By Michael Haas
Have you ever been listening to the radio and a song comes on, and you think, 'Damn, this song kinda sucks.' Chances are good that the song you heard was Canadian.
Many people don't even know which bands come from Canada and which ones don't. But once you put some of them together, you start to see and hear some common themes - and those themes all suck. BTO (Let It Ride, Takin' Care of Business) Steppenwolf (Born to be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride) The Guess Who (American Woman, No Sugar Tonight) Rush (Working Man, Tom Sawyer) Bryan Adams (Summer of '69, Run to You)
See what I mean? Using just those four bands, one could start a crappy cookie-cutter classic rock radio station. And if you threw in Americans Bob Seger and John Mellencamp, you'd really have something.
Even new bands like Nickelback suck. Nickelback does not even deserve to be mentioned on this fine website. If an American band was named Nickelback, the American band would be stronger. It's science. (one Canadian nickel = 0.04752 U.S. Dollar)
So without further ado, I present the top ten Canadian songs of all-time. (excluding Neil Young, since this list would be almost all Neil Young songs.)
10. Celine Dion - It's All Coming Back To Me Now
9. Tom Cochrane - Life is a Highway
8. Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild
7. Alanis Morissette - One Hand in my Pocket
6. Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown
5. Trooper - We're Here For a Good Time
4. The Band - Up on Cripple Creek
3. Bare Naked Ladies - One Week
2. The Band - The Weight
1. Gordon Lightfoot - Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
ah, shoot. No room for Workin' for the Weekend by Loverboy.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Canadian Music is Mediocre At Best
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
20 comments:
Arcade Fire are awesome, and they're canadian. then again, they really are the only good canadian band.
Neil Young is awesome. The Band is pretty decent. Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot are also pretty good.
ive never heard of arcade fire. i'll check them out. thanks for the tip, ash collins.
ha, trooper. holyshit that brings me back to highschool.
whoops. we all make mistakes haas, but leaving out Informer by Snow is a bit inexcusable
man do I hate Nickelback. Has there ever been a band that had more songs that sounded exactly the same? I really like Life Is A Highway but I cant stand the horrible remix that country band did for the Cars movie. Leave well enough alone already.
arcade fire, aren't they the ones who did the music video dancing on the treadmills? Wait, no thats OK Go, or HelloGoodbye. I can't keep these wierd bands straight.
On a seperate note does anyone else think that band names are wierd? When did Band Names originate? I assume that back in the day it was like "The (Insert guys name here) Band/Group" When did people start naming their group wierd stuff?
Thoughts?
that band that did the remake for Cars was rascall flats.
i know trooper isn't a good band, but they're nostaligic. same with the 'One Week' song.
also, after some research, i found that 'total eclipse of the heart' has nothing to do with celine dion. I must have been thinking of "all coming back to me now" they sound similar don't they? i'm updating the list.
i've never heard of Snow. i'll have to check them out as well. maybe i'll make a post of the top ten canadian songs i had never heard of before july 26th, 2007.
As for Band Names, i don't know, but ive wasted about 30 minutes enjoying stupidly named bands on the internet. good stuff.
Wow your knowledge of rock music astounds me. Do you know where all bands come from?
This is an interesting observation. What is it about Canadian Music? Why does is it so bland? Well, what about Canada is exciting? Almost nothing.
I want to listen to Trooper right now.
If I had a vote I would bump Tom Cochrane above Alanis Morissete.
Yea that band name thing is something to think about... What about naming songs? Why is the name of the song actually in the lyrics 95% of the time? Also, why do 99% of song have a corus that repeats? More song writers should break this mold. I want to hear a popular song that doesn't repeat any lyrics. Now that would be something.
pop songs and breaking the mold is almost an oxymoron. Figuring out when exactly bands started to name themselves based on other things besides the frontman would be interesting to find out. I'm guessing it happend sometime before or around 1920 or so, but I'm sure there were some old jassmire bands in the 1800s that called themselves something strange.
Darrin O'Brien - born October 30, 1969, in Toronto, Ontario is an award-winning Canadian reggae musician, best known by his stage name Snow.
His 1993 debut album was 12 Inches of Snow. MC Shan produced the entire album, apart from one track which was produced by John Ficarrotta. The album was produced shortly before Snow was imprisoned for a year on an assault charge. Upon his release from prison, his first single "Informer," featuring MC Shan, became a chart topping hit. The song spent seven consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Informer” is a reggae rap song (yes a reggae rap song from a guy from Toronto) goes a little something like: “informer a no she ought to something al len blam a nicki boom boom down so somer salt summy not to blam …”
(for actual lyrics: http://www.snowlyrics.com/12inches.htm#informer)
haha. i just watched the video of that song on youtube. i'd seen it somewhere before. someone had shown it to me. now its stuck in my head.
i just realized that this post came from two things: a convo about how bad nickelback sucks i had with a friend
and animosity toward canada for the stupid blue jays sweeping the twins.
as for non traditional pop songs, waters is right. it is an oxymoron. you'll just have to be a hipster and listen to bands that no one has ever heard of. sounds like a lot of work. but there are GOOD bands who are who do use a formula for their songs. my recommendation: listen to more Bob Dylan and David Bowie
Ferron -- a female folk-rocker from Canada who got some play in the USofA about 15 years ago. I liked her stuff. Still have one old cassette tape of her first album. Haven't heard anything good come out of Canada since (not counting Justin Morneau and Jesse Crain a.k.a. The Crainadian).
i had fun when we went to Canada in high school... Malecha is a character, that kid is awesome. If anyone is still reading this tell me your thoughts on Jake Malecha?
history will describe malecha better than any of us possibly could.
there is only one word to desribe malecha. Wow. what a great dude.
Loverboy is the worst band in the world.
Isnt he the mayor of Gaylord?
hahahahaha...that was one of those things you had to be there for
What about Avril Lavigne, she pretty much rox my sox off.
I love celine Dion!
Post a Comment