]

Btw: I read an interview with the band, and it seems they only actually wrote and recorded 11 songs this time around. No writing 25-30 songs and using only the best ones. Meaning no bonus tracks for deluxe versions or anything. So in the 3 years since the last album they wrote and recorded 11 new songs - lasting less than 40 minutes. WTF? People spend their hard-earned money buying your records so ffs MAKE THEM AS GOOD AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN, rather than just releasing an album with the first 11 songs you write.

[embrock]

Btw: I read an interview with the band, and it seems they only actually wrote and recorded 11 songs this time around. No writing 25-30 songs and using only the best ones. Meaning no bonus tracks for deluxe versions or anything. So in the 3 years since the last album they wrote and recorded 11 new songs - lasting less than 40 minutes. WTF? People spend their hard-earned money buying your records so ffs MAKE THEM AS GOOD AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN, rather than just releasing an album with the first 11 songs you write.

 

While I tend to agree that "Here and Now" is not a great album (still a good one IMO) and I definately love it when bands write many more songs than needed to compose an album, it was the other way around for me with Hinder: They wrote around 70 tracks for "American Nightmare", but it falls short compared to "Take it to the Limit", which was a collection of 11 (out of 13 I think) tunes.

[Geoff]

'All American Nightmare' may fall short of the pretty much perfect 'Take it to the limit' (like most albums do) but it's still an excellent CD, imo. I really struggle to find much worth listening to on the new Nickleback disc. I like 'Trying not to love you' and 'Don't ever let it end' and that's about all I can manage.