Nickelback’s ‘Photograph’ Resurfaces after Presidential Tweet

According to Nielsen Music, U.S. streams and sales for Nickelback’s 2005 song “Photograph” surged following the song’s inclusion in a meme tweeted by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, October 2nd.

“Photograph” was the lead single from All the Right Reasons, Nickelback’s fifth studio album, and a one-week No. 1 on the Billboard 200 dated Oct. 22, 2005 (coincidentally nearly 14 years before the song’s Trump tweet usage).

The tweet was well circulated throughout Twitter upon its posting, but by the following day, the video in the tweet had been disabled due to a copyright violation claim.

“LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH!” Trump tweeted accompanying a video of the “Photograph” meme, through which users replace the titular photograph in the song’s music video with a different image. In Trump’s case, the photo included Joe Biden, his son Hunter and, according to a label on the picture, a “Ukrainian gas exec.”

Since the post, the song has surged in streams across all platforms.

The song earned 772,000 on-demand streams (audio and video combined) on Oct. 2-3, a 38% gain from the 558,000 it collected on Sept. 30-Oct. 1. (Streaming numbers include streams from sources like YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify, but not streams from videos shared directly via Twitter’s platform.)

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Photo Credit: Mikhail Bakunovich / Shutterstock.com