10 Amazing Songs By Terrible Artists
3. Far Away - Nickelback
People tend to be a little too eager to put a nail in Nickelback's coffin over and over again. For anyone who...well...has ears, their derivative attempts at post grunge and hard rock is what made the genre concave in on itself in the mid '00s. And we probably could have been better off for it if they had just decided to lean into their softer side a little more often.
Though the sound of getting a clean and polished Nickelback might sound like waxing a piece of dogsh*t to some people, Far Away actually has a lot more going for it. As far as the raw song, it's not too bad to hear Chad Kroeger actually dial it back a little bit, as he tries to win back a former flame. There's even a few lifts in the track that feel like they're from the heart rather than just made in a boardroom by record executives.
In fact, you could probably argue that this song has more in common with what was going on in country music at the time. Hell, if this had been released by someone like Trace Adkins around the same time, people probably wouldn't bat an eye. But it's Nickelback, so it has to be bad. In the case of Far Away though, it might be better not to be so close minded.