Because it’s Nickelback, the instinct is to dislike it, and that’s too bad. The meaningless, over-sexed pseudo-poetry that Chad Kroeger spews would be viewed as harmless and, to some people, charming. If it appeared on a Red Hot Chili Peppers album, people would say they were returning to their funk roots with a psychedelic beat. Flo Rida shows up for a funk number with a horn section called “Got Me Runnin’ Round”. Yet not all of this album, a slickly produced mixture of club dance and cock rock, is … bad, exactly. It’s almost unlistenable to a serious music fan, but that’s why it works as a radio single surely, there are people in clubs who dance to this and enjoy singing along to lines like “Everybody needs a leap of faith/ When are you taking yours?/ What are you waiting for?” The song’s production is torturously annoying: A squish effect pans from the left to the right channel, an a cappella swell hits at the most “meaningful” moment, and a bass drum fill finishes the thing. It feels like Nickelback have been poring over Dance Music for Dummies. “What Are You Waiting For” sounds like a Corona-core country song written by Jimmy Buffett and covered by the worst DJ you’ve ever heard. There are also things here that no one should ever like. At its core, Nickelback’s new album is one almost anyone could enjoy if they wanted to. If you removed the terrible lyrics and the even worse singles, some people who berate Nickelback would openly love this album without a fear of being disowned by their friends. When it comes to No Fixed Address, Nickelback are acceptable. They still have the reputation of a one-trick-pony that rewrites the same hit over and over despite the fact that they’ve been changing their sound since, at the latest, 2007. But even as some critics warm up to them with time, Nickelback have found a way to remain the one band that everyone shits on. Is there really anything inherently worse about the Canadian rockers than their peers Three Doors Down, P.O.D., or Daughtry? Probably not. Why did Nickelback become Nickelback? This question is perpetually hard to answer from a critical perspective.
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