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Reception
Review aggregator Metacritic reports that four of their six most recent studio albums since becoming a mainstream act, The Long Road, All the Right Reasons, Dark Horse, and Here and Now, have scores of 62, 41, 49, and 51, respectively, out of 100.
AllMusic reviewer Liana Jones complimented Nickelback after their commercial breakthrough, Silver Side Up; "what gives the group an upper hand over its peers is intensity and raw passion... Nickelback ups the ante by offering realistic storytelling that listeners can relate to."Following their 2008 album, Dark Horse, ChartAttack credited the band's success to knowing their target audience: "Chad Kroeger is a genius because he knows exactly what people want and precisely how far he can go. He turned out an extremely racy album that's loaded with songs about gettin' drunk and doin' it all without breaking any taboos, and with enough love and moral authority to grease its passage into the mainstream. Rejoice, North America. This is your world." Billboard gave praise to the band: "The bulletproof Nickelback provides affordable fun that promises good returns in hard times." Various fellow musicians like Chris Martin of Coldplay as well as R&B singers Timbaland and Keyshia Cole support the band.
The band has been criticized due to their over-use of themes involving "strippers, sex, prostitutes, drugs, sex, drinking and sex", and for being derivative in the music they create, too often sticking to formula and being repetitive instead of innovative. In November 2011, users of the music-oriented dating site Tastebuds.fm voted Nickelback as the number one musical turnoff, edging out Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. In May 2013, the readers of Rolling Stone magazine named Nickelback the second worst band of the 1990s, behind only Creed.