Filed under: music | Tags: buffy sainte-marie, canadians, jane child, kd lang, kon kan, leonard cohen, martha and the muffins, men without hats, nelly furtado, sarah mclachlan, the stills
10. Kon Kan, “I Beg Your Pardon” (1989)
I actually had no idea Kon Kan were Canadian until a few weeks ago. I assumed they were British and nearly put them on a playlist for the Euro-pride party I DJed, but decided at the last minute to look up their origins online. This song is great, though, with its sample-as-chorus and moody moose verses boosted by a really perky synth section.
9. Leonard Cohen, “Dance To The End of Love” (1984)
As a rule, I like late sixties folky Leonard Cohen better than overproduced-to-hell-and-surrounded-by-ladies eighties Leonard Cohen. This song, not “Hallelujah,” is the one exception.
8. Jane Child, “Don’t Wanna Fall In Love” (1990)
When I mentioned this song yesterday in my Linda Sundblad post, I had no idea that I’d accidentally waste spend my entire morning devising this list. Just for the record.
7. Sarah McLachan, “Black” (1991/1998)
I don’t know if you know this about me but I used to looooooooooooove Sarah McLachlan. Like, as much as I pretend that my high school music experience was in any way cool, I spent so much time listening to Solace and Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and The Freedom Sessions. I don’t even know how to pick a favorite song, so I went with this one, which has an oboe in its original version (on Solace) and which was also remixed for the soundtrack to the X-Files movie.
6. The Stills, “Still In Love Song” (2004)
Cheesy though it may be, this hipster-ish love song (which incidentally came out at a point in my life when I was hanging out with a lot of Urban Outfitters employees) still makes me swoony.
5. kd lang, “Miss Chatelaine” (1993)
Simultaneously the coolest and least cool musician ever, kd lang released a trio of albums in the mid-nineties (Ingenue and All You Can Eat and Drag) that are all really excellent. This may be my favorite of her singles from that time if only because it’s the biggest-sounding.
4. Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right” (2007)
Despite her (periodic) popularity, I feel like the Portuguese-Canadian singer gets a bad rap a lot of the time. Sure, she makes horrible botox face in every press photo and sure, she never really sticks to one style long enough to settle into it. But nearly all of her singles are great, especially the ones from the Timbaland-produced Loose album, which is one of the albums I’ve gone back to the most in the past few years.
3. Buffy Sainte-Marie, “Moonshot” (1972)
There is not enough space here to explain the greatness of Buffy Sainte-Marie. Her 1969 album Illuminations, produced in the electronic music lab at NYU, is phenomenally wonderful. But the greatest single by the Cree singer is from slightly later; the lyrics manage to criticize western anthropologists and the space program while still sounding like the most romantic thing ever written. No wonder Dean and Britta decided to cover it.
2. Men Without Hats, “Pop Goes The World” (1987)
When I was, I don’t know, six, I had a conversation with a friend named Erika Beetle about whether this song was better or worse than “Waiting For A Star To Fall,” which hit the US pop charts on (I think) the same week. I advocated for the latter, although Erika Beetle pointed out quite rightly that the singer of “Waiting For A Star To Fall” had hair like a girl. At the time I had no idea about “The Safety Dance,” or that Men Without Hats were actually pretty political. I just knew that their drummer was an evil-looking snowman thing in a top hat.
1. Martha and the Muffins, “Echo Beach” (1980)
If you read this blog two summers ago, you might remember how excited I was when a young British singer named Mpho sampled the opening of this song for her debut single. That song didn’t really take off with anyone besides me, but the original, by a sextet featuring not one but two Marthas, was a huge hit in Canada.
God, this song is so good. Those opening guitars. That cheesy-but-oh-so-true sense of longing. That sax solo! This song, while not ever a hit in the US, was big enough in Canada that it won the Juno Award for Single of the Year in 1980 [well, tied, technically, with Anne Murray's "Could I Have This Dance."] And it’s stuck around long enough that the newest Live Nation concert venue in Toronto is named after it.
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