How did Nickelback gain a large fan base despite criticism of their music?

(Nickleback sucks! They’re the worst band ever! I can’t stand them. Why do so many people like them? So unoriginal!)

Nickleback! Nickleback!

(Yeah, it was great at first. But I have heard it a bit too much.)

Patti LuPone stuns Broadway as The Apologizer - AV Club

Dude, you heard that new single by that band, Nickleback? It’s awesome! Holy crap! That song is everywhere! It’s so cool!

(Wow! What’s with this band? So many people are going nuts for them? What’s so special about them? They had a decent song or two. But there’s no originality now. They’re just wearing themselves out chasing their own tail.)

Hey, man, that band I told you about, Nickleback? The dropped their sophomore. It’s really good. Check it out.

Why would the state lie about the Earth's shape? We know that it's flat, but why do they lie and tell us that it is a sphere?

I think it went something like this.

(It sounds a bit too much like they took what made them popular from the previous album and just did more of that.)

Yay! Nickleback!

Has Messi scored against the Buffon?

Hey, have you heard of this new band, Nickleback? Their first album is pretty cool.

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Nickleback are awesome! My new favourite band! I just got their fourth album. It totally rocks!

2000 times the volume of Earth! These scientists made a discovery, this planet in our solar system was twice as large 4.5 billion years ago. - Farmingdale Observer

(It really bugs me that such a boring, unoriginal band gets so much attention when there are loads of other way more interesting bands out there.)

Here’s my ranking of Nickleback’s discography. They don’t have a bad album at all. But some are better than others. In last place is their most recent album. I felt it was very uninspired. This track is the best one and that track is pretty good. But the rest of the album doesn’t do much for me…

(Nickleback? They suck. Who cares…)

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Something like that. Millions of people love them. Millions claim to hate them. The most honest criticism of the music is that it sounds like it’s being written deliberately for a particular market. I haven’t heard anything since around 2002 or so, so I can’t say for myself. They don’t suck as in bad musicians or bad song writers. They just sell millions of albums while other excellent bands struggle. That’s what the real problem is, I think.