With Nickelback [ tickets ]'s sometimes overtly misogynistic, sexual lyrics, one would think that women wouldn't necessarily be into the Canadian rock band.

But bassist Mike Kroeger said that's far from the truth, as evidenced by the hit "Figured You Out," from the group's 2003 album, "The Long Road." Even Kroeger said he was skeptical about releasing it as a single.

"I really did expect to get flack or negative feedback," he said. "What really, really puzzled the hell out of me, I still haven't figured it out, but the guys think it's great because of the subject matter--and so do the girls.

"I did not expect that. It's fairly misogynistic in a really jaded way, too. When I heard it, I thought, 'Oh yeah, that's pretty playful and cool. Is this ever going to be a single? No way.' It turns out to be the biggest single to that point in Australia. It was massive. Huge. The Australians just thought that was the greatest thing ever."

The single was released thanks to the radio-department think tank.

"It's good to surround yourself with quality people who don't always do exactly what you want them to do and don't think everything you think," Kroeger said. "But we trust their judgment a lot. They weighed pretty heavily on this one and it turned out they were right."

Nickelback's No. 1-debuting 2005 album, "All the Right Reasons," has no shortage of sexually tinged lyrics. The song "Fight for All the Wrong Reasons" is a hormone-charged story about a man who stays with a woman just for sex. The hard-driving "Animals" is a humorous story about a young couple making out in a vehicle who get caught by the girl's dad.

Nickelback--including vocalist/guitarist Chad Kroeger (Mike's brother), guitarist/vocalist Ryan Peake and drummer Daniel Adair--do stray from the suggestive lyrics on "All the Right Reasons." "Side of a Bullet" is an angry response to the death of Pantera/Damageplan guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, who was murdered as he played on stage. "Rockstar," on which Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top guests, pokes fun at the public's perception of music icons' lives.

liveDaily: Most bands tour just before their album is released. Nickelback decided to wait. Why is that?

Mike Kroeger: We decided this time around to wait until the third single's really happening, until we would go on the road in a really prolonged way. We're midway through this second single ["Animals"]. By January, the third single should be getting ready to come out, and we're going to be hitting the trial.

Why did you decide to wait until the third single?

The way it's typically gone when you first get going as a new artist, as soon as there's a single at radio--sometimes even before that--the record company would like you to get out there and start a fire for when the record comes out and get the whole "campaign" underway. We had done that every time. Typically what happens is there's a lag time that it takes for the single at radio to settle in and the anticipation to build. We've had a good run of touring but it's a little soft up front, let's say. We want to eliminate that off period, and go right for the good times. So we're going to hang back at home until it's significantly heated up and ready for us.

It seems like it would be more economically viable, too.

We've sort of gone over the hump, in a sense, from going on tour to promote your album and that sort of beginning phase, to now the album is promoting itself well at radio through the various other marketing forms we're using. Touring now has to be a business that has to sustain itself. It's not so much a promotional tool, but a business venture that has to be executed correctly. If we take it out too early, it loses money because we like to carry a pretty big show. Rather than taking a small, pared-down show to conserve the resources, we're going to wait and bring the big show out.

The first single, "Photograph," is a snapshot of life that I think everyone can relate to. That seems to be a strength with Nickelback. Would you agree?

It's important when you're writing lyrics, and Chad is really good at this. We're all sort of in agreement with it. It's really good to write a lyric and tell a story that people can relate to. "Photograph" is exactly that. Everybody can relate to that story. Everybody has a hometown and a lot of people don't live in them anymore. There's a way of romanticizing the past and this is the example that you remember the good times and the bad times--but mostly the good times. Certain times have almost a sweet quality to them because they're behind you.

I moved from Detroit to Phoenix three years ago, so I can totally relate to the song.

It's really, really clear, that whole thing, "You can never really go home." We've gone back. We went back to shoot the "Photograph" video, and it's not like that anymore. Everything has changed--the times of your growing up and your childhood and your adolescence should be savored as much as possible. They're the hardest times, I think, in your whole life, maybe aside from dying itself. You're really establishing your place in the world trying to figure out where you fit in. It's a very, very difficult time, but it's also some of the most precious moments. I'm 33, and it seems the further I get away from that time, the sweeter it seems. It's clear your mind is playing tricks on you. But you remember some of those times fondly.

Tell me about "Rockstar." How did that song come about? It's a great parody of the life of a musician.

It is guilty-as-charged by the media as being a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of what people think goes on or what people aspire to. Because a lot of people do aspire to the whole, "I'd even cut my hair and change my name," you know that line [in the song]? A lot of people would do that. It's sort of tongue in cheek at times, and also a little close to reality at times, too. There's a few broad generalizations about what we do. Some are true and some are not. It kind of goes over those things.

It must have been a fun song to write.

It was pretty funny. All those lyrics are really over the top, so it's kind of like, "Is that too much?" We had to grapple with that a little bit. It's all good. It turned out with the vision that Chad had for it. Personally, I was a little skeptical up front. I wasn't exactly sure where we were going with that. Once the vision was realized, I got it. Being in a band with somebody when they have a vision of something at the finish line, sometimes the trip getting there [seems to be tough], and now I get it.

Tell me about Nickelback's songwriting process. I'm assuming that Chad writes the lyrics?

We've all tried to get a little bit more involved in the lyric-writing process. That has been welcomed, for sure. We get more involved when he's got writer's block or he's stuck on a certain lyric, more so than writing a whole song. The realization I've had over the years is he's the guy who has to get on the stage and sing those words every night, so he'd better believe them. If he feels a little wishy-washy about a lyric that somebody else writes, then he shouldn't sing it. It really was kind of tough. But the reality is, to sing with conviction, you have to believe all those words entirely and that's something that comes with writing them yourself, mostly.

Do you write the music together or individually?

The songs sort of morph over time as each thing goes down. As you reflect on what each part is doing, it changes the creation of the song. Sometimes, one thing being played or something different will change the rest of the way that song is written. Sometimes, it will cause us to go back and rewrite the whole thing. That's happened. "Saving Me" on the record was written, I think, twice.

How do you know the song is perfect after you've written it twice?

It's by no means perfect, but you just kind of realize the place you were trying to go with the song, you didn't reach it and you have to reevaluate where you want the song and what you want the song to say both musically and lyrically. Let's say we address it, and we wanted to go in a more melodic direction. This whole verse that has a straight-ahead, hateful feeling that's really driving isn't giving us the melodic feeling we want to bring across the emotion of the lyrics. That song took us six weeks. We recorded it three times. It was one of those ones that was really painstaking. Whereas the song "Animals" was written and recorded in 24 hours. We basically needed a song and had a day to finish the record before we had to go on a plane and go somewhere.

That was the last song you wrote? So you knew you had a song to write and whipped it out in 24 hours?

It's sort of something we've done with the last few records. Let's see if I can remember ... with "On the Long Road," "Flat on the Floor" was very much like that. That was a two-day song. "Animals" was a one-day song. I don't know if we did one of those on "Silver Side Up." Actually, on "Silver Side Up," they were all like that. We did the whole record in five weeks. It was pretty tight work.

How long did it take you to record "All the Right Reasons"?

Between seven and nine months. The reason I say it that way is because it was nine months on the calendar, but we really only worked for seven. [Laughs] There was a significant amount of leisure, depending on where you live.