Nickelback has always seemed to me to be emblematic of everything that is wrong with mainstream rock: trite, monotonous, cliched--a least common denominator for people who still listen to hair metal stations on satellite radio. I was unfortunate enough to live through the 80's, and even have to admit to seeing Motley Crue, Cinderella, Bon Jovi, and Ratt live. (The Scorpions too, but I won't label them an 80's hair band.) Motley Crue went from edgy dick rock to commercial dick rock: 10 Seconds to Love became Girls, Girls, Girls. That transition led me to the conclusion that songs written about strippers or for strippers are never good. Never.
Witness Nickelback's new, stupid single "Something in Your Mouth." If 80% of the strippers in America haven't ground the pole to this song by the end of the year, I'll buy you a lap dance. And I'm willing to bet half of them will do so with a lollipop and a "pretty pink thong." I'm happy to admit that sex and angst are difficult to write songs about, at least if you want to write good songs. (Two exceptions: Rachael Yamagata's "Don't" and Bell X1's "Reacharound", the latter of which qualifies as mainstream rock.) But I'm equally sure that this new effort from Nickelback is no better than a hormonal poem the average high school freshman could produce. The saddest part of this story is that Nickelback actually utilized Mutt Lange on this project. The sound is different, thanks in part to Lange's input, but the songwriting is still Kroeger's awful work. And I hope that the nod to hip/hop throughout the song was Kroeger's awful idea, not Lange's. Kroeger sounds like he dug out all the Timbaland recordings he could find, assuming there are any available of Timbaland writing and rapping after a six-day mescaline high, and then wrote a cute little three-line rap to change up the band's monotonous sound.
I have another bold prediction regarding this song. People are going to love it. I mean love it. It's catchy. Wall of sound guitars, a throaty growl, a bit of a "white boy drunk on beer beat" to dance badly to, and lyrics about strippers and blowjobs. Oh, I know. The lyrics actually say she's sucking on her thumb, but does anyone actually believe that isn't the most obvious euphemism in the world? Combine paper-thin euphemisms with songwriting that includes the scintillating lyrics "dressed up like a princess, bettin' that her skin smells better than the scent of every flower in the desert, come on!" and you get music for lap dances. It's the only context in which music like this makes sense. Unfortunately, it won't just be played in strip clubs. And equally unfortunately, Nickelback is going to sell millions of copies of this single in various formats which will only encourage more bad music. I am hopeful that new projects like Chinese Democracy can revive mainstream rock, but I'm not all that hopeful. It may be a genre that has exhausted itself in its own vacuity. The fact that Kroeger felt the need to add faux hip/hop to his single signals that even the performers have little confidence in their product standing on its own.
