How You Remind Me
by Nickelback
- 86
- BPM
- C minor
- Key
- 5A
- Camelot
- 45
- Danceability
- 0
- Acousticness
Chad Kroeger had the first four lines of "How You Remind Me" in his black book of notes. After an argument with his girlfriend in their Vancouver apartment, he went down to the basement, switched on his recording microphone and started improvising loudly, hoping she would hear how upset he was. She told him it sounded great. In 45 minutes to an hour he had the lyrics, melody and chords. He said it was a sarcastic look at relationships, and that "Are we having fun yet?" is full sarcasm.
He brought a skeleton version to Nickelback as a last-minute addition a week before they started recording Silver Side Up. The album was recorded at Greenhouse Studios in Burnaby, British Columbia, mixed at Armoury Studios in Vancouver, and mastered at Sterling Sound in New York City.
Released on July 17, 2001, as the lead single, it reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's only American chart-topper. Billboard ranked it the top single of 2002. It was the most-played song in the United States that year across all formats. It received a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year and went nine-times platinum in 2026. Greg and Colin Strause directed the video, which has Kroeger rejecting an ex-girlfriend played by model Annie Henley.
How You Remind Me runs at 86 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.79 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 698 ms. It is in C minor, Camelot 5A, which shares its notes with Eb major and mixes cleanly with F minor and G minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.