“This How You Remind Me of Someday,” by Mikey Smith, is just Nickelback’s two biggest hits played simultaneously in different channels. It’s amazing how well they line up, not just in terms of intro/verse/chorus, but when the drums cut out, when the bass comes in, etc. At the time (2005), the takeaway from this was supposed to be “lol Nickelback sucks,” (“Smith says thatÂ’s grounds for fraud. He claims Nickelback is ripping off its fans, some of whom might not realize it”) but of course you could do this with lots of things. The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night” and “You Really Got Me” are virtually (and intentionally!) identical, and that’s fine: if Ray Davies wants to invent power-pop twice, he’s well within his rights to do so. The point, I think, is more about how pop music works. Like a sonnet, a pop song is not great because it invents a new form, but because it does beautiful things within those extremely strict constraints. Complaining that pop songs all have the same structure is like complaining that electronic music has too many synths: that’s literally the point of the genre. How can you take something very fixed and make it surprising and new is the question a pop songwriter faces every time they sit down to work.
Also, lol Nickelback sucks.
