Look at this photograph!
Every time we do, it instantly brings to mind one of the biggest songs of @Nickelback's career, which was released 15 years ago on the album #AlltheRightReasons. Here’s some fun facts about it.
Photograph went double platinum in the U.S. and hit No. 1 all over the world. Not bad for a song that, Chad Kroeger told us in 2017, is about “nostalgia” for growing up in the small town of Hannah, Alberta. “You can't go back to your childhood," he said.
The first line Kroeger wrote for the song also ended up being the song's iconic first line.
"The photograph I'm holding in the music video is the photograph," he says.
"I [was] just spitting stuff out," says Kroeger. "Next thing I know, there was a line, 'What the hell is on Joey's head?'"
It’s the question of a generation: what IS on the head of the band's friend/producer Joey Moi? It looks like the Stanley Cup, which isn’t the case.
“It was just a big, very well-polished champagne chiller,” says Kroeger. “We were just messed one New Year's Eve, out of our minds, and someone took that picture."
The song also confesses to some of Kroeger’s criminal activity, with lines like, “Criminal record says I broke in twice/ I must have done it half a dozen times."
The incident in question refers to Kroeger breaking into his high school in order to steal money from the office safe — it was actually 11 times, but “‘half a dozen’ fit better rhythmically,” he confesses, unworried. “I've done my time."
Kroeger and co. returned to the same school to shoot the music video for “Photograph,” and he was saddened by what he saw of the town.
“It was shrinking, so many places were being torn down, so many of the shops had closed and were for lease," he says. "But it didn't matter …. because there were still friends there.”
All the Right Reasons, which is getting a 15th anniversary reissue from @Nickelback, would go on to produce five top 25 singles and it became the first rock album of the 2000s to contain three top 10 hits — none more popular than "Photograph."
Read more: cbc.ca/radio/q/blog/t…
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