Nickelback, Photograph | The Flops

In the seventh edition of The Flops (2026), we examine the questionable “Photograph” recorded by the Canadian rock band Nickelback.

Like damn, bruh! Sis! C’mon! You thought it was bound to hit, but instead it was total shit – nothing but dookie 💩!  The songs that appear in The Flops didn’t hit or are perceived to have underperformed or underwhelmed for a given artist. Flops are even more detrimental when the artist is considered a superstar and rarely misses the mark. Flops can even be successful, even if the quality sucked. Or maybe they’re not-so-bad, but they bombed on the charts.  Regardless, this is the column to highlight abject failure. In the seventh edition of The Flops (2026), we examine the questionable “Photograph” recorded by Nickelback.

OMG 🙄! Ugh, I will NEVER understand why Nickelback was as popular as they were. The Canadian rock band led by Chad Kroeger is by no means a flop in the commercial sense. They were very big in the day, baby! “Photograph,” the ‘objectionable’ song at hand, is a multi-platinum single. It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 👀.  Let that sink in. Its parent album, All the Right Reasons, released in 2005, is the rare diamond-certified LP 👀. Somebody really fan-boyed this group, or they wouldn’t have the commercial accolades they earned. But just because a song was hella successful doesn’t mean it is a critical darling. “Photograph,” written by Chad Kroeger, Mike Kroeger, Daniel Adair, and Ryan Peake, and produced by Joey Moi, has been much maligned for a long, long time.

Why is “Photograph,” a bop by commercial standards, such a flop by critical standards? Well, from my perspective, Kroeger’s gritty voice is an acquired taste.  It’s the tone, particularly, which is overextended in the overblown chorus 😳. Chad has some powerful pipes, but unfortunately, unlike one of my college friends, I don’t find his voice to be sexy 🤷🏾‍♂️. In some ways, “Photograph” possesses what I look for in a pop hit. The melody is tuneful, BUT annoyingly so.  Beyond the acquired vocals and irritating melody, the songwriting makes me roll my eyes.  That first verse is more than enough to take me out. I couldn’t care less about “What the hell is on Joey’s head” in that damn photograph! Yes, it’s a memory song, but, meh… who cares? “Kim’s the first girl I kissed / I was so nervous that I nearly missed,” Kroeger sings in the second verse, and continues, “She’s had a couple of kids since then / I haven’t seen her since God knows when.” Ugh, ugh, ugh! But, as cringe-inducing as the verses are, it’s that chorus that earns the biggest thumbs down 👎:

“Every memory of looking out the back door

I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor

It’s hard to say it, time to say it

Goodbye, goodbye.”

I was in college during the Nickelback/ “Photograph” craze; I remember it was way overplayed and, honestly, much ado about nothing. Nothing Shakespearean about this song.  When I did a Google Search asking why people hate “Photograph” by Nickelback, the AI Overview, which isn’t always reliable, mind you, nailed the reasons why it is disliked: Cheesy nostalgia, vocal delivery, formulaic songwriting, airplay saturation. All things that made me loathe and still loathe “Photograph” to this day. Although it made Chad Kroeger and company some serious paper, the song is a big-time ‘No for me, dawg!’

---

Nickelback » All The Right Reasons » The All Blacks B.V. » 2005

Nickelback, Photograph: The Flops No. 7 (2026) [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; The All Blacks B.V.; Will Oliveira from Pexels; Gordon Johnson, OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay]

---