The core of the band hails from Hanna, Alberta. They are now based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Nickelback's climb to mainstream was helped by Cancon, the Canadian law that requires a certain percentage of music played on Canadian radio to be from Canadian bands. Their second album, The State, propelled them to mainstream status even before Silver Side Up.
Nickelback has achieved major success on rock radio, scoring ten Top 10 hits since 1999. They have also crossed over to mainstream radio, scoring multi-format smashes on their last two albums. Coincident with the release of the first Spiderman film's soundtrack was the single "Hero," sung by band leader Chad Kroeger and Saliva singer Josey Scott.
Nickelback released their Silver Side Up album on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. On that morning, they were on their tour bus traveling across Pennsylvania less than 10 miles from where Flight 93 crashed. To some, the first single, "How You Remind Me", became an anthem of sorts in memory of the fallen Americans on 9/11 and became one of the most played songs in the U.S in 2001 and much of 2002.
Critics have often pointed out that "How You Remind Me", a Nickelback song that received extensive airplay in 2001, and "Someday", a popular song in 2003, are almost identical except for lyrical content. A clever mash-up combined the two songs into a single track, "How You Remind Me of Someday", which has circulated the internet for years on humor sites and music messageboards.
Nickelback are also heavily criticized as commercial sellouts by grunge fans because of their simple radio-friendly sound, which makes frequent use of digital post-processing. Many fans of Nickelback argue that it is tough to judge the band by their singles, as is the case with many mainstream bands.
The band were booed offstage by a Portuguese festival crowd, who threw rocks and water bottles at the band. Kroeger's response to the hecklers was the inquiry, "Are there any Nickelback fans in Portugal?" The lackluster response led Kroeger and Vikedal to display a vulgar hand gesture to the crowd, leaving stage after only a few songs. The reason for this was revealed that Nickelback was asked to play at a heavy metal festival, which they were reluctant to do becuase they didn't feel that they fit in with the genre of the bands that were at the festival. However, the money they were offered was so substantial that they couldn't turn it down. The predictable result was that fans who wanted to be treated to plenty of headbanging hits heard How You Remind Me and flipped.
CANADA