Nickelback released No Fixed Address in Australia on November 14, 2014, on CD and as a digital download. Their eighth studio album and first for Republic Records paired familiar hard rock with funk, dance-pop and a guest appearance from Flo Rida. Its title reflected a practical change: the band had stopped making the whole record in one place.
The sessions had stretched across more than a year. In an October 2014 interview with Full Metal Jackie published by Loudwire, Chad Kroeger described recording in rented houses in Los Angeles, Maui and Vancouver, with a portable setup accompanying the band on a European tour. “We hit record all over the place,” he said. Guitarist Ryan Peake explained the circumstances in a 2015 interview with The Front Row Report. Previous albums had involved months of long days at Kroeger’s Vancouver-area studio, a routine that became harder as family commitments grew. Shorter visits to different locations let them step away between sessions and return with some perspective on the songs. Peake said they had written on tour before; carrying recording equipment made it easier to capture material that could survive into the finished album.
Kroeger also saw experimentation as part of the band’s history. In his Full Metal Jackie interview, he recalled “Photograph” and “Rockstar” being greeted as departures before becoming familiar examples of Nickelback’s style. On No Fixed Address, “She Keeps Me Up” made that willingness to change direction easy to hear. Its disco and funk elements put a different kind of groove beneath his vocals. The band carried that approach into the song’s 2015 music video, with mirrored guitars, an illuminated dance floor and waitresses on roller skates. The track sat on a record that also made room for horns and female backing vocals.
The guest appearance on “Got Me Runnin’ Round” grew out of another connection. Flo Rida heard material through a friend Kroeger was writing with and wanted to take part, Peake told The Front Row Report. The resulting session happened in a house. Although Peake wasn’t there, he relayed Kroeger’s account of Flo Rida completing his writing and vocal parts in roughly an hour or two. A collaboration the band hadn’t planned became part of the album.
Elsewhere, the band experimented with storytelling. Kroeger told Loudwire that he’d wanted to write a bank-robbery song, which became “Get ’Em Up.” The would-be criminals imagine a clean getaway, then struggle to park and discover they’ve arrived at a closed bank on a Sunday. Peake pointed to the slide guitar’s blues character, while Kroeger explained that the bungled robbery was deliberately comic. It gave the album a fully plotted story alongside its relationship songs and bigger political concerns.
“Edge of a Revolution” addressed those concerns directly. Kroeger said television news helped the band develop the song’s topics, including public uprisings, government surveillance and anger over Wall Street bonuses after the financial crash. He regarded that overt political stance as new territory for Nickelback. The lead single reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart before the album arrived.
No Fixed Address subsequently debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, with approximately 80,000 copies sold in the United States during its first week.
