"Q:How long have you been playing the piano?"
"A:I honestly don't remember. My parents made me start lessons in grade school, but I don't remember at what age. I hated every second of it at the time."
"Q:Are you planning to branch out of your videos and make your own music in the near future?"
"A:You know, my dad keeps telling me that I need to write music. He paid for all those piano lessons, he might as well see some end product, right? My only response is basically that I have no desire whatsoever to write music. None. These videos, they just flow right out of me, and I could do them all day. Sit down and compose something? Probably not gonna happen. I started making these videos because I was struck by the idea and then I suddenly couldn't stop myself from making the videos. Doing this is easy. Making my own music? Just never felt like it."
"Made gross, pervy comments about (and to) every female on this site, including Spoony's girlfriend, and including Spoony (I am apparently not going to be invited to any Spooning with Spoony videos -- I'm not up to his standards, which hurts)"
"Let's see, there was this little conversation with one of the anime people"
"Them: i'm editing a video. Manga related"
"Me: ahhhh"
"Me: i've heard of manga"
"Me: it's some kind of japanese thing"
"Them: yep!"
"Me: is it a food of some kind?"
"Them: ... close enough."
"Complained about not being paid enough"
"Bitched to Mike Michaud about not being invited to the Molossia invasion just because I had not technically joined the site yet when it happened"
"Just generally been a belligerent drunk asshole in every single conversation I've had with the TGWTG crew"
"Vandalized the wiki"
"Announced my plans to supplant The Nostalgia Critic and make it ToddInTheShadows.com"
"Q:What would you say your least favorite song from each decade you've been alive during is?"
"A:Again, that's a pretty big question. I'm not sure I can give you any definitive answers, but I can tell you that '80s-wise, I've always despised Billy Joel's "It's Only Rock and Roll to Me" for reasons I'm not sure of. "We Built This City" is also a good answer, if too obvious. More recently, I just encountered Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky" (a UK #1 single in 1988!) and it is just fucking abysmal.
'90s: My answer is almost certainly "What's Up" by 4 Non Blondes. An inexcusable record on every level.
'00s: Let's see. "Crank Dat Soulja Boy" is a good, though again too obvious, answer. "Break Up" by Mario still stuns me with how bad it is. "Welcome to My Life" by Simple Plan is deeply offensive to me, as is "The Wait" by 30 Seconds to Mars. If I want to get controversial, I'll go ahead and say it: "New Slang" by The Shins. I really, really just despise The Shins, they are the sum total of everything I hate about indie rock."
"Q:What are you're least favourite songs of all time?"
"A:Off the top of my head:
"Break Up" by Mario
"Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks
"Welcome to My Life" by Simple Plan
"A Milli" by Lil Wayne
"Lips of an Angel" by Hinder
"Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood
"If Everyone Cared" by Nickelback
"How Do You Like Me Now?!" by Toby Keith"
"Q:When did you decide that pop music was your "genre" (to put it loosely) of sorts to follow? You said it yourself, for a guy your age it's certainly an odd choice to follow the likes of some of music's most loved and hated artists. I can respect it of course; I've got some strange interests myself But anyway, what got you into it?"
"A:For the longest time, I didn't listen to pop music. Then some time in 2007 my antenna came off my car and I only got the pop station and the classic rock station. Since I didn't have any money to fix it, and since I didn't want to hear "More Than a Feeling" five times every day before lunch, I gravitated to the pop station. And it stuck. It's not that I actually like all or even the majority of music I hear there; it's just that -- and I realize how this sounds -- I got bored hearing music I like. (I used to spend a lot more money on CDs; now I don't have the money or the time.) Meanwhile, the pop music station is always changing. And I guess it's still a novelty for me to be plugged into the Top 40. For the vast majority of my life, I was nearly completely ignorant about what was popular. My parents actually BANNED me from listening to anything but country music for most of my life, and when I did start developing my own tastes I mostly paid attention to alternative and classic rock. Now I'm fascinated with the pop world. It's so colorful and weird -- much weirder, I'd argue, than much of the independent, non-mainstream music that I hear. And I'm also fascinated by how of-the-moment it is; the fact that much of this stuff is ridiculously huge but is going to disappear from the cultural memory banks just a few months later is extremely compelling to me. It's like being there for an orchid that only blooms once a year. I read down the list of big hits from 2004 and I don't know any of them, and that bothers me. I feel like I missed out on something."
"Now here's a question. Nickelback has long been put upon as the worst mainstream band in recent memory. How did they earn this reputation? Well, there are a lot of reasons, so I'll try to enumerate them:
They fucking suck. The most obvious and most important of the reasons is that they are simply a terrible band, and worse than most other bands. Their sheer lack of quality is undeniable and staggering. I have problems with all the other artists you listed, but to even suggest that John Mayer or Kanye West are somehow worse than Nickelback is insanity. Clinical insanity.
Consistency. Not only do they suck, they ALWAYS suck, in exactly the same way every time. Barring their newest album (in which superproducer Mutt Lange did his best to polish a turd), none of their songs was measurably better or worse than their others.
Sheer volume. I can honestly think of several worse bands than Nickelback (Hinder, Saving Abel), but none with their sustained popularity. Their popularity has something to do with the backlash, but it's not just people hating them for being popular. It's that their popularity has granted them the opportunity to repeatedly pollute the airwaves day after day after day. Their second major-label album had FIVE singles. The one after that, SEVEN. The newest album has EIGHT. EIGHT FUCKING SINGLES.
Unsexiness. Nickelback are an ugly, ugly band. Ugly lyrically, ugly sonically, and most of all, ugly visually. The Traveling Wilburys look like the Backstreet Boys next to Nickelback. Chad Kroeger has one of the worst voices in rock and roll, and it's used almost exclusively for moan-y angsty crap about how he misses his girlfriend. It's much like Stanley the Troll in NC's newest review: hideously unattractive and disgustingly weak.
So to sum up: They're treated like the worst thing ever because they fucking deserve it. Fuck Nickelback".
"Seriously, you have no idea how much I hate video editing. It is an awful, terrible process."
"As far as I'm concerned, country music should be about one thing: Misery. Misery and drinking...[Need You Now] is what country music is supposed to be about: bitterness, missed connections, and pain, and utter hopelessness."
"Mathew: Rendering the new episode from earlier whilst cleaning out. Man, I really should stop leaving my scripts everywhere."
"Brad: Sometimes I print my scripts on the back of old scripts."
"Mathew: It's not so much I lost a script as I just filled my room with old ones out of nostalgia and laziness. Not a good combo.
"Todd: When I moved out of my apartment I found stray scripts that were more than a year old."
