Songoftheday 1/23/23 - Never made it as a wise man, I couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing...

 

 

"How You Remind Me" - Nickelback

from the album Silver Side Up (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (four weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 40

 

Today's song comes from the Canadian rock band everyone loves to hate, Nickelback, who started out under the name "Village Idiot" at the start of the 1990's with siblings Chad and Mike Kroeger on lead vocals and bass and cousin Brandon Kroeger on drums, with friend Ryan Peake as the lead guitarist. Changing their name, Nickelback released the EP (extended play single) Hesher in 1996. On the buzz from that they were given a change to release an album by the Canadian non-profit arts group FACTOR, and Curb, which contained four songs from the EP, came out the following year, half of those being re-recorded. Brandon left the band thereafter, eventually being replaced by Ryan Vikedal (to make Nickelback a half-Kroeger/half Ryan band). This set in time got heavy metal label Roadrunner to sign them, where they recorded The State which arrived in 1998. The first single from the record, "Leader Of Men", became a decent rock radio hit in America, climbing to #8 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock airplay chart, along with peaking at #21 on the Alternative Rock radio counterpart. Its follow-up, "Breathe", also made the Mainstream Rock top ten at #10, and also got to #21 on Alternative rock radio. The State album climbed to #130 on the Billboard 200 sales tally in 2000. 

In 2001, Nickelback returned with their third full-length disc Silver Side Up, produced by the band with Rick Parashar. The lead single was the ballad "How You Remind Me", written by the band with lyrics by Chad. In it, Chad is having a romantic fight and expressing how he feels put down and put aside, with the snide "are we having fun yet?" as the tag that got people to remember. The production is crisp and organic for that kind of post-grunge rock, and the music video alters the script a little to have Chad haunted by the presence of a former love...

"How You Remind Me" went all the way to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 on their first time on the list in December of 2001, their first and so far only chart topper there, and was the trade magazine's biggest hit for 2002. On the radio, the song spent ten weeks at the top of the Mainstream Top-40 pop airplay chart, and led both the Mainstream and Alternative Rock radio lists for thirteen weeks. The ballad was so massive it took nineteen weeks at #2 on Billboard's older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, cresting the arrival of hard rock onto that platform, while just missing the top ten on the Adult Album Alternative (or Triple A) Rock radio list. Internationally, the song hit #1 in Austria, Ireland, and Denmark, and made the top ten in Australia (#2), Belgium (#2 Flanders/#4 Wallonia), Germany (#3), Switzerland (#3), the United Kingdom (#4), Sweden (#4), New Zealand (#4), and Norway (#4), and reached the top-40 in France (#11), Romania (#13), Italy (#14), the Netherlands (#17), and Finland (#18). The Silver Side Up album, despite having the release date of September 11th, 2001, went on to sell over six million copies, and spent 92 weeks on the Billboard 200 sales tally, with a week at #2. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, "How You Remind Me" was nominated for Record Of The Year, which went to jazz-pop singer Norah Jones for "Don't Know Why". 

The second single from Silver Side Up, the moody uptempo "Too Bad", topped the Mainstream Rock radio chart for three weeks, while getting to #6 on the Alternative side, but stalled right under the pop Hot 100 top-40 at #42 in America, though on the radio, the song hit #23 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart and #31 on the Adult Top-40 list. However it scored a second top ten hit in the UK at #9 and in Ireland at #6. That was followed by the dark and groovy "Never Again", which scored a hat trick of a third Mainstream Rock radio #1 hit for three weeks (and #24 on the Alternative list), while "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #124. After the success of the album, Roadrunner re-released their debut Curb, which made the Billboard 200 for a week at #182 in 2002. Nickelback will be back to the series.

(7/10)

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Here's the band in concert in 2002..

and for their Live at Home concert DVD from the same year..

they acknowledged their breakthrough with the song on their Live From Sturgis DVD from 2006...

and lastly on tour in 2018...

Up tomorrow: this boyband is outta here.