About

"Photograph" is a 2005 alternative rock song by the Canadian rock band Nickelback.^[1] On YouTube and elsewhere online, the music video has been widely parodied through series of photoshopped parodies and video remixes featuring the band's lead singer Chad Kroeger holding a framed photograph.

Origin

On September 20th, 2005, "Photograph" was released as the first single for Nickelback's fifth studio album All the Right Reasons. That year, a music video for the song was released, which begins with Chad Kroeger walking alone on a street while holding up a framed picture of himself and Nickelback's producer Joey Moi as the lyric "Look at this photograph" is heard in the background (shown below).

Spread

On March 23rd, 2007, YTMND user NorthAmericanDangerD created a page titled "Nickelback is Racist", featuring a GIF of Kroeger holding a framed photograph of a man in blackface (shown below).

On December 9th, 2008, YouTuber bloomingtonbros uploaded a parody of the song, in which he holds up several photographs of his home town and high school (shown below). In the first seven years, the video gained over 1.1 million views and 1,700 comments.

On September 6th, 2011, YouTuber hell yeah uploaded an edited clip of the music video, featuring a Droste effect of Kroeger holding the picture frame (shown below, left). On December 10th, 2012, College Humor posted a parody of the song titled "Look at This Instagram," garnering more than 7.2 million views and 12,000 comments in the next three years (shown below, right).

On February 23rd, 2014, SoundCloud user fishstik uploaded a parody of the song titled "Nicklolback," garnering upwards of 190,000 plays and 4,400 favorites over the next two years (shown below).

On July 6th, YouTuber Old Man Jenkins uploaded a Source Filmmaker video featuring the fishstik parody song (shown below, left). On November 3rd, YouTuber SebsterBL uploaded an edited clip of the Nickelback video with a picture of the naked banana in the photograph frame (shown below, right).

On April 27th, 2015, YouTuber Euphemism for Magic uploaded a video titled "Nickelstats," in which Kroeger is shown holding a framed bar graph while singing "Look at this graph" (shown below). The same day, the video was submitted to the /r/youtubehaiku^[2] subreddit, where it received upwards of 4,500 votes (95% upvoted) and 120 comments in the first two weeks.

Donald Trump's Tweet

On October 2nd, 2019, Donald Trump tweeted^[3] a "Photograph" parody video featuring a picture of Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and a person labeled a "Ukraine Gas Exec." Shortly after, the video was removed based on a copyright claim.

Various Examples

Photoshopped Images

Videos

Search Interest

External References