I Wanna Be A Rock Star

I read yesterday that Nickelback is working on their 9th studio album. OHHHHH THE HUMANITY! Just when you thought things under Trump couldn't get any worse. OK, I'll admit, I kinda like Nickelback. Here's the thing, I like music of all kinds... Nickelback included. I'm not ashamed of it. Chad Krogers personality might be a little over the top, but you know they do have some pretty catchy tunes.

The hate for Nickelback has become really, really played out . . . not that it's any less deserved. So, the Houston Press has come up with a list of 10 acts you should hate INSTEAD of Nickelback. Here they are, and why they deserve your hate:

1.   Five Finger Death Punch: "They sound like a wood chipper plugged into an amp, and are a general embarrassment to metal."

2.  Maroon 5: "Their songs may not all sound the same, but they're the most unremarkable earworms in modern music, taking everything great about pop music and sucking the soul out of it."

3.  Pearl Jam: "Their songs are full of pseudo-profundity obscured by the incoherent warblings of Eddie Vedder.  Listening with a 21st-century ear, the music is self-indulgent and intolerable, a kind of angsty white-guy navel gazing."

4.  Pentatonix: "Whenever I hear [them], I wanna bang my head between two frying pans because then at least I would hear some bells . . . without the conventional support of things like drums, guitars and keys . . . it all rings hollow."

5.  Pitbull: "He's always pandering to his audience in the phoniest of ways . . . [and he should] stop reducing people to breasts and underwear, [like when] he raps 'In Lebanon, yeah, the women the bomb.' Seriously?"

6.  Red Hot Chili Peppers . . . "Anthony Kiedis has questionable songwriting capabilities, [and] he only seems to sing about California and relationships gone wrong.  It was fun for a while, but at some point, you have to change."

7.  Radiohead: "Radiohead is . . . a good band who has been labeled a great band by those who feel compelled to do so, for no real reason at all."

8.  Smashing Pumpkins: "It's amazing that the Smashing Pumpkins are still held in high esteem, given their downward trajectory for the past ten years . . . Billy Corgan still thinks he's God's gift to music."

9.  U2: "I totally get why people think Bono is an insufferable ass."

10.  Kanye West: Basically they say it's because hate is Kanye's fuel, and list some lyrics to back that up.  But if hate is his FUEL . . . maybe we should just ignore him.  I mean, do we want to feed THE KANYE?

Love 'em or hate 'em, I don't see any of them going away anytime soon. You can sit there and grumble and moan about them but they are laughing all the way to the bank.