CALGARY – If you follow popular online music publications Pitchfork and the A.V. Club, you probably don’t often read about Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.
But if you’re reading on Thursday, you’ll see both sites picked up a photo tweeted by Mayor Nenshi’s chief of staff of the two politicians holding up shirts with the Nine Inch Nails logo.
Only it’s a bit of a remix: “Notley Iveson Nenshi” reads the shirt—naming the premier, Edmonton’s Mayor Don Iveson and the ever-tweeting Nenshi—with the tag line “Building Alberta Together.”
Do you think they’re “hip” as the A.V. Club joked in its headline?
Or maybe you think it’s lame, like this Twitter user (luckily Mayor Nenshi agreed, and laughed it off):
“We’ve gone from Notley Crue to Nine Inch Nails,” Nenshi said on Tuesday, referring to Notley’s past campaign shirts that riffed on Motley Cru.
The A.V. Club offered its usual snark, writing the “eye-rolling trend of politicians glomming onto hip musicians to appear culturally relevant continues unabated, this time in Alberta, Canada.”
Back at home, the National Post suggested Hurt and Closer (F— You Like an Animal), the band’s most famous songs, are “thematically appropriate, given what the province’s taxpayers are going to feel during the next four years.”
So far no online response from band front man Trent Reznor or the Nine Inch Nails Twitter feed, but some negative reaction from the group’s fans:
There was also some outrage from Albertans who don’t live in Calgary or Edmonton:
And some people who thought it inappropriate for the premier to reference a band that uses sexually-charged, violent lyrics after kicking Calgary MLA Deborah Drever out of caucus for posing in a heavy metal album cover that appeared to suggest she was about to be assaulted:
On the other hand, there were also some people who enjoyed the photo, had a laugh, and even those who asked where they could get their own shirt:
Comments