Nickelback Reveal The Art Of Choosing The Perfect Set List

How does a band like Nickelback pick a set list? Is it curated from a gut instinct or fan expectation? Or are there dark arts at play?

According to bassist Mike Kroeger, the Canadian four-piece look to radio play statistics as a way of overcoming the difficulties when it comes to choosing the perfect set.

“It’s not easy,” says Kroeger in an interview with Australian magazine, Heavy. “It's been really, really hard to do that, because we have had songs that have done very well. That's a really great problem to have when you have a whole bunch of songs that people want to hear you play every night. Inevitably, we end up throwing out at least one or two Number One singles that we just don't have time to play, but the way that we do it, and the way that we've been figuring it out, is by using data from radio about what played well and what charted well — using that as a barometer for what people want to hear.

“When you go to Europe is when it's really interesting, because very often, you're playing a different country every night,” he continues. “They all have different radio proclivities that you really have to research. We'll be in one country like Germany where the single What Are You Waiting For? went over huge, and then we'll drive to some place like France where it didn't, and something else did well there, so we do a lot of swapping based on what data we can gather of what works.”

The band's latest album Feed The Machine is out now.