Billboard Names Nickelback the Biggest Rock Band of the 21st Century (Well, Sort Of)
Never made it as a wise man, but neither did the person who put together this list at Billboard of the Top 100 Artists of the 21st Century. I guess the list should really be called “Top 100 Artists of the 21st Century So Far” considering that the century is only a quarter of the way over, but hey, maybe Billboard just thinks they’re that good that they can name all the best artists of the upcoming century this far in advance.
Unsurprisingly, considering that rock has allegedly been on the decline in popularity in the 21st century, the top artists on the list are all solo pop stars, with Taylor Swift ranked as #1. But, as Loudwire points out, if you go down the list until you get an actual rock band, the highest ranked one happens to be Nickelback at number 26. Well, sort of.
While Loudwire calls Nickelback the highest ranked rock artist on the list, to get that result they had to skip past Maroon 5 at number 11, a band which Wikipedia classifies as “pop rock.” Still, they’re somewhat more of a pop act than a rock act, so I can see why Loudwire might skip past them. But ranking either one as the best rock band of the century is patently ridiculous.
Also unsurprising is the fact that there are very few rock bands on the list at all, but a few made the cut with Linkin Park coming in at #37, Creed ranked at #66, Three Doors Down at #76, and so on. Oh, and there are a few other bands on the list that straddle that nebulous line between pop and rock on the list, such as Imagine Dragons, the band that The Devil will force me to listen to on repeat in Hell.
There’s no real explanation as to the methodology for this list so I assume that someone just pulled it out of their ass. But it’s kind of ridiculous that, of the very, very few rock bands on their list, two of them are the most consistently ridiculed bands in the entire genre, namely Nickelback and Creed. For all the time that Billboard has spent compiling lists of what’s popular, they seem to have spent little time on social media seeing all the memes about how abysmally bad Nickelback and Creed are. The list ends up making Billboard look about as laughable as both of those bands put together.
The full list is here, but it is behind a paywall. I’m sure you’re so disappointed.
