Hate to Love: Nickelback

Nickelback is one of the most successful acts in music history — and they’re also the band haters most love to hate. This intimate portrait surveys the Canadian stadium rockers’ rollercoaster career and reveals the abiding love for music that keeps them together.

Nickelback started in Hanna, Alberta, where Ryan Peake and brothers Chad and Mike Kroeger were raised and where, in 1995, they founded the cover band Village Idiot. Along with a name change came the determination to compose original material. They recorded an EP and played shows at any venue that would have them. They had no idea what was coming.

In 2001, their single “How You Remind Me” went to number one on the mainstream and modern rock charts. By the time their subsequent singles “Too Bad” and “Never Again” followed suit, Nickelback was everywhere, receiving record-breaking airplay and touring the world’s biggest venues for an exhausting 18 months.

All success breeds backlash, but the hate piled on Nickelback at their commercial peak, accentuated by the advent of social media, took on a life of its own. For all the people screaming with love at shows, there were at least as many others yelling epithets at the band members in the street and bullying their children at school.

Hate to Love: Nickelback doesn’t shy away from the band’s topsy-turvy legacy, but it also finds enthusiastic advocates in the likes of actor Ryan Reynolds and Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. Throughout, the band speaks candidly about their past highs and lows — and getting energized about the next quarter century of growling vocals, colossal drums, gnarly guitars, and irresistible hard-rock anthems.

Official Selection, 2023 Toronto International Film Festival