Repetition v. the Road Not Taken

Many musicians and bands are hit with the criticism that all of their songs sound the same. I used to complain about this too, and it was always a band that was easy to hate. For a millennial, the easiest target has always been Nickelback. You wouldn't dare say that all of Leonard Cohen's songs sound the same, or the Beatles, or Bob Dylan. No, it has to be the sort of act where no one will really challenge you. Nickelback has always been everyone's safe space of hate, which is odd for a band that has sold fifty million albums. You might say people don't criticize those other musicians because all of their songs don't in fact sound like one another. However, in those cases, their careers are over. And the one who is still going (Dylan) has been doing it for sixty years, so we have a viable sample that's long enough to illustrate the point: If you create long enough, variation will just happen. My gut tells me that if Nickelback goes for six decades, their songs will not all sound the…